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 DAV ID

POP,
TR ACE S THE E VOL U TION OF DIVER SE

BRACKETT
BR ACK E T

THE
S TRE A MS OF A MERICAN POPUL AR MUSIC
FROM THE 1920 S T O THE PRE SENT T

ROCK,
“I really appreciate the historical approach that David Brackett utilizes in The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader. I
think that students get a different perspective by reading rock’s history ‘in the time’ written by people as
it occurred. Students enjoy this; it demonstrates that history is a process.”
—Edward Whitelock, Gordon State College

AND
“The range of The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader is excellent. My students enjoy this book because the

THE POP, ROCK, AND SOUL READER

readings are manageable and engaging. The headnotes give enough context for students to be able

SOUL
to make sense of the issues raised by the readings. This is the strongest primary source reader on
popular music available.”
—Gregory Weinstein, Davidson College

Featuring more than 100 readings from a wide range of

sources and writers, The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader has
established itself as the #1 reader for popular music studies.

NEW TO THIS EDITION

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• New articles on the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Kim Gordon, Patti Smith, and “Riot Grrrls”
will inspire class assignments and discussions of classic rock, punk, and 1990s feminist indie music
• Critical overviews of the 1970s and 1980s by leading critics Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau
provide students with essential recent historical context
• New selections exploring today’s rap, hip-hop, and contemporary pop scenes include discussions
of the resurgence of political engagement in recent African American popular music (with features
on Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar) and an account of the meteoric rise in popularity of EDM

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student and instructor resources.
EDITION
FOURTH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Brackett is Professor of Musicology at McGill University.

1 ISBN 978-0-19-084358-8
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EDITION
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HI S T O R IE
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 THE

POP,
ROCK, AND

SOUL
READER
Histories and Debates
Fourth Edition

David Brackett
McGill University

New York    Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brackett, David.

Title: The pop, rock, and soul reader : histories and debates / David
Brackett.
Description: Fourth edition. | New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017639 | ISBN 9780190843588 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Popular music—United States—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML3477 .B68 2019 | DDC 781.6409—dc23 LC record available
at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017639

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by LSC Communications, United States of America

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Contents
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

PART 1 Before 1950

1. Irving Berlin in Tin Pan Alley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Charles Hamm, “Irving Berlin and the Crucible of God”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2. Technology, the Dawn of Modern Popular Music, and the “King of Jazz” . . . . . . . . . 9
Paul Whiteman and Mary Margaret McBride, “On Wax,” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3. Big Band Swing Music: Race and Power in the Music Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Marvin Freedman, “Black Music’s on Top; White Jazz Stagnant”. . . . . . . . . . . 15
Irving Kolodin, “The Dance Band Business: A Study in Black
and White”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

4. Solo Pop Singers and New Forms of Fandom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Martha Weinman Lear, “The Bobby Sox Have Wilted, but the Memory
Remains Fresh”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

5. Hillbilly and Race Music. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Kyle Crichton, “Thar’s Gold in Them Hillbillies”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

6. Blues People and the Classic Blues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

LeRoi Jones, from Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America
and the Music that Developed from It. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

7. The Empress of the Blues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, from Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of
Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40

8. At the Crossroads with Son House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Jerry Gilbert, “Son House (part 1): Living King of the Delta”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

iii

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iv Contents

9. Jumpin’ the Blues with Louis Jordan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

DownBeat, “Bands Dug by the Beat: Louis Jordan”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Arnold Shaw, from Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of
Rhythm and Blues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

10. On the Bandstand with Johnny Otis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Johnny Otis, from Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. . . . . . . . . 52

11. The Producers Answer Back: The Emergence of the “Indie”

Record Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Bill Simon, “Indies’ Surprise Survival: Small Labels’
Ingenuity and Skill Pay Off”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Arnold Shaw, from Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years
of Rhythm and Blues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

12. Country Music as Folk Music, Country Music as Novelty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Billboard, “American Folk Tunes: Cowboy and Hillbilly Tunes
and Tunesters”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Newsweek, “Corn of Plenty”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

PART 2 The 1950s

13. Country Music Approaches the Mainstream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Rufus Jarman, “Country Music Goes to Town”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

14. Rhythm and Blues in the Early 1950s: B. B. King . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Arnold Shaw, from Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years
of Rhythm and Blues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

