#COMBAconference26
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Matthew D. Morrison
Keynote speaking engagements at the conference
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Keynote Address
When: March 6th at 7:30pm
Where: Opperman Music Hall
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Panel Discussion
When: March 7th at 1:00pm
Where: Dohnányi Recital Hall
Dr. Matthew D. Morrison, Associate Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, explores the intersections of racial identity, performance, and intellectual property in American popular music. A native of Charlotte, NC, he holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Columbia University and degrees from The Catholic University of America and Morehouse College. His work has been published in leading journals and major reference collections, and he has held prestigious fellowships at institutions like Harvard, the Library of Congress, and the University of Edinburgh. Beyond academia, Dr. Morrison has consulted for organizations such as Warner Music Group and the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra on issues of equity and justice in the arts. His upcoming book, Blacksound: Making Race in Popular Music in the United States (University of California Press, Spring 2024), traces the legacy of blackface minstrelsy in shaping global music and its industry.
From Blacksoundbook.com
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Dr. Morrison's book Blacksound, "explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century".
Dr. Morrison goes further to describe his book saying, "With this namesake book, Matthew D. Morrison develops the concept of "Blacksound" to uncover how the popular music industry and popular entertainment in general in the United States arose out of slavery and blackface.Blacksound as an idea is not the music or sounds produced by Black Americans but instead the material and fleeting remnants of their sounds and performances that have been co-opted and amalgamated into popular music. Morrison unpacks the relationship between performance, racial identity, and intellectual property to reveal how blackface minstrelsy scripts became absorbed into commercial entertainment through an unequal system of intellectual property and copyright laws. By introducing this foundational new concept in musicology, Blacksound highlights what is politically at stake—for creators and audiences alike—in revisiting the long history of American popular music."
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For more information please click the link below for the accompanying video description.
