When the Stars begins to fall. Exoticism, Aesthetic Blues and Representations of Singing in the American South

Between 1800 and 1863 -the years when Lincoln declared Emancipation -many travellers from Europe or the North of the United States went to the Southern States and provided particular descriptions of the geographic reality of that land. Many of their stories included descriptions of musical practices -and in particular singing performances -of Afro American slaves. The trips continued even after the end of the civil war and throughout the nineteenth century, although in different forms. Later the philanthropic movement became the main driver of such explorations. These reports often included many pictures that visually supported the descriptions of the musical performances observed by travellers.The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between literary and visual descriptions focusing on the Afro-American musical performances. What emerges is a continuous dialectic between the exoticism of musical practices and sound scenarios, and the attempt by reporters to define aesthetic blues, theorized later by Powell, on which the American black music and visual cultures were based. Recent evidence shows that the dialectic between exoticism and aesthetic blues is still active in representations of the South of the United States that move between sound memories and imagination, as highlighted by the recent exhibition When the Stars Begin to Fall(Studium Museum, Harlem, 2014).