15. “The House that Ruth Brown Built”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Ruth Brown (with Andrew Yule), from Miss Rhythm:
The Autobiography of Ruth Brown, Rhythm and Blues Legend. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

16. Ray Charles, or, When Saturday Night Mixed It Up with Sunday Morning. . . . . . . . 78
Ray Charles and David Ritz, from Brother Ray: Ray Charles’
Own Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

17. Jerry Wexler: A Life in R&B. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Jerry Wexler and David Ritz, from Rhythm and the Blues:
A Life in American Music. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

18. The Growing Threat of Rhythm and Blues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Variety, “Top Names Now Singing the Blues as Newcomers
Roll on R&B Tide”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Variety, “A Warning to the Music Business”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

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 Contentsv
19. From Rhythm and Blues to Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Songs of Chuck Berry. . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Norman Jopling, “Chuck Berry: Rock Lives!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

20. Little Richard: Boldly Going Where No Man Had Gone Before . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Charles White, from The Life and Times of Little Richard:
The Quasar of Rock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

21. Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, and Rockabilly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Elizabeth Kaye, “Sam Phillips Interview”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

22. Rock ‘n’ Roll Meets the Popular Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

23. The Chicago Defender Defends Rock ‘n’ Roll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Rob Roy, “Bias Against “Rock ‘n’ Roll” Latest Bombshell in Dixie”. . . . . . . 115

24. The Music Industry Fight Against Rock ‘n’ Roll: Dick Clark’s
Teen-Pop Empire and the Payola Scandal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Peter Bunzel, “Music Biz Goes Round and Round:
It Comes Out Clarkola” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
New York Age, “Mr. Clark and Colored Payola”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

PART 3 The 1960s

25. The Brill Building and the Girl Groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Charlotte Greig, from Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
Girl Groups from the 50s On . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

26. From Surf to Smile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Richard Cromelin, “Interview with Brian Wilson” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

27. Urban Folk Revival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Gene Bluestein, “Songs of the Silent Generation” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Time, “Folk Singing: Sybil with Guitar” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

28. Bringing It All Back Home: Dylan at Newport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Irwin Silber, “Newport Folk Festival, 1965”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Paul Nelson, “Newport Folk Festival, 1965”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

29. “For a Man to Be at Ease, He Must Not Tell All He Knows,

Nor Say All He Sees”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
John Cohen and Happy Traum, “An Interview with Bob Dylan”. . . . . . . . . . . 155

30. From R&B to Soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Jerry Wexler and David Ritz, from Rhythm and the Blues:
A Life in American Music. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

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vi Contents

31. No Town Like Motown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Harvey Kubernik, “Berry Gordy: A Conversation with Mr. Motown”. . . . . . 168

32. The Godfather of Soul and the Beginnings of Funk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

James Brown (with Bruce Tucker), from The Godfather of Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

33. “The Blues Changes from Day to Day”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Jim Delehant, “Otis Redding Interview” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

34. Aretha Franklin Earns Respect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Phyl Garland, “Aretha Franklin—“Sister Soul”: Eclipsed Singer
Gains New Heights”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

35. The Beatles, the “British Invasion,” and Cultural Respectability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
William Mann, “What Songs the Beatles Sang . . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Theodore Strongin, “Musicologically . . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

36. A Hard Day’s Night and Beatlemania. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Andrew Sarris, “Bravo Beatles!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Barbara Ehrenreich et al., “Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. . . . . . . 201

37. Two Takes on Sergeant Pepper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Tom Phillips, “Review of Sergeant Pepper:
The Album as Art Form”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Richard Goldstein, “I Blew My Cool through the New York Times”. . . . . . . . . 210

38. The British Art School Blues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Giorgio Gomelsky, “The Rolling Stones Stake a Claim
in the R&B Race”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

39. The Stones versus the Beatles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Ellen Willis, “Records: Rock, Etc.—The Big Ones”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

40. If You’re Goin’ to San Francisco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

Ralph J. Gleason, “Dead Like Live Thunder”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

41. The Kozmic Blues of Janis Joplin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

Nat Hentoff, “We Look at Our Parents and . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

42. Jimi Hendrix and the Electronic Guitar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

Bob Dawbarn, “Second Dimension: Jimi Hendrix in Action”. . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

