Episode 3: The Birth of American Music

i want to know from which song is the intro from the pod cast because it swing 's

The NYT has been kind enough to print several of my observations on this section of the 1619 project. There is no point in beating a live horse that everyone wants to ride, so I shall make this short and sweet: There is not a single paragraph in this History of American Music that is trustworthy as solid scholarship. To make the matter abundantly clear, no one who had not been to medical school would presume to write a history of brain surgery on the basis of having watched a few programs on the subject on YouTube, yet everyone is an expert on music. This article cannot be factually trusted. And one more thing. No one denies that race is a highly volatile subject. Just so everything is clear. I marched in civil rights marches under Hosea Williams, I talked on occasion to Mrs. King about these problems, and, over the putative objections of the local KKK, I put the first black face next to the 99 white faces in the Austin Peay University Band. My conscience is as clear as any white’s can be about what was done to blacks. The point. When you talk about race you must be very careful that you have all your facts straight, you are not speaking out of emotions of resentment or self-interest, and that you are truly interested in solving the problems and not adding to them. Otherwise, whites feel threatened, blacks feel even more aggrieved, and before you know it, you have a race incident on your hands. Sadly, the people who start such things rarely hang around to end them.

I don’t think, how may I put this, that these commentary editors are interested in comments that rest on scholarship—read facts—and incline much more to effusive emotional undirected approbation. This is a problem we face in social intercourse generally, not just music.

Has anyone created an Apple playlist of all of the songs in this episode?

Gah Americans. You are so good at minimalizing and glorifying your own history of oppression. It was pretty good until it got midway and went downhill to the end. No conversation about how white men continued to monetize off black people during the Motown era no mention of how little black artists made in the 50s and 60s and that exploitation continues today in the form of "the pay gap". I began rolling my eyes and nearly fell over when the narrator summed it all up by saying "yes it was painful, but in the end it was all worthwhile". Worthwhile? That's easy for a white person to say that.

Thanks for this awesome podcast. Would you mind letting me know what's the name of the music at the end of this podcast? Thanks!!!

Does anyone know where to find the recording of “Old Ship of Zion” used in this episode?

Thanks for another powerful, illuminating episode in this fabulous series. As a die-hard Steely Dan fan whose guardian angels include the Four Tops, I was amused to hear the inclusion of "Do it Again" as the coup de grâce in the yacht rock rundown (though many would wince at putting the Dan and the saccharin Seals & Crofts in the same genre). I share other listeners' confusion around the subsequent salad of chronology and some crucial omissions. Two more come to mind: 1) the origin of the term "cover" (the practice of white artists recording songs penned by blacks for greater hit potential and to "cover" up the tunes' true origins; 2) the back story of Blue Note records, which is an exception to the racist narrative. It was started by two young Jewish emigrés who fled Nazi Berlin, knew something about oppression, and gave a rare advantage to musicians they recognized as genius.

I love this podcast series.....but one little correction: 'This Magic Moment' by the Drifters that was used as an example of the Motown sound was incorrect: The Drifters was with Atlantic Records, which was...in my humble opinion....the Record company that was unabashedly BLACK. While Motown tried gently to ease white folk into Black music, Atlantic Records much more raw and funky sound aimed directly and primarily at Blacks, and if whites wanted to partake, fine....The Drifters was one of those timeless groups that had a sound that ranged from Rufus Thomas type of funky soul (Money Honey'), to the sweet quasi-soul music sound that was 'This Magic Moment' (1960) and 'There Goes My Baby' (1960).....Both of which had strong european strings and instrumental backgrounds....which Motown expanded upon, later in the 1960s..... Atlantic Records versus Motown Records would be a great compare and contrast story with the backdrop of white american racism during the 1960s...

