One of the original creators and developers of the blackface minstrel songs was an American composer Stephen Foster.
Parlor music is a genre of music created primarily for music making in the home, as musical proficiency as a hallmark of good taste and moral reputability gained increased importance in 19th century America. At first, Foster wrote ballads and dances for parlor singers and pianists as well as blackface minstrel songs for theatrical groups. The blackface minstrel songs, like the ballads, had simple melodies and accompaniments, but their texts, written in dialect, depicted African-American slaves as simple, good-natured creatures. But, Foster grew ambivalent about his blackface songs, and grew more concerned with the lyrical meaning. In years when debate about slavery intensified, he became increasingly sensitive to the suffering of African Americans. Although, he continued to use dialect, his tunes began investing black Americans with greater dignity. Foster set out to reform minstrelsy by writing texts suitable to refined taste, and emphasized that certain of his songs should be performed in a pathetic, not a comic style, for the purposes of evoking compassion for the subjects. Foster began offering a different image, that of the black as a human being experiencing pain, love, joy, even nostalgia. Foster also began using the term "plantation song" for his new compositions, many of which were gentle and nostalgic in text with music that hinted at Irish or Italian ancestry. Soon he dropped dialect altogether from his texts and eventually referred to his songs as "American melodies". The verse-chorus structure of these songs made them suitable for both the minstrel stage and the parlor. African American leader Frederick Douglass even claimed that one Foster song, "Old Kentucky Home," awakened, "the sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish".
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