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 Contentsvii
43. Rock Meets the Avant-Garde: Frank Zappa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Sally Kempton, “Zappa and the Mothers: Ugly Can Be Beautiful”. . . . . . . . . 241

44. Festivals—The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Mike Jahn, “Recollected in Tranquility: Woodstock”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

PART 4 THE 1970S

45. Where Did the Sixties Go?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Lester Bangs, “Of Pop and Pies and Fun”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

46. The Sound of Autobiography: Singer-Songwriters, Carole King. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Robert Windeler, “Carole King: ‘You Can Get to Know
Me Through My Music’”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

47. Joni Mitchell: The Power of Insight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Penny Valentine, “Joni Mitchell: An Interview (part 1)”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

48. Sly Stone: “The Myth of Staggerlee”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Greil Marcus, from Mystery Train: Images of America
in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

49. Not-so-“little” Stevie Wonder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Chris Welch, “Stevie Wonder: ‘Hah—the boy is getting
MILITANT! You get back to ‘Fingertips’ now!’” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

50. Parliament Drops the Bomb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

W. A. Brower, “George Clinton: Ultimate Liberator
of Constipated Notions” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

51. Heavy Metal Meets the Counterculture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288

John Mendelsohn, “Review of Led Zeppelin”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Ed Kelleher, “Black Sabbath Don’t Scare Nobody”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

52. Led Zeppelin Speaks!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Dave Schulps, “The Crunge: Jimmy Page Gives a History Lesson”. . . . . . . . 298

53. “I Have No Message Whatsoever”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

Cameron Crowe, “David Bowie Interview” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

54. Rock Me Amadeus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Tim Morse, from Yesstories: Yes in Their Own Words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

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55. The Global Phenomenon of Reggae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

Robert Hilburn, “Third-World Theme of Bob Marley”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

56. Get On Up Disco. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Andrew Kopkind, “The Dialectic of Disco: Gay Music Goes Straight”. . . . . . 325

57. Punk: The Sound of Criticism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

James Wolcott, “A Conservative Impulse in the New
Rock Underground”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

58. The Punk Rimbaud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340

Robin Katz, “Patti Smith: Poetry in Motion”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

59. Punk Crosses the Atlantic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346

Caroline Coon, “Rebels Against the System”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

60. Punk to New Wave? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352

Stephen Holden, “The B-52s’ American Graffiti”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354

PART 5 THE 1980S

61. A “Second British Invasion,” MTV, and Other Postmodernist Conundrums. . . . . 357
Robert Christgau, “Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster: the Music Biz on a Joyride”. . . . 359

62. Thriller Begets the “King of Pop”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Greg Tate, “I’m White! What’s Wrong with Michael Jackson” . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Daryl Easlea, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough: Bruce
Swedien Remembers the Times with Michael Jackson”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374

63. Madonna and the Performance of Identity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

Camille Paglia, “Venus of the Radio Waves” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

64. Bruce Springsteen—Reborn in the USA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

Dave Marsh, “Little Egypt from Asbury Park–and
Bruce Springsteen Don’t Crawl on HisBelly, Neither”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Simon Frith, “The Real Thing—Bruce Springsteen” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387

65. R&B in the 1980s—To Cross Over or Not to Cross Over? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Nelson George, from The Death of Rhythm and Blues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

66. Heavy Metal Thunders On!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401

J. D. Considine, “Purity and Power—Total, Unswerving Devotion to Heavy
Metal Form: Judas Priest and the Scorpions”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402

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67. Metal in the Late Eighties: Glam or Thrash? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Richard Gehr, “Metallica”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406

68. Parents Want to Know: Heavy Metal, the PMRC, and the Public
Debate over Decency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
Record Labeling: Hearing before the Committee on Commerce,
Science, and Transportation, United States Senate,
99th Congress, September 19, 1985. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414

69. Postpunk Goes Indie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420

Al Flipside, “What Is This Thing Called Hardcore?”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

70. Indie Brings the Noise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

Kim Gordon, “Boys Are Smelly: Sonic Youth Tour Diary, ’87”. . . . . . . . . . . 425

