Segregating Sound

“Segregating Sound is certainly an eye-opening book. I found myself completely engrossed in it, nodding my head in agreement, and uttering ‘a-hah’ as my previously held assumptions were overturned.” — Mitzie Collins, ARSC Journal

“Segregating Sound is revisionist cultural history of the first order. . . . Miller has produced a resounding critique of reductive cultural categories and the discursive power they indubitably wield.” — Michael Pickering, European Journal of Communication

“[A] captivating description of the tactics that the early 20th-century recording industry used to isolate the musical styles, artists, and audiences into racial categories for marketing purposes. Moreover, one will find a compelling critique of the folkloric paradigm of authenticity that is sure to garner attention. Segregating Sound is well worth reading.” — Korey Bowers Brown, Journal of African American History

“The book’s strong points include its review of factors leading up to that hard-core segregation: touring theatre groups in the 1870s and 1880s; the sheet music publishing industry; white performers who specialized in blackface, minstrel, and ‘coon song’ acts; and the emergence of academics who created a new field of study known as folklore. . . . [T]he book is worthwhile in terms of presenting the big picture of how business and academic interests as far back as the 1870s influenced decisions about what was acceptable for consumers to listen to, what wasn’t, and how those decisions were deeply connected to race.” — Lindy, WeenieCampbell.com

“In this fascinating study of the nature of music, those who study music, and the music business, Miller explains how musicologists and folklorists tried drawing hard lines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries between what they considered music of the folk (poor black and, sometimes, white, Southern musicians) and more worldly pop music. [T]he author displays an incredible depth of knowledge and presents an important history of music.” — Library Journal

“Karl Hagstrom Miller has produced a meticulously researched and compelling multidisciplinary study that contributes much not only to our understanding of the relationship between race and musical culture, but also the emerging revisionist literature on Southern distinctiveness.” — Clive Webb, Ethnic and Racial Studies

“Rarely does a book offer a clear paradigm shift in thinking about a historical topic as successfully as does Segregating Sound by Karl Hagstrom Miller. . . . Miller’s ‘imaginative leap’ (p. 280) results in a completely new way of conceptualizing folk, blues, hillbilly, and even jazz and popular musics that brings into question decades of scholarship. . . . Segregating Sound now leads the revision underway in studies of southern music.” — Glenn T. Eskew, Journal of American History

“Scrupulously researched, engagingly written, and bursting with ideas, Segregating Sound asks readers to reengage with the origins of folk and pop music in a manner that offers a roadmap to the future, rather than simply a dismantling of the past.” — John Dougan, Journal of Southern History

“Throughout this study, borrowing from Steven Feld’s notion of listening as a 'feelingful activity,' Miller complicates musical meaning, allowing multiple interpretations, multiple identities to exist in any performance, allowing individuals to embrace and use music often assumed to be outside of their core culture. This is a provocative study, sure to incite further commentary on the topic.” — Bertram Lyons, American Studies

“Segregating Sound provides a convincing and far-reaching argument that the duality within southern music developed out of three factors in the latter part of the nineteenth century: the rise of political and economic segregation, the academic professionalization of folklore, and the modernization of the music industry. . . . Segregating Sound is a valuable and interesting work that anyone working in cultural studies should consult.” — Kenneth J. Bindas, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

“[A] marvelous reappraisal of early 20th century American musical culture. . . . [Miller’s] book is rich with examples of folklorists or academics heading south in search of something ‘elemental’ and pure, and editing out anything that didn't fit. And there was a lot.” — Hua Hsu, The Atlantic

“[B]rilliant . . . . Miller is the first scholar to take the overwhelming presence of popular music in the South seriously and to weave the story of changing ideas about what makes music ‘authentic’ into the history of what musicians from the South were actually playing and what people were actually listening to. Segregating Sound tells the stories of the varied cast of characters who invented the category of southern music, a significant part of what is called ‘folk’ or ‘Americana’ or ‘roots’ music today and understood as part of the American musical canon.” — Grace Hale, Southern Spaces

“[T]he most thorough achievement thus far in a growing body of scholarship and criticism demystifying and dissecting the roots of American music, and by extension the American music industry. . . . Miller goes several steps further than prior bodies of research, tracing back the artificial distinction to a confluence of marketing, scholarship, and music classification decisions, each driven to some degree by the prevailing racial attitudes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” — Mark Reynolds, PopMatters