This class primarily focused on “the Great Migration,” race records, and identity of artists.  In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, great numbers of sharecroppers, former slaves or their descendants, and overall large numbers of rural folk “migrated” into urban centers in search of better jobs.  The majority of these migrators were African-Americans escaping the prejudicial life of the south, and brought with them their rural attitudes and music.  However, as we learned, they faced some amount of prejudice in the more urban north as well, with African-American urbanites labeling them slang such as “geechies” for their more urban ways; and the phenomena of race records.

Race records have been mentioned before in the class, and I knew that they were sort of a music market segregated into “white” and “colored” music markets, but the happening was not really gone into much.  Race records often took the same song — often a “southern inspired” one, and geared it both towards the “white perception” and “white sensibilities” of African-American and southern culture, as we’ve heard about a lot in this course, especially about minstrel shows.  The flip side of the race records coin was an appeal to African-American culture by emphasizing themes of southern hospitality, romance, and nostalgia, often times yearned for by those who escaped the very same southern societies in the south.

There was also an emphasis on southern artists attempting to change their musical identities discussed.  Let’s say a singer from Alabama approached a record label from Detroit, and he tried singing classical, or more “refined music” than what he listened to growing up — which might have been race records from either side of the coin because we’ve learned of the cross-racial music appreciation prevalent in the south at that time.  The record label would most likely turn him away — because most urban labels were in demand for “American folk music,” or untouched by commercial enterprise.  The artist would then realize this, and relent to singing “southern ditties” such as — ironically — commercial hits they grew up listening to.  This happened to Vernon Dalhart, a singer from Texas who first tried to sing classical Italian opera in New York City, and went through the same conundrum (Miller, chapter 4).