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 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.
3 units · Letter (ABCD/NP) · GER: WAY-EDP
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 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.
Offered in Winter 2026 at Stanford University.