This afterword [to a special issue of the Journal of Social History on the social and cultural hi... more This afterword [to a special issue of the Journal of Social History on the social and cultural history of music] offers historiographical context for historical writing on music, stretching back to the pioneering work of Eugene Genovese and Lawrence Levine in the 1970s. For the articles in this special issue, it suggests Christopher Small's concept of " musicking " as a useful way to think about music as social practice and proposes that these articles take on added power when read in relation to the recent scholarship on the history of the senses and especially of sound. Finally, it encourages historians' expanded use of music as an interpretive tool.
Review of: Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith... more Review of: Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday; and I Can’t Be Satisfied: Early American Women Blues Singers—Town & Country, Vol. 1, Country; Vol. 2, Town
In 1964, the US government conducted an experiment in which it bombarded Oklahoma City with eight... more In 1964, the US government conducted an experiment in which it bombarded Oklahoma City with eight sonic booms a day, every day, for six months, in order to test community reaction. The experiment was part of a large-scale program to build a supersonic transport (SST), an aircraft that would have produced sonic booms affecting many millions of people. This article explores the history of sonic booms, with special focus on the causes, contexts, and consequences of the Oklahoma City experiment. It argues that within the political economy of the Cold War, sonic booms became a new kind of state power that touched people through their senses and functioned as a kind of “technopolitics” that intruded upon the practice of everyday life. The final section considers the legacy of sonic booms and the militarization of sound in the twenty-first century.
Review of Steve Young and Sport Murphy, Everything's Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industr... more Review of Steve Young and Sport Murphy, Everything's Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals, in the Journal of Popular Music Studies 2015
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the emergence of a new technology for the mechanical reprod... more At the dawn of the twentieth century, the emergence of a new technology for the mechanical reproduction of music struck many people in the United States as a harbinger of dramatic cultural change. To its champions, this technology would usher in a more democratic musical age, bringing "good" music to more people, more easily, untethered from the painstaking and time-consuming labor of learning to play the piano. For some, this held the promise of fighting back what they saw as the degenerative, corrupting effects of the rising tide of popular music. A few contemporaries championed this new technology of mechanical reproduction for its creative potential in and of itself, capable perhaps of opening new realms of musical expression. Others, meanwhile, found the technology a menace, debasing the time-honored value of traditional musical training and robbing copyright holders of their rightful compensation for their creative labors. This technology was called the player-piano.
This afterword [to a special issue of the Journal of Social History on the social and cultural hi... more This afterword [to a special issue of the Journal of Social History on the social and cultural history of music] offers historiographical context for historical writing on music, stretching back to the pioneering work of Eugene Genovese and Lawrence Levine in the 1970s. For the articles in this special issue, it suggests Christopher Small's concept of " musicking " as a useful way to think about music as social practice and proposes that these articles take on added power when read in relation to the recent scholarship on the history of the senses and especially of sound. Finally, it encourages historians' expanded use of music as an interpretive tool.
Review of: Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith... more Review of: Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday; and I Can’t Be Satisfied: Early American Women Blues Singers—Town & Country, Vol. 1, Country; Vol. 2, Town
In 1964, the US government conducted an experiment in which it bombarded Oklahoma City with eight... more In 1964, the US government conducted an experiment in which it bombarded Oklahoma City with eight sonic booms a day, every day, for six months, in order to test community reaction. The experiment was part of a large-scale program to build a supersonic transport (SST), an aircraft that would have produced sonic booms affecting many millions of people. This article explores the history of sonic booms, with special focus on the causes, contexts, and consequences of the Oklahoma City experiment. It argues that within the political economy of the Cold War, sonic booms became a new kind of state power that touched people through their senses and functioned as a kind of “technopolitics” that intruded upon the practice of everyday life. The final section considers the legacy of sonic booms and the militarization of sound in the twenty-first century.
Review of Steve Young and Sport Murphy, Everything's Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industr... more Review of Steve Young and Sport Murphy, Everything's Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals, in the Journal of Popular Music Studies 2015
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the emergence of a new technology for the mechanical reprod... more At the dawn of the twentieth century, the emergence of a new technology for the mechanical reproduction of music struck many people in the United States as a harbinger of dramatic cultural change. To its champions, this technology would usher in a more democratic musical age, bringing "good" music to more people, more easily, untethered from the painstaking and time-consuming labor of learning to play the piano. For some, this held the promise of fighting back what they saw as the degenerative, corrupting effects of the rising tide of popular music. A few contemporaries championed this new technology of mechanical reproduction for its creative potential in and of itself, capable perhaps of opening new realms of musical expression. Others, meanwhile, found the technology a menace, debasing the time-honored value of traditional musical training and robbing copyright holders of their rightful compensation for their creative labors. This technology was called the player-piano.
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