Viewing page 12 of 18

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:31:41]

{SPEAKER name="1"}
Okay let's have a big hand please for the Disco Queens and Kings.
[00:31:44]

[[Applause]]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
Thank you very much, too.
[00:31:46]

[[Applause]]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
It's their last stage appearance at the festival here.
[00:31:48]

[[Applause]]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
God bless all y'all. Everybody say , "Huh"!
[00:31:52]

[[Background Voices]]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
And don't never forget get us. Everybody say Queens and Kings!
[00:31:56]

[[Background Voices]]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
God bless with you all. Good luck with y'all.
[00:32:00]

[[Applause]]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
Now come on down to Philadelphia on some weekend, just hit downtown and you'll see them out there in the summer.
[00:32:06]

{SILENCE}

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
--Stage. Before Willie was a dance--was a comic, he was a dancer.
[00:32:13]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
Again, working Tent Show Stages, Nightclubs, Broadway Reviews, and of course the Savoy Ballroom in New York City.
[00:32:20]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
What we're going to do today, is talk about those traditions of entertainment.
[00:32:26]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
We'll talk for a little while about a few of the selected traditions, let's say Carnival, and Minstrelsy,
[00:32:33]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
some aspects of dance, how he got to be a humorist, why we're doing this on the stage here,
[00:32:38]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
and then we'll open up the floor to questions from the audience about any of the traditions that we'll discuss.
[00:32:44]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
The best way to start is to simply say that when we're talking about traditions,
[00:32:51]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
here at the festival, most people think of traditions passed from generation to generation;
[00:32:58]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
from father to son, from mother to daughter. The traditions we'll be talking about here on the stage are not traditions passed down in that way,
[00:33:07]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
rather they are traditions of the black stage. Traditions passed not from Father to Son, but from older performer to younger performer.
[00:33:16]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
And it's that passage, on the stage, all the time. Not on the street, not necessarily in other settings.
[00:33:24]


{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
Not at house parties or places like that, but rather on the professional stage where traditions of comedy and traditions of dance
[00:33:31]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
are passed on so that jokes being told in a African American owned Minstrel show in 1890,
[00:33:38]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
were still being told in 1940, in a black Carnival show,
[00:33:43]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
and are still being told in senior citizen centers and on the stage of the Folk Live Festival here today.
[00:33:50]

Transcription Notes:
Speaker names are needed.