On Ownership and Value: Response

In his fresh and insightful paper, Ronald Radano conveys the cultural work African-American music performs for the nation. The paper calls to mind reflections James Baldwin made about the subject a half-century ago. "It is only in his music," Baldwin wrote, "that the Negro has been able to tell his story" (Baldwin 1985, 65). According to Baldwin, music supplied this vehicle because it commanded the attention of white Americans. Yet he carefully pointed out that black music also hindered their ability to fully understand the sonic stories.

Both Baldwin and Radano agree that black music has had a powerful hold on Americans. To account for the influence, Baldwin pointed out that black music inspired a "productive sentimentality among white audiences," preventing them from comprehending its deeper messages (65). Building on Baldwin, Radano concentrates on how African-American music functions in American life. Looking beyond style to consider its broad contours, Radano argues that black music assists in the construction of race.

Placing race within a broader historical context lends added salience to Radano's intriguing assertion. Since the eighteenth century, race has provided the basis of a social hierarchy, with whites situated at the top and blacks occupying the bottom. Despite the destruction of slavery, and even Jim Crow, ideas about white supremacy and black inferiority have persisted. Radano traces how discourses about African-American music cultivated a sense of black superiority providing a crucial counter narrative to notions of black inferiority. As early as the 1850s Americans—black and white—began regarding African-American music as decidedly more authentic than nonblack forms.

These twin discourses have proved decisive, in some cases tragic, for black singers and musicians who gained stature as national celebrities. As it garnered national and international attention, African-American music emerged as a vehicle for gaining upward mobility. Over the course of the twentieth century a host of black singers and musicians such as Nat King Cole, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong became household names. Their lives on and off the stage, however, could not have been more different. The notoriety and acclaim they could command did not transform the prevailing prejudice and discrimination that imposed constraints offstage. These men and women warrant discussion because, unlike the listeners on whom Radano focuses, they call attention to the limitations of black music.

Of course the music operated much differently for audiences. In a nation that championed democracy, slavery and discrimination threatened to undermine this cherished ideal. Given its appeal across racial lines, black music has helped to temper the significance of race without dismantling it. In the process, music has kept ideals about freedom intact while instilling a sense of racial pride. Perhaps the source of this power resides in the sheer elusiveness of sound, enabling music to assume an array of different meanings and forms. Radano highlights two different forms of property that black music has assumed with the proliferation of mass-produced culture. African-American music has given concrete form to blackness, representing the unfettered black body. In addition, economic forces of ownership and exchange have made black music accessible to all Americans. These competing forms have produced tensions rendering black music contradictory and paradoxical.

In the late twentieth century, these paradoxes have unleashed a chain of events that have united and divided Americans. Although black music helps to construct race, it has provided a source of cultural unity enabling it to transcend race. As particular styles grow increasingly popular among whites, they lose their authenticity among blacks and some whites. Predictably new, more authentic styles soon follow, and the cycle repeats itself. The process has produced innumerable sonic styles including sacred and secular gospel, bebop and free jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, rap, and hip hop just to name a few.

Radano has unveiled a national obsession that suggests exciting new areas of research. His insights demonstrate the value popular discourses can have for approaching black music. More generally, the paper beckons us to explore the role the music plays in American culture. Radano suggests that African-American music fostered a sense of national belonging that sprang from citizens...