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Title: Joel Sweeney's Role in the Northern Migration of the Traditional Southern Black Banjo: An HGIS Approach

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2010

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Abstract: The early decades of 19th century America witnessed many social modifications over its vast geographic space. These social assimilations were heavily influenced by contemporary political, economic and social currents. In 1840, these tangible and intangible forces accumulation produce the extant effects of modernitythe concepts and processes manifesting improvements for transportation of ideas and objects across time and space. Due to modernitys irregular presence across geography, certain areas of America in 1840 embodied modernitys consciousness more than others. Within modernitys patchwork, people pursued ancient cultural rituals; one of those was music. Beginning in the early 1840s, the banjo, a symbol of African-American culture, was ubiquitously adopted by blackface minstrelsy in America and carried over the world. Joel Sweeney, a white Virginian, performed a pivotal role in presenting the black banjo to popular white culture through their favorite entertainment medium: blackface minstrelsy and then the creolization the black banjo.Chapter I sets the scene in which banjos became significant in popular American culture and how GIS techniques can help map its emergence into this culture. Chapter II builds an understanding about why the black banjo became such a nationwide fad. Using ideas about cultural formation, lifeworld experiences, centers of modernity and Joel Sweeneys role within these processes, the historic social and racial context of the 1840s emerges that enveloped the northern movement of the southern black banjo. Chapter III discusses the application and display of these ideas and concepts through Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS). HGIS offer a unique chance to retrace the echoes of Joel Sweeneys modernized banjo and recreate the social environments in which he performed. Using historical census data from the University of Minnesotas Population Center, Joel Sweeneys performance tour from 1836 to 1842 is plotted against demographics depicting racial, age, gender and employment populations, as well as contemporary access and presence of communication and transportation networks. Together, these demographics insinuate the breadth of particular lifeworlds. Chapter IV examines the results these series of maps based upon economic, transportation and communication, racial, age and gender demographics from 1840. Chapter V offers conclusions derived from this project and further research options.This is an interdisciplinary project utilizing Appalachian Studies, historical geography and HGIS. It looks at differences in historical life experiences between the northern and southern United States in 1840 based upon modernitys power centers within these regions, and the affects these power centers exerted upon the mass adoption of the banjo into blackface minstrelsy. This project illustrates the southern black banjos northward migration into the white dominated North through Joel Sweeneys 1836-1842 performance tours.

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Authors: Bowman, Lucas

Institution: Appalachian State University

Department: Geography and Planning

Advisor: Christopher A. Badurek

Degree: Master of Arts

Publisher Location: Boone, NC

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Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity

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