In Blacksound, Matthew D. Morrison expands upon the important concept of ‘Blacksound’ that he first introduced in a widely cited 2019 article for the Journal of the American Musicological Society (Morrison Reference Morrison2019). In its elaborated form, Morrison can give his concept the space and detail it deserves, and he has produced a foundational new text in the study of race and popular music in the process. Morrison’s concept is clear and convincing, and to become acquainted with it as I enthusiastically devoured this impressive book was to come away with a deeper and altered understanding of the racial workings of the entertainment industries in the United States.
The book comprises two parts. The first is a revised prehistory of the U.S. popular music industry, which traces the aesthetic development of blackface performance as it became the nation’s preferred form of popular entertainment in the nineteenth century. Here, Morrison shows that blackface performance had its roots in the legal and ideological logics of slavery, exploited black cultural forms aesthetically and commercially, and that it facilitated the articulation of a hierarchical antiblack racial system. The book’s second part illustrates how the early popular music industry in the United States, from Tin Pan Alley onwards, was concretely based on the racially informed aesthetic and socioeconomic developments of the blackface practice that preceded it, and that, in Morrison’s cunning estimation, lived on in the industry even ‘after the disappearance or removal of burnt cork’ (p. 13, italics author’s own). This means that the popular music industry Morrison reintroduces in the latter half of his work directly rearticulates the racial and racist dynamics of early blackface performance, and of slavery itself. The concept of Blacksound, then, not only retells the history of popular music in the United States but also provides a framework for understanding the ever-present dynamics of race in today’s entertainment industries.
Morrison explicates the history and concept of Blacksound with a wide range of analytical examples. Some of those examples are biographical: well-known figures such as composer Stephen Foster and performer Thomas Dartmouth Rice, whose popular blackface characters included Jim Crow, are critically examined. Another artist considered is the black musician and dancer William Henry ‘Master Juba’ Lane, who is the focus of Chapter Two. Lane’s work in the mid-nineteenth century – which was popular because of its ‘Africanist aesthetics’ (p. 82), but unacknowledged as Lane’s own property – illustrates not only the way in which blackface and Blacksound took from black aesthetics but also how they enlisted black performers to articulate their logics.
As troubling as the example of Lane is, it also exemplifies one of the admirable strengths of this book. Throughout, Morrison is concerned with recentring marginalised stories. Lane’s is one, and so too is formerly enslaved recording artist George Washington Johnson’s, who is the focus of Chapter Five. Johnson’s early phonographic recordings of ‘coon songs’ were historically significant and hugely popular, but copyright laws that deprioritised recorded sound until 1976 meant his success earned him no real wealth. Previously ‘a muted sonic history’ (p. 188), the inclusion of Johnson’s important story here is a welcome contribution.
Other analytical examples are musical. In Chapter Three, Morrison examines the musical development of Foster’s ‘Plantation Melodies’ throughout the composer’s mid-nineteenth-century career. Morrison shows how the American standards Foster wrote and the style he popularised – both of which became central in the imminent emergence of the U.S. popular music industry – were deeply intertwined with the ongoing solidification of class and racial categories, and with mid-century ideological and political developments in the United States. Another example examined in detail is ragtime. In Chapter Four, Morrison reframes ragtime aesthetics cultural-musicologically to illustrate how they were both absorbed and othered in the output of the major early Tin Pan Alley publishing house M. Whitmark & Sons. And in Chapter Five, Morrison illustrates how the African American musical ‘practice of Signifyin(g)’ or ‘ragging’ on ragtime propelled that form to the mainstream, and eventually towards its development ‘into the aesthetic foundation of Blacksound and popular music’ (p. 173). The historical and biographical richness of Blacksound is bolstered, then, by the detail and cultural situatedness of its musical analysis, which is always clear and accessible.
Morrison also makes some other, broader contributions. These first include his problematisation of the idea of the stolen black ‘authenticity’ upon which Eric Lott’s (Reference Lott1993) seminal concept of ‘love and theft’ for the understanding of blackface is based. Through his own analysis and a preference for Saidiya Hartman’s (Reference Hartman1997) formulation of ‘terror and enjoyment’, Morrison updates scholarly understandings of blackface performance and productively rethinks the sounds that are at its base. Another of the book’s achievements is its applicability to understandings of the entertainment industries today, as Morrison illustrates through his fascinating concluding discussion of the legal battle over the ownership of the Marvin Gaye-indebted (black) sounds utilised in Robin Thicke’s 2013 hit ‘Blurred Lines’. These achievements illustrate that, as Morrison introduces a helpful original concept, he also offers new understandings of the varied areas through which he travels to advance it. Those include theories of blackface; copyright law; ragtime; and, elsewhere, the black history of the banjo (pp. 95–98, 147–148), and the cultural-political history of Tin Pan Alley (Chapter Four).
A minor drawback of Morrison’s work is its occasional speculation. Argumentation in Chapter One around the ‘potential impact’ of the black New Orleans street performer Old Corn Meal on Rice’s performance practice, for example, is reasoned, not evidenced (p. 36). Similarly, Morrison suggests that the compositional influence Foster might have taken from black religious practices in Pennsylvania came from a ‘potential relationship’ with the churchgoing African Americans he met, perhaps at the church he ‘would likely have visited’ with the Foster family’s slave Olivia Pise (pp. 115–118). These leaps – necessitated by the unavailability of evidential sources – detract minorly from some of Morrison’s broader points. They don’t, however, trouble the overall credibility of his arguments.
Also minor, but noteworthy, is a terminological issue of this book. Aside from some intriguing consideration of related developments in the United Kingdom, Morrison’s focus is the United States. However, the author largely prefers the adjective ‘American’. The risk of appearing to employ a catchall continental descriptor for developments in the North would have been bypassed if Morrison had clarified his language in the Introduction.
Infrequent speculations and adjectival generalisation notwithstanding, this book is a powerful contribution to the understanding of the history of race and popular music in the United States. It will be invaluable to those researching such specific topics as blackface, ragtime, and Tin Pan Alley. But it should also sit on the shelves of those interested more broadly in the intersection of race and music, and the history of U.S. politics and society. Engaged at once with historical and cultural musicology, organology, American studies, and American political and legal history – among many other fields and approaches – Blacksound is an impressive, far-reaching achievement. Its titular concept will likely be crucial for much future work in the many areas on which it touches.
