Listen to the EpisodeIn episode 3, media critic Wesley Morris explores the Black roots of American popular music from the mid-19th century to the late 20th century, tracing the ways that musical expressions of Blackness became "the sound of complete artistic freedom"-- and the ways that those same expressions have been appropriated for White entertainment, from the caricatured depictions of Black Americans in blackface minstrel shows, to the smooth 1970s stylings of yacht rock.
Read the accompanying essay by Wesley Morris in The 1619 Project for more exploration of these issues:
Interested in the music discussed in Episode 3? Explore a century of Black music, from spirituals to disco, in this streaming playlist.
The many styles and genres of Black music form the bedrock of American popular music. From rural to urban, sacred to secular, acoustic to electric, and folk to commercial, Black musicians have drawn on musical roots stretching back to West Africa, while constantly synthesizing new influences to create new and daring musical innovations. Black music has been a means to express joy, anger, pride, and sorrow, often with virtuosic skill.
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Yet, as Wesley Morris describes in this episode, Black music has also been appropriated frequently by White musicians for White audiences, often due to segregation and systemic racism that allowed those White musicians to profit off of Black music in ways that the Black musicians who originally created the music could not. One such example is the concept of cover songs in popular music, which arose in the 1950s, when White artists would "cover" songs by Black artists in order to market them to White radio audiences; often the White artists would become better known for performing those songs than the Black artists who first recorded them, largely because the White artists could get wider airplay and media coverage. One of the best known covers from this era is the song "Hound Dog", which was a hit for Elvis Presley in 1956 and is still one of his most iconic pop hits-- but it was first recorded as a blues song by Big Mama Thornton in 1952.
The following popular songs from early 20th-century America exemplify the type of racist caricaturing of Black musicians and culture in popular American minstrel songs discussed in Episode 3 of the 1619 Project podcast. Before the rise of the recording industry, buying sheet music to play a song at home was the primary way that most middle-class Americans consumed popular music. The cover art was designed to catch a potential buyer's eye and tell them about the content or theme or the music; it might also feature photos of the songwriters or of performers who were known for singing that particular song. Often the back covers contained ads for other songs of a similar type or by the same songwriter. Click on each cover image below to view the full piece of music.
Content note: These items contain racist images and words, including exaggerated and stereotyped depictions of Black appearances, speech dialects, and behavior.
J. Will Calahan and May Aufderheide, “Dusty Rag” (1912) -- from the UO Historic Sheet Music Collection via Oregon Digital
Like the minstrel songs discussed in the podcast, this song attempts to portray life for poor Black Americans in the rural South in a carefree, pastoral light. The cover image depicts a racist caricature of a Black man (or possibly a performer wearing blackface), juxtaposed upon a banjo, an American folk instrument with African roots. In the lower left corner of the cover is a small photograph of a White man, J. Russell Powell, who was known for performing this song.
Harold A. Robe and Ethelwyn Arnold, "Make Way Foh Dis Broadway Coon" (1906) -- from the UO Historic Sheet Music Collection via Oregon Digital
This song's lyrics are written in the type of broadly exaggerated dialect used by minstrel show performers when portraying Black characters. Although the main character is ostensibly the protagonist of the song, he is nonetheless associated with stereotyped behavior such as gambling, violence, and public drunkenness. The fact that this song is set not in the rural South, but on Broadway in New York City, the heart of the American entertainment industry in the early 20th century, demonstrates just how central minstrel songs were to American pop culture at this time.
You can explore more early American sheet music like this, as well as many pieces by Black songwriters, in the UO Historic Sheet Music Collection, an archive of over 23,000 pieces of popular music from 1820-1970, held in the UO Libraries Music Collection. Approximately 1,100 pieces from this collection have been digitized and are available to view and download for free in our online archive, Oregon Digital.
In Episode 3 of The 1619 Project, Wesley Morris describes the impact of early films like Birth of a Nation (1915) and The Jazz Singer (1927) in codifying blackface performances and racist portrayals of Black characters in American pop culture. Director Spike Lee tackled the harmful legacies of blackface minstrel shows in his 2000 film Bamboozled, about a modern-day television minstrel show with Black performers that becomes a runaway hit.
