Philadelphia Mummers Building Community Through Play Summary

In Philadelphia Mummers: Building Community Through Play, Patricia Masters explores how the Mummers began and how the parade has changed as Philadelphia has become more diverse. She effectively demonstrates the Mummers ability to produce an ongoing “play community” that has successfully triumphed in a largely fragmented society where social integration had essentially been lost at the time of its inception. Masters’ capacity to clearly outline the longstanding ceremonies of the annual parade shines through as she closely analyzes the rituals present within the community beginning in the mid-19th century. Her attention paid to the African American experience within the mumming community clarifies the conflicting practices within it and society

Mummers were working class immigrants living in the Southern Philadelphia. Once a year on New Years’ Day, these people, all of varying ethnic groups, came together and walked the streets of their neighborhoods in costume, singing, dancing, and performing skits door to door for their neighbors, who often rewarded their performances with cake and other refreshments. “The public nature of the holiday gave the diverse ethnic groups an opportunity to see the individuals and their families from other cultures at play and to understand that, as different as they were, they could come together as neighbors and friends in the spirit of fun.” (Masters 42) Traditions within the mumming community developed spontaneously and informally, as the driving force was the desire to have fun and play together, affirming their group identities in that they could express group sentiment and values. In the early 1800s, mumming was a carnivalesque occasion, but following the Civil War, aesthetic and specific musical forms began to develop. Businesses began to offer cash prizes for categories such as best performance and best costume, and the Mummers parade changed from spontaneous play to competitive play with the institution of a set of rules when the different clubs came together to parade down Broad St in

Despite displays of minstrelsy, which often involved the mockery of blacks through blackface and derogatory skits, people of color still remained facets within the community and their culture is still present within the Mummer’s traditions today. Mummers had initially resisted the city’s ban of blackface, continuing to “identify blackface as a tradition that was devoid of any other meaning besides having fun” (Masters 77). This hails back to the true reason for the Mummers’ traditions—to escape the grueling demands of factory work and poverty. While there was tension between groups such as CORE and the mumming community, blacks within the community chose to remain a part of the traditions despite the history of racially insensitive practices, most of which were banned in the 1960s, because through mummery they had an outlet through which they could escape their daily lives by way of anonymity and