Kudos to Mr. Morris for helping us understand minstrelsy’s significance as an expression of a form of traumatic psychosis rooted in this country’s peculiar combination of White cruelty/criminality on the one hand, and suppressed White admiration for African-American genius on the other. But the comments critical of this episode are really important; one hopes Mr. Morris will appreciate them too. Once he’s through with minstrelsy, his narrative just spins out of control. From Al Jolson to...Muddy Waters? Bizarre. From Muddy Waters, back to Bechet, “then” Armstrong? The previous comments cover several other lapses in better detail. Finally (and as others have also pointed out), his assertion of Motown’s primacy is arguable at best — but the underlying problem is that he has somehow managed to omit nearly 50 years of deeply significant “American” musical developments (Blake, McTell, John Hurt and OKEH, Broonzy, Gary Davis, etc. etc.) so that the whole Motown thesis ends up very close to a non sequitur. It would be super if Mr. Morris published a Part 2 that addressed some of these important threads!

This was a fairly good episode. The NY Times did much better on this than PBS has done. The Times does a better job at looking at Black music on it's own terms, rather than justifying it as something which turned into white music as PBS did. That being said, this piece does not convince me that Motown was more important than Black Swan, Paramount, or Black Patti, and it does not convince me that Diana Ross was somehow more important than Bessie Smith or Clara Smith. Also Fats Waller and Billie Holiday bridged the gap between black and white music long before Motown did so.

I am surprised that in the recollection of the significant moment of Daddy Rice appropriating the song and dance of a black stablehand to "invent" the character 'Jim Crow', you have left out the matter of disability- "jim crow" was disabled- most likely by the duress and trauma of slave labor. -and so there is no understanding of Black music as American music without recognizing the white audiences twisted fondness and curiosity for (a distroted, defective )black entertainment, as well as recognizing our understanding of birth of american music is limited without the contribution of people with disabilities. Would Blues albums have sold as much if every other musician wasn't blind/ "Blind"? It's time we take the scholarship relating to the mutual relationship of race and disability seriously in how we tell our histories.

Wow! Blown away with this episode. Well done Mr. Morris. Agree with the reader who said this series should win a Pulitzer. Thank you Nikole Hannah-Jones and the NYT for this thought-provoking and enlightening series.

This is a wonderfully insightful presentation. I liked best your summation, which, if I can paraphrase, expresses the irony and power of black expression... those among us who are the most historically deprived people of The Rights proclaimed in our Constitution, are those staking their lives on our living democratic experiment. It's not surprising that through music our truths are revealed. Music is a universal language through which we humans express our true Sprit, which is love. I question one contention in your piece, that the phenomena of black face and white artists expressing their version of black culture is a way to assuage white guilt for black oppression. That may be partly true for that era of white minstrels. But it goes deeper. What really was behind the desire to express the feelings of a people who live among us who we've segregated ourselves from? Identity goes deeper than roles, accomplishments, family, race, gender, and so on. Identity, whether we are conscious of it or not, stems back to Creation. Our Founders got it right. We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights... that we are all Created equal. Their hearts were true, while reality proved so hard for them to change. But in this truth Thomas Jefferson so eloquently expressed, we are all one. Unconsciously or not, we desire for "Tikun Olam" (Hebrew for repair the world). And that those minstrels, however, awkward, were moving toward that.

Mr. Morris, I’m loving, and getting familiar with you, on ‘In Progress’. (Please more) This particular podcast solidified my appreciation for you. Cutting vegetables (I’m vegan and born in 1970) and suggesting Yacht Rock, to your friend, has sent me down a Yacht Rock Rabbit Hole! Loved hearing you sing along and guide us through the evolution and contributions of black performers. You present yourself as super objective, honest and emotionally present. You are a gift. Thank you.

