ABSTRACT
In the history of popular music, perhaps no concept has been as vexed as that of race. From the “race” records of the 1920s to the political reception of rap music in the 1980s, race has been both calling card and wild card, draw and repulsion, essence and pose. No history of popular music or study of its contemporary formations can afford to neglect the issue of race, yet “race” as such has been continually elided, both within the music industry’s discourse on its own modes of production and consumption, and by many of music’s self-appointed critics. For even as popular music embodies and evokes a mosaic of racial identities and histories, its relationship with identity has never been as deterministic as those who see race as an essence have tried to construe it. “Black” music has always drawn “white” audiences, and indeed often drawn from “white” musical traditions.
