Alive in the Sound (Paperback)

Ronald Radano

ISBN 10: 1478032170 / ISBN 13: 9781478032175

Published by Duke University Press, North Carolina, 2025

About this Item

Paperback. In Alive in the Sound, Ronald Radano proposes a new understanding of US Black music by focusing on the key matter of value, manifested musically in its seemingly embodied qualities - spirit, soul, and groove. While acknowledging these qualities are always embedded in Black music, Radano shows they developed not simply from performance but from musicians status as laborers inhabiting an enduring racial-economic contradiction: Black music originated publicly as an exchangeable property owned by people whose subhuman status granted them - as natural musicians - indelible properties of sound. As a contradiction of the rules of ownership, where enslaved property was forbidden the right to own, modern Black music emerges after emancipation as a primary possession, moving dialectically into commercial markets and counterhistorically back into Black worlds. Slaverys seminal contests of ownership underlie modern musical sensations of aliveness, which become the chief measure of value in popular music. By reconceiving US Black music history as a history of value, Radano rethinks the musics place in US and global culture. Ronald Radano offers a new understanding of Black music, arguing that its value developed from the historical relation of race and capital. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781478032175

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Alive in the Sound (Paperback)
• Publisher: Duke University Press, North Carolina
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1478032170
• ISBN 13: 9781478032175
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

In Alive in the Sound, Ronald Radano proposes a new understanding of US Black music by focusing on the key matter of value, manifested musically in its seemingly embodied qualities—spirit, soul, and groove. While acknowledging these qualities are always embedded in Black music, Radano shows they developed not simply from performance but from musicians’ status as laborers inhabiting an enduring racial-economic contradiction: Black music originated publicly as an exchangeable property owned by people whose subhuman status granted them—as “natural” musicians—indelible properties of sound. As a contradiction of the rules of ownership, wherein enslaved property was forbidden the right to own, modern Black music emerges after emancipation as a primary possession, moving dialectically into commercial markets and counterhistorically back into Black worlds. Slavery’s seminal contests of ownership underlie modern musical sensations of aliveness, which become the chief measure of value in popular music. By reconceiving US Black music history as a history of value, Radano rethinks the music’s place in US and global culture.

About the Author

Ronald Radano is Professor Emeritus of African Cultural Studies and Music at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Among his books is Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique, also published by Duke University Press.