Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States

by Matthew D. Morrison

A new concept for understanding the history of the American popular music industry.
 
Blacksound explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century. With this namesake book, Matthew D. Morrison develops the concept of "Blacksound" to uncover how the popular music industry and popular entertainment in general in the United States arose out of slavery and blackface.
 
Blacksound as an idea is not the music or sounds produced by Black Americans but instead the material and fleeting remnants of their sounds and performances that have been co-opted and amalgamated into popular music. Morrison unpacks the relationship between performance, racial identity, and intellectual property to reveal how blackface minstrelsy scripts became absorbed into commercial entertainment through an unequal system of intellectual property and copyright laws. By introducing this foundational new concept in musicology, Blacksound highlights what is politically at stake—for creators and audiences alike—in revisiting the long history of American popular music.

Genres: Music, Audiobook, Nonfiction, Grad School, Politics, History

323 pages, Paperback

Published March 5, 2024

Reviews

[Lois · Rating 5 out of 5]

This audiobook was made available for me to listen to and review by Matthew D. Morrison, HighBridge Audio, and NetGalley.

This audiobook is narrated by the author Matthew D. Morrison. The author's excitement and emotions are evident in his voice and that helps to build excitement for the subject matter. I was deeply appreciative of the choice to have him narrate this, pure perfection!

This was truly interesting on many levels. It helped that as I was reviewing this I was also reviewing a nonfiction audiobook on music as medicine by Daniel J. Levitin.
This narrative traces the sounds of Black folks in the Americas from 1800's slavery through the turn of the century during the creation of America's musical sound.
This focuses on minstrel shows and how these shows export the first aspect of truly American culture abroad. Minstrel shows directly lead to Jim Crow Laws. This isn't a new idea as Jim Crow is itself a minstrel character from these shows.
Early Minstrel players were Irish men and because the Irish claim to whiteness was shaky at that time period, they seek to cement the inferiority of Black folks. I think they thought it would work to add them to the collective idea of whiteness and it did. These minstrel actors specifically wanted white audiences overseas to understand that Black folks were genetically inferior to white folks. Minstrel shows cemented eugenic ideas into American culture at home and Western culture worldwide.

This offers a rich history of US copyright law and procedures. How copyright laws were used to protect white men's intellectual property in a way that specifically disadvantaged Black musicians. This offers so much lost history surrounding Black music traditions. Incredibly detailed and enlightening.

This also tracks the theft of Black sound which includes movement and dance by white minstrel actors. They intentionally wanted to degrade Black folks, they often used their own music with celtic origins but added unique Black aspects to it, such as scat (the singing of nonsense sounds) and the call and repeat pattern that is a hallmark of Black American music. Their shows also offered an offensive and white supremacist revision of Black movement and dance.

Surprisingly modern music is the long arm result of these shows. Of course the minstrel tradition is still practiced today by white artists such as Weird Al Yankovich. Also it could be argued by artists such as Post Malone & Pink, who use Black music to become popular because they failed in their chosen music genre which was created by Black sound but is now dominated by white artists, like America Country music.

I deeply enjoyed reading about historical Black entertainers who were lost to history because white men stole and copyrighted their material. The movement of Juba to tap dance really fascinated me. I watched all the videos I could find on Juba on YouTube. This was just truly an interesting experience. I highly recommend this book to history buffs and music buffs alike.

Much of this history is upsetting, frustrating and demeaning to Black folks specifically. The author/narrator handles this deftly so the reader can enjoy the knowledge as much as possible. This isn't easy to manage with weighty subjects like slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, etc. This is beautifully handled and incredibly interesting.

Thank you to Matthew D. Morrison, HighBridge Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. All opinions and viewpoints expressed in this review are my own.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got to be one of the more interesting books about copyright law

[Michelle Merlo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew D. Morrison’s Blacksound is an exploration of the influence and exploitation of Black people in the earliest foundation of popular entertainment in America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Blackface minstrels, which consisted of musical and variety-show-style performances presented by white actors with burnt-cork-blackened faces, were America’s earliest form of popular music/pop culture. These actors popularized the sounds and styles of Black people both during and after the emancipation of the institution of slavery, capitalizing on grossly exaggerated and blatantly false racial stereotypes of Black people. Morrison dissects the ways “Blacksound,” which he defines as the vocal, instrumental, and rhythmic styles of enslaved Black people, was manipulated, marketed, and capitalized on by non-Black artists and industries. He describes how the roots of blackface and Blacksound are recognizable throughout the decades following slavery via popular entertainment forms from ragtime, vaudeville, jazz, blues, and rock and roll to film, radio, and television. Despite the vast influences of Blacksound, the original creators weren’t credited for their endless contributions as the racialization of Black people continued to caricaturize them and keep them disenfranchised via systemic racism, power dynamics, and the lack of intellectual property and copyright laws.

[alexa koe · Rating 4 out of 5]

FASCINATING!!!! my favorite book i've read for grad school so far. tells a comprehensive story about the history of minstrel shows from the antebellum era to the dawn of the modern American music industry. goes into cultural appropriation/intellectual property theft, and explores the musical tradition of America, both from African Americans and European immigrants. this is a subject i knew nothing about, and the writing style was very helpful! yasss morrison tell me exactly what you're arguing in this chapter <3

[Juana Derdoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

logging bc if i had to read it it’s at least going to count towards my reading goal! but actually really enjoyed, v insightful

[anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for one of my classes. I have two main takeaways from it:
1. This book is so well written and very informative. As someone majoring in music industry, none of this information has been discussed in any of my previous classes.
2. White americans suck.