Alive in the Sound Black Music as Counterhistory eBook

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In Alive in the Sound, Ronald Radano proposes a new understanding of US Black music by focusing on the key matter of value, manifested musically in its seemingly embodied qualities—spirit, soul, and groove. While acknowledging these qualities are always embedded in Black music, Radano shows they developed not simply from performance but from musicians’ status as laborers inhabiting an enduring racial-economic contradiction: Black music originated publicly as an exchangeable property owned by people whose subhuman status granted them—as “natural” musicians—indelible properties of sound. As a contradiction of the rules of ownership, wherein enslaved property was forbidden the right to own, modern Black music emerges after emancipation as a primary possession, moving dialectically into commercial markets and counterhistorically back into Black worlds. Slavery’s seminal contests of ownership underlie modern musical sensations of aliveness, which become the chief measure of value in popular music. By reconceiving US Black music history as a history of value, Radano rethinks the music’s place in US and global culture.

This is a digital product.

Alive in the Sound: Black Music as Counterhistory is written by Ronald Radano and published by Duke University Press Books. The Digital and eTextbook ISBNs for Alive in the Sound are 9781478061137, 1478061138 and the print ISBNs are 9781478028918, 1478028912. Additional ISBNs for this eTextbook include 9781478032175.