MINSTREL INTERVIEW

Les Want
Minstrel performer 1966-78

Monday 17 May 2004

I didn't mind her objecting, but what annoyed me was the salute. I was going to have a word with her, but I was pulled back. I just wanted to know how it offended her. I didn't understand the great controversy. The thing was, she didn't object to sharing the stage with us at the end of the show when the Queen came along the line.

BBC Four: How aware were you and your colleagues of the growing controversy surrounding the show?
LW: Floella Benjamin fronted a demonstration outside Victoria Palace where we performed, and certain left-wing councils demonstrated when we toured. We used to invite them in to see the show, but they would never come in.

All these people who jumped on the bandwagon, they seemed to think that minstrel shows started when the Black and White Minstrel Show started. But they go back to 1750. Originally the performers were black. They were field workers who sang round campfires and wrote comical songs about their white bosses. Eventually they turned professional and went on the river boats, up the Mississippi.

The white vaudeville entertainers heard about these black performers and went see these fantastic shows. They stole the songs, went back to vaudeville, blacked up their skins and performed the minstrel shows they'd seen down South. So right from the beginning it was only an impersonation of the original black shows. It was nothing to do with ridiculing them.

Not one of us ever gave a thought to racism. I was putting on what I thought was a theatrical make-up, to impersonate minstrel shows from the late 1700s. We didn't connect it with black people, because the original shows were white people blacked up. It never felt offensive.

BBC Four: So when you first heard that black people felt ridiculed and humiliated by it, how did you feel?
LW: It was a little uncomfortable, but at the same time we used to have black people in the audience. In the mid-1960s, the whole Duke Ellington orchestra saw the show, and they gave us a standing ovation. Gary Sobers' West Indian cricket team used to come backstage and chat with us. They all loved the show, and they never mentioned racism. It changed politically from the 1960s to the 70s, when it all went berserk.

BBC Four: When you look back on the show, what is your perspective now?

LW: I still think it's a wonderful show. It's obviously racist because of the climate of the world today, but 40 years ago there wasn't the controversy. We were just performers.

Last summer we did a mini-Minstrel show in Dawlish in Devon, with the costumes but without the make-up. We did just four dates but it mushroomed beyond our wildest dreams. We packed the houses out.

A quarter of the population are pensioners and they still love the show. They're still innocent to the fact that it's probably racist, they just see it as an old-fashioned variety show. They accept that we can't black up anymore, but they still come to see the costumes and the songs. And the theatres are full.