Focusing on two influential broadcasts staged for British television in 1963–4, this article traces transatlantic attitudes towards blues music in order to explore the constitutive relationship between race, spectatorship and performativity. During these programmes, I claim, a form of mythic history is translated into racial nature. Ultimately, I argue that blues revivalism coerced African American musicians into assuming the mask of blackface minstrelsy – an active personification of difference driven by a lucrative fantasy on the terms of white demand. I ask why this imagery found such zealous adherents among post-war youth, situating their gaze within a longer tradition of colonialist display. Subaltern musicians caught within this regime were nonetheless able to ‘speak’ via sung performances that signified on the coordinates of their own marginalization. The challenge for musicology is thus to heed the relational syncretism arising from intercultural contact while acknowledging the lived experience of African American artists unable fully to evade the preordained mask of alterity.

中文翻译：

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跨大西洋蓝调复兴中的精通与伪装

本文聚焦于 1963-4 年为英国电视台举办的两场有影响力的广播，追溯跨大西洋对蓝调音乐的态度，以探索种族、观众和表演性之间的构成关系。我声称，在这些节目中，一种神话历史形式被转化为种族性质。归根结底，我认为布鲁斯复兴主义迫使非裔美国音乐家戴上黑脸吟游诗人的面具——一种积极的差异化身，由以白人需求为条件的有利可图的幻想驱动。我问为什么这个图像在战后青年中找到如此热心的追随者，将他们的目光置于更长期的殖民主义展示传统中。尽管如此，被困在这个政权中的下层音乐家仍然能够通过歌唱表演来“说话”，这意味着他们自己被边缘化的坐标。因此，音乐学面临的挑战是注意跨文化接触所产生的关系融合，同时承认非裔美国艺术家的生活经历无法完全逃避预定的异性面具。