George H. Chirgwin - The White Eyed Kaffir

Many amazing and strange things happened to me when living in the USA. Getting to play Banjo one on one with musicians such as Walt Koken and David Bass, being asked to perform on stage at my first square dance with Rachel Eddy and co, having an hour long live performance on WAMU’s Bluegrass Country, and getting to see fireflies on a nightly basis was always a blessing. None of those things compare to something that I discovered while working at the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives though. A complete coincidence that in hindsight, had I changed just one little part of my actions in this story, I would never have discovered it!

I had started work in the archives one day, and upon checking my list of reel to reel tapes to digitize I picked the next one on the list. A tape labelled ‘British Music Hall’. Turned out it was a dub that someone had made of some rare and early recordings of the Music Hall craze in Britain during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. It was funny to hear those crackly sounds you get with really early recordings, along with some very distinct Cockney and over the top British accents too. I had been inputting each performer and their songs metadata into the system when I came across one name that struck out in particular, a man named G.H.Chirgwin, G for George. It stood out as the name Chirgwin was my Grandmothers maiden name. At first I didn’t think anything of it, then after putting the box away I realised, I swear once she had told me that she was the last in line of the Chirgwins in our family. Unfortunately she had passed now so there was no way to know. I did some research on the internet and started discovering some of the most fascinating (yet politically incorrect) things about the man. Turns out he was a black faced minstrel performer who had started performing when he was six years old, and did so until his late retirement. He was noted for his unusual stage appearance, a bizarre costume and make-up consisting of a tight black body-suit, extravagantly tall white top hat, and a white diamond painted over his right eye. He also had made varied musical accomplishments, using a falsetto voice when singing, and playing the one-string “Jap Fiddle” (based on the Japanese instrument the Kokyu) as well as the Banjo too! Because of his strange get up and odd approach to performance, this meant that his stage character was only partly inside the blackface minstrel tradition, and indeed his material included cockney material as well as straightforward blackface songs and sketches.

In the 1890s, he appeared in two films, ‘Chirgwin in his Humorous Business’ and ‘Chirgwin Plays a Scotch Reel’. He later wrote and acted in a silent drama film called ‘The Blind Boy’ too. As well as these successes he also did some recording, including the piece that I had just digitized called ‘My Fiddle Is My Sweetheart’, and ‘The Blind Boy’, which had appeared on the film. He also adopted the nickname ‘The White Eyed Kaffir’, after an incident where during a show, he accidentally rubbed off the black paint around his eye making it appear ‘white’. After noticing the recognition it gave him he then permanently adopted  the white eye mark and kept it for future performances.

Indeed a very intriguing character, I messaged my mum to see if she had ever heard of the name. She got right back to me and confirmed that she had. Turns out he was my Grandmas great uncle!! Crazy! She also informed me of other curious information about him, mentioning that my Grandma had told her that he once purchased an island known as ‘Burgh Island’ near Devon, which now has a huge art deco hotel on it with a wing named after him. As well as this she thinks there may be a photo of him somewhere in our family photo albums which I have to track down! Upon further research I’ve found that the V&A in London have many paintings of him, as well as a book about his life that is stored in the British Library.

So it was all very strange, turns out I’m related to this guy! There aren’t really any musical people in my family history apart from my Dad, so maybe that explains where that comes from, as well as the Banjo interest. I just find it fascinating that after traveling to the other side of the world, I come across this recording that I end up working on, and get a reel (had to put in that pun) feeling upon listening to it and reading the name, and then it turns out we’re related! Made apart by about 120 years. The world often works in funny ways and this was certainly one of them. And to think, if I’d have put the tape box away like I did and never got it back out to check the name, I would never have known any of this.

I also found a rare bit of footage of him on Youtube which you can see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbciBbYaDIU. As you can see by the pictures, he was a very crazy looking character!