CBH Talk | Blackface Minstrelsy and the Racial Foundation of American Musical Culture

In his new book, Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States, musicologist Matthew Morrison unpacks the political legacy of blackface minstrelsy, showing not only how blackness was commodified by white people as popular entertainment during the nineteenth century, but how that commodification profoundly shaped American popular music, culture and identity even as those Black artists were denied the benefits of ownership over their creative work. Morrison’s concept of “Blacksound” gives shape to a fundamental historical through line. “Blacksound” explains how songs originating with Black performers were spread by white performances, then co-opted, copyrighted, published as sheet music by white power brokers, and embedded in our popular culture. Join him, led in conversation by CBH Chief Historian Dominique Jean-Louis, as he shares music and images that trace the impact of blackface minstrelsy on American music and entertainment, and demonstrates how Blacksound lives deep in our national, cultural DNA today.