Musical Capital: Sound and Power in Washington, D.C.

Musical Capital: Sound and Power in Washington, D.C. brings together a collection of thirteen essays developed by twenty-nine authors and musicians to create an expansive story of musical life in Washington, D.C. It examines D.C.’s music as an articulation of both the city’s symbolic importance on the global stage and the quotidian realities of lived experiences on a human scale. A telling of the history of music in D.C. that primarily concerns classical music and sometimes jazz usually unfolds as an entirely positive story of linear progress, because cultural life in the city has grown significantly in range and reputation over the centuries. But the history of D.C.’s music, like that of the city and country as a whole, is much more complicated than such celebratory narratives might indicate. The music of this city―whether classical music and jazz, or rap and hip-hop, go-go, or music made by Latin American and Asian immigrants―has long reflected not only what this nation imagined and hoped itself to be but also what it actually was and is, in all its messiness. Musical Capital embraces and explains some of this complexity.

Emily Abrams Ansari is an Associate Professor of Music History at the University of Western Ontario.

Daniel F. Boomhower is Director of the Research Library at Dumbarton Oaks.

Michael Sy Uy is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.