Smoking concert

The term smoking concert (or simply a Smoker) was used in the 19th century to refer to a live performance, normally attended by an audience of men only. Especially popular during the Victorian era, these social occasions were also instrumental in introducing new musical forms to the public (e.g. Christy style performances). They were really social occasions, at which the attendees would speak of politics while smoking, listening to live music or comic acts and speeches.

Such events also took place in the British colonies or on board British naval vessels in the later 19th century.

South African examples include one held for the visiting English cricket team, led by C. Aubrey Smith, in the Exhibition Theatre, Cape Town, on 24 December, 1888. (For the programme, see C. Aubrey Smith)

For more on them see the Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_concert

Some Smoking concerts held in South Africa

The 1888 English cricket tour

On 24 December 1888 a "smoking concert" was held in honour of the first English cricket team to play against a South African team in Cape Town, South Africa. The English team was led by C. Aubrey Smith, who would later become famous as a stage and film actor. The Smoking concert was held in the Exhibition Theatre, Cape Town and some of the team members from both teams also took part in the performances.

The concert had two parts, first a Christy Minstrel show, that included a comic ditty called "The Man that Struck O'Hara", sung in black-face by by C. Aubrey Smith. The second half saw songs by local celebrities such as Tom Graham, a talk on public entertainers by Robert Baden-Powell, as well as other team members, such as the manager Major Warton and the popular English bowler Johnny Briggs. The critic and chronicler of theatre in the Cape, D.C. Boonzaier, was himself involved in the event, helping to blacken the faces of the performers in the Christy show.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_concert

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1923. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p. 389.

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