One other 12 months has come for us in Canada to have a good time and commemorate Black Historical past Month. Currently in some quarters it’s now being known as Black Futures Month. Whether or not Current, Future or Previous, this month has change into a black hysterical affair for a lot of work areas to point out their appreciation for its black employees. It’s additionally a delicate option to present how effectively the office is responding to its Variety techniques. Nevertheless, greater than that, Black Historical past Month in Canada has change into a Minstrel present for thus many. As an artist, a musician, singer, dancer it’s the busiest time of the 12 months. Essentially the most enquiry you’ll ever get in your craft. By no means thoughts you’re working towards the whole 12 months and struggling to remain related. Black Historical past Month has change into the jackpot to many black entertainers in Canada.
This fervour for performing acts has been a supply of rivalry to me. Yearly, I’m inundated with enquiries for a singer, a dancer, a musician. This 12 months was a primary: they wished a caterer to organize a breakfast for its employees. So now we’re consuming black. It would simply change into a pattern within the absence of the entertainer.
One can not fault these work areas although. It’s a historic and cultural response to the black enslaved our bodies who entertained their masters for such events as Crop Over, Carnival, Easter and Christmas. Their dance and music, pantomime and mimicry had their masters and the plantocracy effectively entertained. They had been so overwhelmed by these performances that, submit emancipation, the masters themselves painted their faces in black to change into such entertainers as the previous enslaved, and so started the motion of the minstrels.
When the black our bodies had been emancipated, they themselves adopted the grasp’s minstrel type and approach and made it their very own. Ever heard of the “Chitlin Circuit” and vaudeville reveals? The emancipated African toured areas of the US entertaining their former masters in music, dance and pantomime. This trade sustained black musicians and dancers in the course of the period of racial segregation.
I’m fairly certain that when Dr Jean Augustine envisioned Black Historical past Consciousness in Canada it was not a few music and a dance however reasonably to embrace Sankofa in our efforts to have a good time our blackness previously, current and future.
I applaud these work areas as The Neighborhood Group Neighborhood Companies and others like them who seized the chance to interact its employees in a breakfast and viewing a Documentary movie on Africville. There was no minstrel present, as a substitute it was a chance for its employees to replicate on collective reminiscences in preserving Black Historical past and Tradition. Members of employees had been then invited to debate household heirlooms and the way these objects assist join them to their previous and current.
Alas, I personally get roped into the minstrel present, however as a comic I flip all of it right into a laughing matter, so the Black Historical past Month is all a Black Hysterical Month. Nyam Comedy will commemorate the event with three dynamic girls in comedy. That includes Enoje Ozjam from “Bish Humorous”, Juno-nominated Zabrina Douglas, and yours actually at Spade Bar and Lounge, 3503 Mc Nicolls Ave in Scarborough. Between us three, we are going to go away no stone unturned and promise to ‘bend for the digicam’ a la Girl Lava who’s smashing the airwaves for The TT Carnival.
Rhoma Spencer is an actor, director, playwright and comic. When she is just not doing any of the above, she may be seen swizzling a random pot of Callaloo together with her Sweethand Delights gig. Observe Rhoma Spencer Leisure on Fb and Sweethand Delights on Instagram and Fb.
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