Minority Music

Black and white head and shoulders portrait photograph of a youngish Chinese man with very closely cropped hair, clean shaven, wearing a dark colored Chinese-style collarless jacket.

Sam Lee: Overseer of Chinese Labourers.

Black and white grainy oval portrait photograph of a young black woman with prominent eyes and long black curly hair parted in the middle swept back off her face.

Emma Stark, first black school teacher in Cedar District.

Although there were Black and Chinese communities in early Ladysmith, racial prejudice largely left them outside the rounds of mainstream musical and social entertainment.

Black Music

Black and white photograph of an unpaved town street flanked by a variety of wooden and brick buildings. At at centre-left is a two story clapboard sided flat roofed building with a large windowed shop front over which is a canvas sign with the lettering ‘J.X. Smith’s Restaurant’.

J.X. Smith’s Restaurant.

A rare small Black event occurred in the summer of 1904 when a successful “…cake walk and dance was given by the coloured fraternity of Ladysmith in the Finn Hall..” The cakewalk dance stemmed from pre-US Civil War southern plantations, where it originally was performed by slaves who would parade around mimicking and parodying the dances they saw the white plantation owners doing. The prize for the best dancing couple was a cake. The winners of the Ladysmith 1904 cakewalk are not recorded; neither is it known whether the white inhabitants of Ladysmith realized that the cakewalk dance was a subtle but powerful means of Black resistance to white supremacy.

While the nuances of the cakewalk may have been missed, and it was likely not viewed by very many outside the coloured community, performances by visiting coloured performers were a regular occurrence in early Ladysmith. Many of their shows would now be viewed as unacceptably racist in nature.

McKandlass’ Merrymakers Coloured Minstrel Troupe performed in Ladysmith in 1905 and 1906, presenting programs of vaudeville, minstrel and musical comedy lasting about 2 ½ hours. Travelling with them was “an 8-piece orchestra” as well as the Merrymakers Trio; McKandlass and Perry, musical artists; King and Berry of London England, the world champion buck and wing dancers; Sam Barber, a monologue comedian; Miss Lulu Walker, sweet singer; W. Smith singing “In the Shade of the Old Apple tree; Miss Gertrude Johnson, ragtime shouter; Toni O’Banion, a tuba player; and others.

Richard and Pringle’s Famous Minstrels, a group of 40 performers, entertained in the Ladysmith Opera House in September 1908. Stars of the show included Clarence Powell, who was perhaps the most famous comedian of the time. This group was long-lasting and very well known throughout North America, with members who had performed in Europe – to Queen Victoria no less!

Black and white printed music score with words for the hymn ‘At the Cross’.

Score for the hymn: ‘At The Cross’.

The Tennessee Jubilee Singers from Fisk University performed under the auspices of the Ladysmith Football Club in December 1908. By that time, this Black choral group was famous for its negro spiritual music– and it still is today, over 150 years after its foundation in 1871.

Chinese Community

Black and white photograph of a railway track in the foreground along which groups of men, many of which are Chinese, are working. In the background is the wreckage of numerous wooden railway coal cars ‘concertina’d’ together in a jumbled pile.

Chinese labourers repairing the train track.

There was a Chinatown in Ladysmith, but there are no reports of Chinese concerts or plays being performed there. A Chinese resident, Shirley Savard, and her older brother recall their parents listening to Chinese operas on vinyl records at home as well as attending concerts in nearby Nanaimo’s Chinatown.

Minority Music|Chinese Opera (captions available in FR and EN). Enjoy this video with a transcript (EN)

Boomtown Bands 1900 – 1915 A Vibrant Port