Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow

Refiguring American Music

by Karl Hagstrom Miller

In Segregating Sound , Karl Hagstrom Miller argues that the categories that we have inherited to think and talk about southern music bear little relation to the ways that southerners long played and heard music. Focusing on the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, Miller chronicles how southern music—a fluid complex of sounds and styles in practice—was reduced to a series of distinct genres linked to particular racial and ethnic identities. The blues were African American. Rural white southerners played country music. By the 1920s, these depictions were touted in folk song collections and the catalogs of “race” and “hillbilly” records produced by the phonograph industry. Such links among race, region, and music were new. Black and white artists alike had played not only blues, ballads, ragtime, and string band music, but also nationally popular sentimental ballads, minstrel songs, Tin Pan Alley tunes, and Broadway hits. In a cultural history filled with musicians, listeners, scholars, and business people, Miller describes how folklore studies and the music industry helped to create a “musical color line,” a cultural parallel to the physical color line that came to define the Jim Crow South. Segregated sound emerged slowly through the interactions of southern and northern musicians, record companies that sought to penetrate new markets across the South and the globe, and academic folklorists who attempted to tap southern music for evidence about the history of human civilization. Contending that people’s musical worlds were defined less by who they were than by the music that they heard, Miller challenges assumptions about the relation of race, music, and the market.

Genres: Music, History, Nonfiction, Research, Academic, School, Historical

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Karl Hagstrom Miller is an Assistant Professor who teaches in the History Department and the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at the University of Texas, Austin.

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book: it was quite fascinating. Miller looks at Southern music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and examines how the musical color line was largely constructed by folklorists and the music business, creating a cultural segregation that did not reflect the real musical lives of southerners both black and white during this period. Miller shows that these southerners played all types of music - folk songs, blues, Tin Pan Alley tunes, ragtime, ballads, and popular hits - and that black and white repertoires were similar, reflecting a shared musical world. Miller also provides a strong critique of the motivations and practices of early folklorists and song-collectors. He argues that their desire to find isolated and idealized folk cultures caused them to distort and misunderstand the musical repertoires and practices of their informants.
Miller's information and thesis kept me engaged in and even glued to this book throughout its 368 pages. I gained a new and illuminating perspective on the history and practice of categorizing music into "Black" and "White", and learned a lot about how segregation affected art and culture in the Jim Crow era. I also finally have a grip on what minstrel shows were all about, and even acquired a new (and kind of head-exploding) understanding of what was up with that old country-themed variety show Hee Haw. I highly recommend this book to any one interested in American music and culture.

[Zeb Larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best explanation I've found for the development of country and blues music into recorded forms. Refreshing because it doesn't carry tired notions of musical authenticity.

[Mark Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I know of for understanding how the racial categories through which we view American music came to be what they are. Consistently eye-opening, and sometimes astonishing, it's a work of serious scholarship which also has an engaging writing style. I consider it not only recommended but essential.

[Anna Grace Wenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

started this for class, but finishing this on my own. fascinating take on the manufacturing of popular music and the idea of high art versus humanity. well written, i'm a big fan.

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense but valuable info

[Michelle Merlo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Karl Hagstrom Miller’s Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow attempts to explain the influences of folk and popular music categorization by the commercialized publishing industry, cultural forces, academic persuasion, and Jim Crow legislation in the American South. Rather than the division of these musical categories – and more notably, the division of black and white music – being a spontaneous occurrence, Miller explains how these influential forces collectively and systematically constructed partitions between music according to race.
One of the key arguments Miller makes in Segregating Sound is that isolation and music purity were the main defining features of the authenticity of folk music. He highlights the ways in which folklore was intertwined with the politics of race and the impact on musical contributions by isolated cultures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Miller, 87). Often, the isolation Miller references is based on the work of Francis James Child, who argued that as oral tradition gave way to the printed word, those isolated from “book culture” remained more aligned with traditionality. This separation from the impact of education denied isolated communities not only consciousness but also the self-awareness that served as a marker of civilization (Miller, 93). This isolation marked an important factor of music purity regarding what was accepted as “folk music.” The establishment of the American Folklore Society in 1888 and the academic study of isolated societies further imposed an environment ripe for gatekeeping of what qualified (and arguably more importantly, what didn’t qualify) as authentic folk music. It wouldn’t be until the 1920s that black musical authenticity to the blues would be increasingly accepted as legitimate folk music (Miller, 224).
Admittedly, I found Miller to be a bit repetitive throughout the book, and I hold white authors on matters of Black history to a tighter standard. I would argue that he seemed somewhat flippant about some of the racial matters he was addressing. At one point, I paused reading and thought, “I bet he’s a white dude.” Sure enough…

[Cana McGhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

takes us through early 1900s landscape of genres comprising popular music in the american south (or, in people’s visions of the south). really great explorations of the multiracial engagements with diff materials and practices, and how music entrenched or reimagined racial segregation practices. did struggle a bit w/ organization since the signposting wasn’t always clear. but nice counterpoint to ideas in david brackett’s categorizing sound!

[Afrasiab]

Folk music album for freedom

https://www.reverbnation.com/6165594/...


#anti war #peace #persian #sadeq chubak

[Christopher Dalla Riva · Rating 4 out of 5]

A valuable volume, albeit a bit dry and academic in tone, that chronicles how the genre categories we take for granted for manufactured in the early-1900s along racial lines.

[Christym · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a little difficult for me to get into because the language seemed like that of a dissertation. That's not to say that it is not well-written or an important piece of work. I think it's both of those things -- and it's packed with fascinating insights about American music history. For example, I had no idea that sheet music was as wildly marketed and sought after in the days before recorded music, as CDs, etc., are today. Of course, the subject of the book goes way beyond such things; however, since I only got through four chapters, that's about all I can offer at this time.

[Chi Chi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book by my favorite professor at UT. Miller discusses how the seperation of musical genres in America didn't begin until publishers and record labels and booking agents tried to market everything. It's a bit dry and academic, but it's pretty fascinating, at least to this moi.

[Chandler Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is genre?