Bamboozled (trailer). Directed by Spike Lee
Interview with Spike Lee hosted by the Brooklyn Academy of Music
LibrarySearch offers a streamlined interface for finding books and other media that combines the collections of UO Libraries and Summit libraries.
Wesley Morris is an American journalist and media critic who currently writes as critic-at-large for The New York Times. He previously worked as a film critic for The Boston Globe, where he won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism "for his smart, inventive film criticism, distinguished by pinpoint prose and an easy traverse between the art house and the big-screen box office." Morris also co-hosts the podcast Still Processing, along with culture writer Jenna Wortham.
Learn more about Still Processing and other related shows on the Additional Resources page of this guide.
African American Music: An Introduction, 2nd edition by
American Music: An Introduction, Second Edition is a collection of seventeen essays surveying major African American musical genres, both sacred and secular, from slavery to the present. With contributions by leading scholars in the field, the work brings together analyses of African American music based on ethnographic fieldwork, which privileges the voices of the music-makers themselves, woven into a richly textured mosaic of history and culture. At the same time, it incorporates musical treatments that bring clarity to the structural, melodic, and rhythmic characteristics that both distinguish and unify African American music. The second edition has been substantially revised and updated, and includes new essays on African and African American musical continuities, African-derived instrument construction and performance practice, techno, and quartet traditions. Musical transcriptions, photographs, illustrations, and a new audio CD bring the music to life.
Race Music by
This powerful book covers the vast and various terrain of African American music, from bebop to hip-hop. Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., begins with an absorbing account of his own musical experiences with family and friends on the South Side of Chicago, evoking Sunday-morning worship services, family gatherings with food and dancing, and jam sessions at local nightclubs. This lays the foundation for a brilliant discussion of how musical meaning emerges in the private and communal realms of lived experience and how African American music has shaped and reflected identities in the black community. Deeply informed by Ramsey's experience as an accomplished musician, a sophisticated cultural theorist, and an enthusiast brought up in the community he discusses, Race Music explores the global influence and popularity of African American music, its social relevance, and key questions regarding its interpretation and criticism. Beginning with jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel, this book demonstrates that while each genre of music is distinct--possessing its own conventions, performance practices, and formal qualities--each is also grounded in similar techniques and conceptual frameworks identified with African American musical traditions. Ramsey provides vivid glimpses of the careers of Dinah Washington, Louis Jordan, Dizzy Gillespie, Cootie Williams, and Mahalia Jackson, among others, to show how the social changes of the 1940s elicited an Afro-modernism that inspired much of the music and culture that followed. Race Music illustrates how, by transcending the boundaries between genres, black communities bridged generational divides and passed down knowledge of musical forms and styles. It also considers how the discourse of soul music contributed to the vibrant social climate of the Black Power Era. Multilayered and masterfully written, Race Music provides a dynamic framework for rethinking the many facets of African American music and the ethnocentric energy that infused its creation.
Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation by
Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation is a collection of twenty-one essays by leading scholars, surveying vital themes in the history of African American music. Bringing together the viewpoints of ethnomusicologists, historians, and performers, these essays cover topics including the music industry, women and gender, and music as resistance, and explore the stories of music creators and their communities. Revised and expanded to reflect the latest scholarship, with six all-new essays, this book both complements the previously published volume African American Music: An Introduction and stands on its own. Each chapter features a discography of recommended listening for further study. From the antebellum period to the present, and from classical music to hip hop, this wide-ranging volume provides a nuanced introduction for students and anyone seeking to understand the history, social context, and cultural impact of African American music.
One Nation under a Groove: Motown and American Culture by
In its heyday Motown Records was a household word, one of the most famous and successful black-owned businesses in American history, and, arguably, the most significant of all American independent record labels. How it got to be that way and how it changed the face of American popular culture are the subjects of this concise study of Berry Gordy's phenomenal creation. Author Gerald Early tells the story of the cultural and historical conditions that made Motown Records possible, including the dramatic shifts in American popular music of the time, changes in race relations and racial attitudes, and the rise of a black urban population. Early concentrates in particular on the 1960s and 70s, when Motown had its biggest impact on American musical tastes and styles. With this revised and expanded edition, the author provides an up-to-date bibliography of the major books that have been written about Motown Records specifically, and black American music generally. Plus, new appendices feature interviews with four of the major creators of the Motown Sound: Berry Gordy, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, and Marvin Gaye.
Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry by
Spirituals performed by jubilee troupes became a sensation in post-Civil War America. First brought to the stage by choral ensembles like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, spirituals anchored a wide range of late nineteenth-century entertainments, including minstrelsy, variety, and plays by both black and white companies. In the first book-length treatment of postbellum spirituals in theatrical entertainments, Sandra Jean Graham mines a trove of resources to chart the spiritual's journey from the private lives of slaves to the concert stage. Graham navigates the conflicting agendas of those who, in adapting spirituals for their own ends, sold conceptions of racial identity to their patrons. In so doing they lay the foundation for a black entertainment industry whose artistic, financial, and cultural practices extended into the twentieth century. A companion website contains jubilee troupe personnel, recordings, and profiles of 85 jubilee groups. Please go to: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/graham/spirituals/
"Passing for Black: Coon Songs and the Performance of Race" by
The author discusses the performance of coon songs by African American performers and musicians in the rural South during the 1920s, considering historical context and their skewering of racist stereotypes. Schroeder examines two coon songs recorded by African Americans: Alec Johnson's "Mysterious Coon" (1928) and Luke Jordan's "Traveling Coon" (1927), touching on the influences, audiences, and performance challenges.
Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930 by
This collection of thirteen essays, edited by historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage, brings together original work from sixteen scholars in various disciplines, ranging from theater and literature to history and music, to address the complex roles of black performers, entrepreneurs, and consumers in American mass culture during the early twentieth century. Moving beyond the familiar territory of blackface and minstrelsy, these essays present a fresh look at the history of African Americans and mass culture. With subjects ranging from representations of race in sheet music illustrations to African American interest in Haitian culture, Beyond Blackface recovers the history of forgotten or obscure cultural figures and shows how these historical actors played a role in the creation of American mass culture. The essays explore the predicament that blacks faced at a time when white supremacy crested and innovations in consumption, technology, and leisure made mass culture possible. Underscoring the importance and complexity of race in the emergence of mass culture, Beyond Blackface depicts popular culture as a crucial arena in which African Americans struggled to secure a foothold as masters of their own representation and architects of the nation's emerging consumer society. The contributors are: Davarian L. Baldwin, Trinity College W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Clare Corbould, University of Sydney Susan Curtis, Purdue University Stephanie Dunson, Williams College Lewis A. Erenberg, Loyola University Chicago Stephen Garton, University of Sydney John M. Giggie, University of Alabama Grace Elizabeth Hale, University of Virginia Robert Jackson, University of Tulsa David Krasner, Emerson College Thomas Riis, University of Colorado at Boulder Stephen Robertson, University of Sydney John Stauffer, Harvard University Graham White, University of Sydney Shane White, University of Sydney
On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom by
"An essential volume for music lovers." --East Bay Times On Highway 61 searches for the deeper roots of American cultural and musical evolution over the past 150 years--by studying what the Western European culture learned from African American culture in a historical progression that reaches from the minstrel era to Bob Dylan. Starting out with nineteenth-century American thinkers such as social critic Henry David Thoreau and satirist Mark Twain, and moving through the decades, the book explores the changes and developments that would culminate in the revolutionary period of the 1960s. As the first post-Civil War generation of black Americans came of age, they introduced into the national culture a trio of musical forms--ragtime, blues, and jazz--that would, with their derivations, dominate popular music to this day. Early on, it would attract a cluster of young white musicians who came to be known as the Austin High Gang, who fell in love with black music and were inspired to play it themselves. In the process, they developed a liberating respect for the diversity of their city and country, and it was not long before these young white rebels were the masters of American pop music--big band swing. Even genres commonly thought of as "white" like rock 'n' roll and country would come to reflect significant black influence. This biracial fusion achieved an apotheosis in the early work of Bob Dylan, born and raised at the northern end of the same Mississippi River and Highway 61 that had been the birthplace of much of the black music he would study. This fascinating work shows how a society absorbed the culture of those at the absolute bottom of the power structure--the slaves and their descendants--and realized that they themselves were not free. "This scholarly examination of the roots of American music and its cultural evolution encompasses ragtime, blues, jazz, folk, country, big band, swing and good ol' rock 'n' roll. At the party, we meet the key players of the day." --The Sacramento Bee
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