**"No book from this past year better explains American popular music than professor Matthew Morrison’s Blacksound."—A Rolling Stone Best Music Book of 2024A new concept for understanding the history of the American popular music industry.**Blacksound explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century. With this namesake book, Matt...

A new concept for understanding the history of the American popular music industry.Blacksound explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century. With this namesake book, Matthew D. Morrison develops the concept of "Blacksound" to uncover how the popular music industry and popular entertainment in general in the United States arose out of s...