African American music — Bunk History

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“Big Elliott” Wright at the Big Apple Night Club.

Set the Country to Stamping

The origins of the Big Apple dance.

by Robert Greene II via Oxford American on November 19, 2019

Artwork titled Notes from Tervuren, featuring a figure against a multicolored painted music sheet.

Talking Drums

On the relationship between African American music traditions and one of the most infamous slave revolts, the Stono Rebellion, in colonial South Carolina.

by John Jeremiah Sullivan via Oxford American on November 19, 2019

Jitterbugging with Jim Crow

Ninety years ago, young African Americans in the South took up the Lindy Hop. It was an act of resistance and an assertion of freedom.

by Nicole M. Baran via The Bitter Southerner on October 8, 2019

A Lifetime Of Labor: Maybelle Carter At Work

Maybelle Carter witnessed the dawn of the recording era and helped create country music as one of the genre's biggest acts.

by Jessica Wilkerson via NPR on August 14, 2019

The Rise and Fall of the “Sellout”

The history of the epithet, from its rise among leftists and jazz critics and folkies to its recent fall from favor.

by Franz Nicolay via Slate on July 28, 2017

Guitar Shorty sitting on a bench outside of a house, and playing guitar while smoking a cigar.

Put on my Clothes and Look Like Somebody Else

The life of Guitar Shorty was a mixture of facts, lies and fantasy. He was a blues musician who lived far outside mainstream society.

by Sarah Bryan via Oxford American on April 17, 2017

Blackfoot Chief, Mountain Chief making phonographic record at Smithsonian, February 9, 1916.

Eavesdropping on History

By all accounts, young Bill Owens was a natural song-catcher, trawling across Texas in the 1930s, the golden era of American field recording.

by Cynthia Shearer via Oxford American on April 5, 2016

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