Race in American Popular Music: From Blackface Minstrelsy to Hip Hop

Catalog description

The history of popular sound in the United States illuminates how music, movement, and performance are key to a contemporary understanding of how individual and group identity has been composed throughout the nation’s history. Unpacking this sonic history reveals how identity is connected to how race is heard, both historically and at present. In this course, we explore how race is constructed in the development of global popular music and the culture of sound in and before the 20th century in the United States. This course, in particular, will especially focus on music of the global African Diaspora from the late nineteenth century until the 1960s. We will examine how the sounds and performance of blackface minstrelsy—the first native form of popular music in the U.S.—became the basis of contemporary popular sound, ranging from Tin Pan Alley to blues and jazz, as well as to country and rock ‘n roll. Irving Berlin, Big Momma Thornton, Elvis Presley, The Supremes, Johnny Cash, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, and Jimi Hendrix are but a few of the many artists who will be considered in relation to the history of American popular music and (racialized) sound. Students will consider critical race theories, primary and secondary accounts of popular performance, as well as selected audio and visual material to investigate how race ties into various ideas about individual and community identity, nationalism, and imperialism. In addition, students will gain a nuanced understanding of the relationship between sound, race, and American Music, as they develop critical listening skills to deconstruct how music is performed, heard, and embodied in more contemporary contexts through lectures, discussion, as well as multimedia and written projects. While racial identity will remain central to how we deconstruct the sounds and performance of popular music, aspects of identity such as…