![]() I presumed that the imagery associated with minstrelsy was normal and innocuous, just as I thought topless showgirls performing in my city’s casinos was. I don’t know about her, but I never once thought deeply about what the lyrics evoked: a “mask that grins and lies.” The entertainer I envisioned was a lot like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who looks happy tap-dancing alongside Shirley Temple in her childhood movie series. We created a duet and took turns singing the words. She’d never taken piano lessons, but she patiently learned the right-hand notes and I accompanied her with the left-hand part. ![]() My babysitter, who was 13 and also white, loved “The Entertainer” so much that she asked me to teach her how to play it. The lyrics on my sheet music described a clownish performer doing “snappy patter and jokes” that please “the folks.” I know I imagined a Black man on stage, but I didn’t know about minstrel shows or much else about America’s racist past and present. I didn’t feel sad when I played it, though I missed my dad fiercely instead, I felt indefatigable and industrious. I played it obsessively, perhaps because it occupied my hands and sounded jolly. Before and after school, I played “The Entertainer” on an out-of-tune piano in my mother’s classroom. I’d moved from Las Vegas to Reno with my mother, a kindergarten teacher. In 1991, when I was eight years old, I found a simplified version of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” and relished playing it for most of the year that I was in third grade. His compositions became more and more intricate, until they were almost jazz Bach.- Music publisher Edward B.
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