The irony is that minstrelsy simultaneously perverted -- through misrepresentation -- and preserved -- through imitation -- genuine African American expressiveness. And it presented both interpretations, intertwined, to Black and white observers alike. When African Americans themselves entered show business via minstrelsy, they were forced, paradoxically, to imitate the racist imitators while at the same time they struggled to re-introduce a more bona fide Black and Africanist presence to the genre.

Gottschild also contributes to the larger theoretical and conceptual framework of these issues by proposing an original list of the characteristics of Africanist aesthetics: contrariety, polycentrism, juxtaposition, ephebism, and the aesthetics of the cool. She illustrates these boldly by drawing on descriptions of the extraordinary style of Earl "Snakehips" Tucker, the Harlem dancer who was so sensually explicit that college boys used to bring their girlfriends to his performances as an aphrodisiac.

Gottschild hardly limits herself to the vernacular, however. One of the more intriguing and promising aspects of her study is her analysis of ballet, where one might think the most dramatic contrasts between African and European cultures would be evident. Overall, Digging the Africanist Presence surveys a wide field with intelligence, imagination, and insight. It adds to our understanding as well as our knowledge. Gottschild quotes a well-known phrase of Ralph Ellison, but her book gives it a new level of meaning, and not only as it refers to African American performance: "Change the joke and slip the yoke."

Richard Newman is Fellows Officer at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University. His latest hook is "Everybody Say Freedom: Everything You Need to Know About African-American History (Penguin/ Plume).

COPYRIGHT 1997 Cox, Matthews & Associates
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