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  • Sounding the Color Line: Music and Race in the Southern Imagination by Erich Nunn
  • Tammie Jenkins
SOUNDING THE COLOR LINE: Music and Race in the Southern Imagination. By Erich Nunn. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. 2015.

Erich Nunn’s Sounding the Color Line: Music and Race in the Southern Imagination, is a timely exploration of the connections between race and music in the United States. Presenting music from the genres of folk, country, spirituals, and rap Sounding the Color Line provides alternative interpretations of music as racial text. Focusing on the segregation of musical genres particularly in the South, Nunn examines the unconscious categorization of popular songs and styles such as rap or rock into classifications of black or white in the public imagination.

Arguing that the nineteenth century legacy of blackface minstrelsy played a significant role in the development of race music, from the late nineteenth century into the first three decades of the twentieth century, this book contains a detailed introduction highlighting the argument, scope, sequence, and relevance of these dialogues to the development of contemporary musical offerings. Additionally, Sounding the Color Line is comprised of six chapters, a coda, bibliography, and an index, covering themes such as cultural reappropriation, musical segregation, commodification of blackness, negotiations of whiteness, and stereotypical representations. Situating these topics in conversations of race and music in ways that transcends and redefines present day understanding of these socially constructed barriers, Nunn uses these topics as a springboard to explore the “relationship between music, race, and culture” (35) in ways that embrace the notion of hybridity in musical styles across intersections of class and geography.

Exploring the intricate connection between music, race, and public imagination, Nunn uses Sounding the Color Line to fully dissect these relationships through a critical analysis of the musical archives compiled by John Lomax and his son Alan, as well as literary works by W.E.B. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, and William Faulkner. Drawing on relevant examples of songs from the genres of folk, country, blues, and spirituals, to name but a few, the author notes that both black and white artists often performed the same songs with each making minor changes to the lyrics or rhythm. For that reason, Nunn maintains that the racial segregation used to sort popular music based on arbitrary notions of genres and related characteristics, was often used by artists to construct a “racial identity” (46) for themselves and among their audiences or listeners. Exemplifying moments of cross-collaboration, whether intentional or not, Nunn illustrates the ways that artists had begun culturally reappropriating the various musical styles in ways that had become ingrained in the rearticuation of racially defined musical styles. Viewing the artist’s oral delivery as the common denominator connecting discourses of race and music, Nunn stresses the ability of artists to use their lyrics, recording, and public performances as a forum to transgress racialized categories while challenging the public imagination.

Sounding the Color Line provides a concise and coherent, yet unsettling, understanding of the role of race in the segregation of musical styles from the nineteenth century to the present. Expanding the breadth and depth of current knowledge of the music industry, Nunn articulates a rich, concrete understanding of music as an art-form rooted in racial undertones. The structure, readability, and content of Sounding the Color Line makes this book a useful foundational primer for courses in ethnomusicology, popular cultural studies, and music education. [End Page 168]

Tammie Jenkins
Independent Scholar
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