The Foundations of American Popular Music: Present Day Implications
Course Description
The history of popular music in the United States is a thorny one. It begins with the birth of the Democratic Party in the 1820s, slavery, and the exponential growth of the nation’s population, cities, and several important industries. While the textile, railroad, coal, and steel industries are often discussed within the nation’s development in the nineteenth century, the making of popular music is less understood as one of the country’s major industries to emerge during this era. This interdisciplinary course will take a historical and theoretical approach to unpack the making of the music industry through the first original form of commercial popular entertainment to emerge in the U.S.: Blackface Minstrelsy.
We will explore how the aesthetic, structural, and cultural foundations of Blackface and the American popular music industry shaped the musical and political landscape of the emerging nation leading up to the pre-recording era at the turn-of-the-twentieth century. Through exploring sheet music, live performance, historical documentations of performance, early sound recordings, key musicians and composers, early music industrialists, recording technologies, and other cases, we will develop a more comprehensive understanding of how inequities are structured into the making and selling of America popular music today, particularly within: community and identity making; music and copyright law; and the complex legacy of genre-making in the commercialization of popular music. We will also consider what is at stake in the contemporary global circulation of American popular music that is shaped by power relations structured into its industry since its founding.
Key questions that we will explore are: How do we understand the contemporary music industry in the U.S. and its global impact in relation to its historical foundations? How has identity (race, gender, sexuality, etc.) been shaped by the production and performance of popular music? How do we better understand the development and deployment of music property and copyright laws with the history under consideration in mind? How has music technology informed and been informed by the production of pop music?
Students will be invited to submit creative, written, and research projects at the culmination of this course. We will also consider and engage in performances and various types of media throughout the seminar.
Meet the Instructor: Matthew D. Morrison
Matthew D. Morrison, PhD (originally from North Carolina): “As a violinist and musicologist, I am excited by critical interrogations of music, its industry, performance, and how this medium that we hold so dear shapes various facets of our life, society, and politics. My book, Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States, was ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the Best Music Books of 2024, where the editors stated that ‘No book from this past year better explains American popular music than Professor Matthew Morrison’s Blacksound.’ It also recently won an award from the American Association of Publishers for the ‘Best Book in Music & Arts,’ and the Prose Excellence Award in the Humanities. This book, along with accompanying articles (academic and popular) and media, will be the foundation of the course (students will not be required to purchase the text). I’ve taught several courses related to the history of American culture, music, and politics for over a decade, and students have developed theses projects, research projects for graduate study, as well as creative research-based projects that they continued to develop post-graduation. My courses are largely based on history, theory, and performance, and I would look forward to tackling the often understudied history of American Popular Music with incoming frosh, and how it shapes our industry and listening/consumption practices today."
Of related interest
AMSTUD 113N
MUSIC 113N