Interlocking Themes: American Music, Race, and Music Scholarship

Abstract

I am thinking about belonging, displacement, and liberation. Rather than a linear narrative, these comments present a trio of contrapuntally interlocking themes: American music, African American musicologists, and the American nation more broadly. I am writing this as we approach Independence Day 2022, a holiday that says a lot about Americanness in the United States as it celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This suggests a point of freedom for the nation: a late eighteenthcentury liberation from their colonial status to the British. I was a child when this country celebrated its 200th anniversary in 1976 and, like other 4th of July celebrations in my family, this time marked a moment in the summer that meant a festive holiday, yet also felt a bit disembodied: how did I fit into this independence and liberation given our nation’s history? As I grew up, the meaning of the nation’s freedom became more convoluted. What had given us the right to fight for this land to make it ours? As former British citizens, when the founding fathers took this country and declared freedom, who were we now colonizing as there were indigenous communities practicing sophisticated cultures already here on this land? How did enslaved people brought from other countries fit in, who got to belong? Who was displaced? What does liberation mean?