Singing the master

In the American South before the Civil War, a harvest celebration developed surrounding the shucking of the corn each autumn. This event brought together both slave and master, with the slaves encouraged to perform. Thanks to the reports of visitors and foreigners, the corn-shucking ceremony became a representative scene of plantation life. In Singing the Master, Roger Abrahams reconstructs the genesis of the celebration--and offers a controversial and radical interpretation of the occasion. Tracing the origins of the ceremony to the English custom of harvest home, Abrahams shows how the…