The main point - that one can hear the African American influence in even middle-of-the-road mainstream pop music by white artists - is indisputable. But the dots don't all connect in the way those lines of influence are traced. For instance, in the intro to the Motown discussion, the first piece is "This Magic Moment" by Ben E. King and the Drifters (1960) on Atlantic. If the point is to set this as an example of the vanilla use of strings in pop music, this oversimplifies. The Drifters, like the Coasters and various other male vocal groups on Atlantic and other labels before Motown's heyday, were themselves examples of African American artists modifying and transforming traditional white pop building blocks. These vocal groups can be seen as redirections of the great gospel quartet tradition, with such examples as the Soul Stirrers and the two sets of Blind Boys. Speaking of Atlantic, what about Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin? And speaking of Ray and Aretha, what about their sacred and secular precursors such as Kylo Turner, Nat King Cole, Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson? Yet again, while the podcast episode refers to the tambourines in "Heat Wave" as a church-like element, there is no mention of the line of descent from, say, Marion Williams of the Ward Singers through Little Richard to the Beatles. The narrative that Motown came along in the mid-1960s to right the distortions of minstrelsy going back to the 1830s just leaves out too many crucial steps and players.

This is amazing. When we regard this music as part of the art form in the Caribbean, similarities are undeniable. The unbreakable link, formed on the African continent has survived centuries of abuse. The truth oozes. 1619 helps immensely.

Truly inspired, thoughtful and soul fluttering reporting. Encapsulates American Music so smartly. I am a white girl from Detroit (not the suburbs) with a deep love and admiration for black music. Hearing this helped me navigate feelings I had about being white in a black city and understand how American music is what bonds us all. From bondage to bonding......

This podcast is exceptional in every way. I'm loving it. What is the song at the beginning and end of this episode?! I need to hear more of that song!!

Thank you Mr Morris for this superb piece! I hope this gets picked up as an educational resource. Every high school student should hear this. You've really encapsulated a central thread of American history in a beautiful and inspiring way.

Transcriptions, please! Thanks

This was the single best podcast episode of any podcast ever. What a superb piece. Thank you, Mr. Morris!

re: Episode 3: The Birth of American Music: I laughed out loud a couple times, in my office! Also interesting and enlightening.

I really liked the first 2 installments of 1619 and was especially looking forward to the 3rd because it was about about music, but aside from the fascinating discussion of minstrelsy , I just found the entire episode to be a mess. The long and boring opening section about 70's white music was plain boring, unclear and frankly about the worst example of black influenced music I can imagine. How about Elvis instead. Then after the minstrelsy section the narrator gets his chronology so completely mixed up its hard to believe no one proofread the copy before it was recorded. Sounds like it was written by someone with no knowledge of American or Black music at all - period. I love Motown too but as the height of black musical development in America - give me a break. This could have been fascinating discussion of the deep and pervasive influence of Black, African and Caribbean traditions and experience on American music and its fascinating interactions with all kinds of European music from classical to folk traditions. American music is the creation of a melting pot and frankly there's probably as much European influence in James Brown as there is African in Country Western.

Truly awesome. Our world views are formed by the time period through which we view it. This podcast tells the central story of 400 years of American Music in 30 minutes. It tells the story of 400 years of racism in America, where we have been, and where we must go I am proud that I support the future that I want to see for my grandchildren with my NY Times subscription. Thank you NY Times for doing this. Can the Pulitzer be awarded to this podcast?

I listened to this "lesson" (because this series is so above what standard podcasts offer) twice back to back. It is phenomenal. Thanks to your team for this, and all episodes of The Daily.

Thank you for this. I have always said it's Music is America's greatest gift to the world. It is not democracy - a lot of places do it better and fairer. It is not peace - because it makes far too much war. One might say it could be certain tech advances.... ...but the one thing all people can enjoy is music.

Kudos Mr. Morris. I received my Masters degree studying the history of American Music. I was skeptical when I read the title of Ep. 3 of 1619. "It's not possible," I presumed. I listened to this episode during a long run. It gave me shivers more than once. You were tasked with the impossible -- deconstruct and explain each thread of fabric of African American music sewn into American culture, to illustrate its influence over the entire hue of the garment. And do it in less than 40 minutes. Wow! Simply... (speechless).

