The Rise and Fall of the Metropolitan Police Minstrels

在文化研究中，人们对黑脸滑稽的现象很感兴趣，尤其是在美国的背景下。这一主题为研究‘黑人’作为19世纪和20世纪文化中的一种社会和音乐结构提供了空间，反过来，它也有很多关于‘白人’的当代概念可以告诉我们。对英国黑脸表演的研究相对滞后，但有可能在重要方面发展这些主题，突显大西洋两岸黑脸传统的相似和差异。在这一领域最有启发性的文献是迈克尔·皮克林和德里克·斯科特，其中大部分是由阿什盖特出版的。(皮克林的《英国黑脸明斯特雷西》是英国《黑脸》历史上的第一部长篇，预计将于2008年3月发行，它将极大地促进人们对这种广为流传的音乐娱乐形式的理解。)很大程度上是通过后殖民学术，音乐学者找到了必要的理论资源来解决英美表演史上这一引人注目但令人不快的方面。从19世纪40年代到30年代，黑脸吟游诗人是英国音乐生活中的一支主要力量，出现在时尚和体面的场所(如圣詹姆斯音乐厅)、繁荣的维多利亚时代海滨度假胜地(直到20世纪30年代被皮埃罗剧团取代)，以及首都和其他主要城市中心的街道上。到目前为止，学者们一直专注于美国巡回演出剧团的活动和接待，以及随之而来的专业团体；但业余吟游诗人也可以说是同样重要的，最著名的业余吟游诗人剧团之一是大都会警察吟游诗人(MPM)。MPM是由大都会警局的现役警察组成的，其中许多人与警队历史早期组织的一个欢乐合唱团有关联。从19世纪70年代初到20世纪30年代解散，他们在伦敦各地表演，为大都会和城市警察孤儿院筹集资金，他们不间断的表演生涯尚未引起音乐学家、警察历史学家或文化历史学家的注意，更不用说成为学术研究的焦点了。正如我所展示的，MPM剧团就音乐制作在不断演变的英国警察公共形象中所扮演的角色；英国文化中黑脸表演的意义和解释以及警察对这一传统的参与；以及基本上维多利亚时代的表演模式与摄影、留声机和电影等新兴技术之间的早期接触(MPM在20世纪20年代至少录制了一次录音，并在《爵士歌手》发行仅三年后就进入最终无果而终的对讲机谈判)提供了丰富的见解。MPM的表演也照亮了性别的方方面面，不仅与创建和巩固一个新的等级制度男性职业有关，还因为女性模仿从一开始就出现在他们的表演中，并在20世纪20年代管理MPM的哑剧女爵士克拉克森·罗斯的煽动下，最终创造了“警察女孩”(穿着变装、丝绸和白脸的合唱队)。MPMS的巨大成功和受欢迎程度在全国各地的警察部队中催生了模仿，但也激怒了热衷于通过运动、拳击、音乐骑行和游行乐队来促进更明确的男性权威形式的警察。这项研究利用了大都会警察局的大量档案、大都会和城市警察孤儿基金的档案和财务记录、对20世纪20年代和30年代MPM剧团的目击者的采访、前MPM家庭的文件以及当代报纸和警察期刊上的音乐会报道。与MPM有关的材料是第一次在这里探索。

In cultural studies there has been considerable interest in the phenomenon of blackface minstrelsy, particularly in US contexts. The topic offers scope for investigating 'blackness' as a social and musical construction in 19th- and 20th-century culture, and conversely has much to tell us about contemporary notions of 'whiteness'. Study of British blackface performance has lagged behind, but potentially develops these themes in important ways, highlighting similarities and differences between blackface traditions on either side of the Atlantic. The most illuminating literature in this area, much of it published by Ashgate, is by Michael Pickering and Derek Scott. (Pickering's _Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain_, the first extended history of British blackface, is due out in March 2008, and will do much to advance understanding of this widespread form of musical entertainment.) It is largely through postcolonial scholarship that musicologists have found the theoretical wherewithal to tackle this telling, but uncomfortable aspect of Anglo-American performance history. From the 1840s until the 1930s, blackface minstrelsy was a major strand in British musical life, found in fashionable and respectable venues (such as St James's Hall), flourishing Victorian seaside resorts (until superseded by Pierrot troupes in the 1930s), and on the streets of the capital and other major urban centres. To date, scholars have concentrated on the activities and reception of touring American troupes, and the professional groups which sprang up in their wake; but amateur minstrelsy was arguably just as significant, and among the most well known of the amateur minstrel troupes was the Metropolitan Police Minstrels (MPMs). The MPMs were formed from the ranks of active police officers in the Met, many of whom had been associated with a glee club organised early in the force's history. They performed across London, raising funds for the Metropolitan and City Police Orphanage, from the early 1870s until they were disbanded in the 1930s, and their unbroken performance career has yet to be noticed by musicologists, police historians, or cultural historians, let alone become the focus of scholarly study. As I show, the MPM troupe offers rich insights into the role of music-making in the evolving public image of the British police service; meanings and interpretations of blackface performance in British culture and of policemen's engagement with this tradition; and early encounters between an essentially Victorian mode of performance, and emergent technologies such as photography, gramophone, and cinema (the MPMs made at least one recording during the 1920s, and entered into ultimately inconclusive negotiations for a 'talkie' just three years after the release of _The Jazz Singer_). The performances of the MPMs also illuminate aspects of gender, not only in relation to the creation and consolidation of the 'new police', a new hierarchical masculine profession, but also because female impersonation featured in their act from the beginning, and culminated in the creation of the 'Police Girls' (a chorus-line in drag, silks, and whiteface) at the instigation of the pantomime dame Clarkson Rose, who managed the MPMs in the 1920s. The phenomenal success and popularity of the MPMs spawned imitations in police forces across the country, but also antagonised officers keen to promote less equivocal forms of masculine authority through athleticism, boxing, musical rides, and marching bands. The study draws on the extensive archives of the Metropolitan Police, which operated a committee to manage the activities of the Minstrels; the archives and financial records of the Metropolitan and City Police Orphans' Fund; interviews with those who witnessed the MPM troupe in the '20s and '30s; papers belonging to the families of former Minstrels; and concert reports in contemporary newspapers and police periodicals. Material relating to the MPMs is explored here for the first time.