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"Matthew Morrison has written a modern classic that elegantly and meticulously illustrates how the rise of the music industry is inseparable from structures of racism and copyright. His concept of Blacksound will resonate with audiences across a wide range of disciplines for decades to come."—Anjali Vats, author of The Color of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, and the Making of Americans
"Morrison's brilliantly unique, wide-ranging, and rigorously researched book brings to light how, as Europeans and Americans of many ethnicities deployed sonic blackface as part of an ongoing identity and citizenship project, the US entertainment industry's construction of Blacksound became fundamental to popular music around the world."—George E. Lewis, author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
"Blacksound is a profound original study of the foundations of Black performance in the Americas. It is at once ethnomusicology, cultural history, and critical race theory, built on rigorous archival research and sophisticated engagement with a vast body of scholarly research. An engrossing and expansive text, Blacksound will be an indispensable addition to the study of race and African American culture."—Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
List of contents
Contents
List of Illustrations
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Origins of Blacksound
PART I. RACIAL IDENTITY AND POPULAR MUSIC IN EARLY BLACKFACE
1. Slavery and Blackface in the Making of Blacksound
2. William Henry “Master Juba” Lane and Antebellum Blacksound
3. Stephen Foster and the Composition of Americana
PART II. THE BIRTH OF THE POPULAR MUSIC INDUSTRY
4. The House That Blackface Built: M. Witmark & Sons and the Birth of Tin Pan Alley
5. Intellectual (Performance) Property: Ragtime Goes Pop
Conclusion: Blacksound and the Legacies of Blackface
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Matthew D. Morrison, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, is a musicologist, violinist, and Associate Professor in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
