{"id":684,"date":"2007-04-14T23:24:59","date_gmt":"2007-04-14T15:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2007\/early-recording-of-mock-cantonese\/"},"modified":"2007-04-14T23:24:59","modified_gmt":"2007-04-14T15:24:59","slug":"early-recording-of-mock-cantonese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2007\/early-recording-of-mock-cantonese\/","title":{"rendered":"early recording of mock Cantonese"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month a recording of Cal Stewart’s 1904 comic monologue “Uncle Josh and the Insurance Agent” was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry of 2006<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Here’s the LC’s description:<\/p>\n

Cal Stewart was among the most prolific and popular recording artists of the first 20 years of commercial recording. His “Uncle Josh” monologues offer humorous commentary on American life at the turn of the 20th century, reflecting major themes and fashions of the time. His “rural comedy” describes life in the imaginary New England village of Pumpkin Center, painting humorous pictures of Uncle Josh’s encounters with new technologies, and comic contrasts between agrarian and urban life in America. Stewart’s influence can be heard in the comedy of Will Rogers, in Fred Allen’s character, Titus Moody, and in Garrison Keillor’s stories about Lake Wobegon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Comedies of the time often featured “ethnic humor.” Whether anyone still finds such things funny or even bearable without wincing is of course another matter. <\/p>\n

Stewart has an example of this in his Uncle Josh in a Chinese Laundry<\/a> (audio), found in a slightly different version in Uncle Josh’s Punkin Centre Stories<\/a> (text). This is the tale of Uncle Josh, told in the first person, getting into a fight with someone working in a Chinese laundry — though this is because Uncle Josh is cheated by a presumably white man, not by anyone in the laundry. “Uncle Josh in a Chinese Laundry” also contains what might be one of the first recorded snippets of mock Cantonese, which would probably have been the Sinitic language most heard in the United States then. <\/p>\n

further reading: <\/p>\n