Interpretation

Interpretation at Fort Snelling has primarily centered on the site’s military history. We were not interested in military stories that center acts of violence, or that focus on artillery or wartime strategy. Instead, we were interested in how soldiers at Fort Snelling express their own sense of history and culture through performative acts. But how can we think about performance in historical terms when the archive cannot capture and store the live event? For the purpose of this proposal, our focus is on the regimental band of the 25^th United States Infantry, the segregated black military unit of the U.S. Army, however a performance studies lens can and should be applied to any group with a significant and formative relationship to Fort Snelling. According to Diane Taylor, performance transmits cultural memory and identity. We learn and transmit knowledge through embodied action, through cultural agency, and by making choices. Performance functions as a way of knowing (2003).

There were only four regular regiments of African-American soldiers in the U.S. Army from 1870 to 1917. These were the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiments. They were primarily stationed far from major white centers of population in the American South and West for most of their history before 1920 (Dobak and Thomas, 2001).

Select companies of the 25^th United States Infantry were stationed at Fort Snelling from 1882-1888. MNHS has already made some effort to interpret this history, though the assertion that Army historians describe the time spent at Fort Snelling as “the most uneventful in the regiment’s history,” and suggest “the soldiers probably spent more time practicing, drilling, and parading than ever before” may have placed limitations on the amount and kind of interpretation that was thought possible ("The Fort Expands"). Instead of thinking about their time here in terms of idleness, we decided to look at the soldier’s time here in terms of influence. By researching archival newspapers from their time at the fort, we discovered that the regimental band had a noticeable impact on the Twin Cities. The relative downtime of their time at the fort led to opportunities for collaboration and creativity between the musicians. They experimented with European conventions of military music, adding their own embodied knowledge and cultural agency to assert and transfer a sense of identity among themselves and others. Just as the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers plays an important role in the significance of the space, Fort Snelling can also be looked at as a site of confluence where European and African musical styles merged—a confluence that was integral to the development of jazz. According to Stuart Hall, when it comes to popular culture, "there are no pure forms at all. Always these forms are the product of partial synchronization, of engagement across cultural boundaries, of the confluence of more than one cultural tradition, of the negotiations of dominant and subordinate positions" (1993). Fort Snelling at Bdote is a small site of influence within a much larger cultural framework, acting as an incubator for what jazz historians call “pre-jazz” music. In looking at the fort through this framework, visitors will understand how performance functions as a way of knowing and the ways the regimental musicians transmitted their own cultural agency to citizens of the Twin Cities.

Until the Civil War, regimental bands were enlisted soldiers. After the war, faced with the double expense of paying off debt and rebuilding the country, Congress reduced the number and size of regiments and rendered the regimental bands inactive. However, military music was considered too important to morale to eliminate completely. Because congress would not fund regimental bands, the Army turned to civilian bands for support. Unregulated by the military, civilian bands were free to adopt new styles and instrumentation ("A History of U.S. Army Bands"). In the case of the black regiments, the new styles and instrumentation adopted were part of a distinct African American vernacular tradition.

From the bands’ inception, the position of chief musician was held by a white officer. He was the lowest-ranking white soldier in the unit and the only white soldier who was not a commissioned officer. Before 1907, the highest rank to which a black bandsman in the regular army could aspire was the number two spot. It was appreciated that the bands were an important training ground and a source of steady employment for African-American musicians outside the entertainment industry (which largely consisted of minstrel shows) and that they offered blacks one of the few opportunities for learning woodwind instruments in the post–Civil War era (Lefferts, 2013).

The band was an important part of every regiment. Although federal statutes made no provisions for bands, Army Regulations authorized the commanding officer to appoint a chief musician and to appoint as many as sixteen musicians from the companies. Funds for the purchase of instruments and uniforms came from voluntary contributions of officers and men. Recruiters often made special efforts to find musicians. The regimental band usually performed at least twice a day, at Guard Mount and at Retreat. Bands usually offered open-air concerts once or twice a week as weather permitted. Bandsmen on their own time also played at dances. The regimental bands were in great demand among western towns particularly on national holidays. The soldiers’ often formed their own musical groups, either brass bands or string bands. Their own musical groups were an important source of entertainment in isolated western garrisons (Dobak and Phillips, 2001).

According to Stuart Hall, “Selective appropriation, incorporation, and rearticulation of European ideologies, cultures, and institutions, alongside an African heritage, led to innovations in rhetorical stylization of the body, forms of occupying an alien social space, heightened expressions, hairstyles, ways of walking, standing, and talking, and a means of constituting and sustaining camaraderie and community" (1993). It is reasonable to say that when the 25^th regimental band entered the space of Fort Snelling and the surrounding Twin Cities community, they entered a space in which their very appearance alienated them from the population at large. This kind of alienation promotes the need for identity consolidation in order to feel more physically and emotionally protected.

Performance is a way of understanding the myriad elements that constitute a sense of self. Diane Taylor claims that embodied performances have always played a central role in conserving memory and consolidating identities in all societies (2003). What do the performances of the regimental band tell us about how the musicians understood themselves and how they were understood by the community at large?

At a time when blackface minstrel shows were still one of the most popular forms of entertainment, the performances of the 25^th regiment seem to have offered something else. Black musicians were able to assert an Africanist influence into the social lives of Euro-Americans that was not based upon negative stereotypes and did not seek to glorify plantation life.

Find the works cited here.