African Cultural Studies 409: Topics in US & Global Black Music

Introduces the phenomenon of “musical blackness” as a US-based, transnational cultural form and practice. Explores (topics will vary) how US-based, racially specified black musical forms, together with global forms also identified as “black,” were constituted as part of the legacies of European colonial encounter and US imperial expansion; the categories of “traditional” music and popular style took shape and have been experienced as something part and parcel of this historical process. Gives close consideration to genre, style, and performance practice, in order to understand the many ways in which musical sound and social/political ideas are inextricably linked.