On the Record: Music That Shaped America

Johns Hopkins musicology professor Celenza (Jazz Italian Style) offers an engrossing history of how music has intersected with American politics, policy, and culture. She covers how the law has shaped the musical landscape, citing the 1991 U.S. district court ruling that unauthorized sampling constituted copyright infringement—undercutting “the communicative power of rap,” a genre reliant on layering different sounds—and the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which led to the deregulation of radio station ownership, privileging “nationally syndicated content” over “local voices and music styles.” On the flip side, music also furthered broader political efforts by both the government—one 1950s State Department project sent “jazz ambassadors” like Dizzy Gillespie abroad to win over “the hearts and minds” of countries believed vulnerable to communist doctrine—and the American people, with songs by Nina Simone and Bob Dylan, among others, spreading the message of the civil rights movement. Celenza also unpacks the complicated roots of classic American music and plays, noting how Martha Graham and Aaron Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring, which was originally set during the Civil War and featured an escaped slave, had become by the time it premiered in 1944 a “mythical narrative of the nation’s founding and pioneering spirit.” Using such examples, Celenza explains with nuance and care how the history of American music reveals as much about the foundational stories ”we choose to protect” as those “we’re willing to forget.” This hits all the right notes. (Apr.)