As a retired music educator who taught pre-school - grade 12 for 39 years, it has always been difficult to cover the history of American music. How could this exquisite art form that took over the world emerge out of a racial divide that produced so much pain and division? Thank you so much for the most insightful treatment of this complicated subject that I have ever heard. The paradox of America's love affair with black music has been a long time interest of just about every twentieth century musician. Many others have pointed out how white Americans co-opted Black music, but you went deeper! By introducing this sordid history within the joyful context of your own personal musical experience, you created a space where the positive aspects of the music stayed front and center. Somehow, with great respect, you rightfully condemned the exploitation, while celebrating the wonderful American style which we all share. Bravo!

The most important point I learned is that African American music was used to create Minstrel Shows, which had White performers using Black face to perform musical skits that became popular with audiences and gave something so culturally important to America that we hardly noticed it then or today, according to the narrator and author, Wesley Morris: “…And this is what America really wanted, which was it’s own original art form that is not an Italian Opera, and isn’t some British guy coming over and thespian-ing all over them. And here is Thomas Dartmouth Rice giving it to them. This is the night that American popular culture was born!”

American history is filled with so much racial complexities, I give much praise to the NYT and writers that has made the 1619 project come alive for all of us. Even though the hard work of research and editing took place over a great length of time, making sure historical accuracy and documentation was accomplished, will not matter to many white Americans in the long run, because there deep imbedded hatred will blind them from the truth. Such a deep shame, that cannot be shaken. I sometimes wonder, what will it take for these Americans to open their hearts and mind. America's true greatness waits, and cannot be actualized until it rids its self of its racism, and, yet, the average white American remains oblivious to this reality and truth.

Interesting show, until it jumps from minstrelsy to the studio recordings of Muddy Waters @ the 26 minute mark, ignoring the entire recorded history of the acoustic blues players of the period between the World Wars who were largely recorded by itinerants. True, most people wouldn't have heard these "race records", but the chronology that follows is screwy. Bechet and then Armstrong (they both recorded for the first time in 1923)? Modal Miles and then Bebop? Yeah, Motown was significant (and as stated, tasteful). But I'd think that blue eyed soul singers and their yacht rock antecedents were more inspired by Stax and James Brown.

Looking forward to the next episode. Thank you Nikole Hannah-Jones for producing these stories. The only problem with them is that the people that NEED to hear them, won't. But still, I continue to be enlightened about America's brutal capitalism.

Jim Crow “moved his body in a particular way...” because HE HAD A DISABILITY. Say the word. We are invisible until we’re trotted out as an inspiration.

Please make a playlist with the songs featured on this one!

Track list? That would be sweet!

Thank you for this incredibly interesting and informative podcast.

The origin of American music also includes the Scots-Irish music of Appalachia. These immigrants brought folk music, ballads, church hymns, and instruments from their homelands that modern American music can also be traced back to. American music has multiple origins, not one or the other, but a beautiful and interesting blend of many influences. (Aldo, it is not true that the only form of musical entertainment was Italian opera and English music popular in Europe at that time.)

This was so good. They are all GREAT but this one was so lush and informative. Thank you for the entire series - the best podcast out there!

Wow, what an incredible podcast! Having the music included, to illustrate what Wesley Morris has written and published on the page, just made this episode #3 of 1619 incredible. I’ve grown up listening to this music (of course), grew up in the “Yacht” music era, and I’ve learned so much from this episode (and all of 1619 so far). Thank you for helping to explicate and illuminate this complex, multi-layered world we live in.

A fabulous contribution to the discussion!. There is so much to unpack here. I have often speculated that one of the appeals of black music to the vast majority of white America is its authenticity that comes from knowledge of limits. African-Americans knew and know the certain limits of social and economic mobility. This knowledge allows deep feeling and pure expression all people can recognize as artistic truth. The white American is taught to believe social and economic mobility is limited only by talent and effort, and to an extent, this is more true for white America. But most people know in their soul of souls that this is largely a myth. Thus, we hear the truth from the culture that understands struggle and appreciates the here and now. It is the truth in the music that relates to all people.