71. Hip-Hop, Don’t Stop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430

Robert Ford, Jr., “B-Beats Bombarding Bronx: Mobile DJ Starts
Something with Oldie R&B Disks” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Robert Ford, Jr., “Jive Talking N.Y. DJs Rapping Away in Black Discos”. . . . 432

72. “The Music Is a Mirror”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433

Harry Allen, “Hip Hop Madness: From Def Jams to Cold Lampin’,
Rap Is Our Music” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Carol Cooper, “Girls Ain’t Nothin’ but Trouble”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440

73. Where Rap and Heavy Metal Converge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442

Jon Pareles, “There’s a New Sound in Pop Music: Bigotry”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

PART 6 THE 1990S

74. Hip-Hop into the 1990s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
J. D. Considine, “Fear of a Rap Planet”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

75. Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

Touré, “Snoop Dogg’s Gentle Hip-Hop Growl” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458

76. Keeping It a Little Too Real. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462

Sam Gideon Anso and Charles Rappleye, “Rap Sheet” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, “Party Over”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Natasha Stovall, “Town Criers” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465

77. Women in Rap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466

Christopher John Farley, “Hip-Hop Nation”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468

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78. From Indie to Alternative to . . . Seattle?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474

Grant Alden, “Grunge Makes Good” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475

79. Riot Girl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

“RIOT GRRRL . . . Believe in me!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480

80. Grunge Turns to Scrunge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

Eric Weisbard, “Over & Out: Indie Rock Values in the Age of
Alternative Million Sellers”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

81. “We Are the World”?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491

George Lipsitz, “Immigration and Assimilation: Rai, Reggae,
and Bhangramuffin”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494

82. Genre or Gender?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502

Carla DeSantis, “Lilith Fair: If You Want to See a Show, Put on a Festival—
Sarah McLachlan Takes the Girls on the Road”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504

83. Electronica Is in the House. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508

Simon Reynolds, “Historia Electronica Preface”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510

84. R&B Divas Go Retro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521

Ann Powers, “The New Conscience of Pop Music” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522

PART 7 THE 21ST CENTURY

85. Country in the Post–Urban Cowboy Era. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
Mark Cooper, “Garth Brooks: Meet Nashville’s New Breed
of Generously Stetsoned Crooner”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
Charles Taylor, “Chicks Against the Machine” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534

86. New Adventures in Mediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540

Joshua Clover, “Jukebox Culture: How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Boy Band” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
Nina C. Ayoub, “Idol Pursuits” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544

87. The End of History and the Mass-Marketing of Trivia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547

Jay Babcock, “The Kids Aren’t Alright  . . . They’re Amazing”. . . . . . . . . . . . 549

88. A World of Copies without Originals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554

Testimony of Mr. Lars Ulrich, Member and Co-founder of
Metallica (Senate Judiciary Committee on Downloading Music
on the Internet, July 11, 2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556

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 Contentsxi
John Seabrook, “Revenue Streams” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559
Joe Coscarelli, “Riding an Online Craze to the Top” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

89. Political Engagement and African American Popular Music

in the 21st Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
Zandria F. Robinson, “How Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ Exposes
the Inner Lives of Black Women”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
Aisha Harris, “Has Kendrick Lamar Recorded the New Black
National Anthem? Singing ‘Alright’ in a Summer of Protest,
Despair, and Hope” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575

90. EDM Grooves Onward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578

Simon Reynolds, “How Rave Music Conquered America” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579

Selected Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585

Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591

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Preface
The music of a well-ordered age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The
music of a restive age is excited and fierce, and its government is perverted. The music
of a decaying state is sentimental and sad and its government is imperiled.
—Lu Be We, ancient Chinese philosopher1

It seems that music is used and produced [in one era] in the ritual in an attempt to
make people forget the general violence; in another, it is employed to make people
believe in the harmony of the world, that there is order in exchange and legitimacy
in commercial power; and finally, there is one in which it serves to silence, by mass-­
producing a deafening, syncretic kind of music, and censoring all other human noises.
—Jacques Attali, contemporary French philosopher2

To some extent the genesis of this project can be blamed on my mother, who gave
me a copy of The Rolling Stone Record Review (a collection of reviews from Rolling
Stone from the years 1967–70) when I was 13. I became aware of an ongoing world
of criticism with its own set of myths and assumptions about what was important in
popular music. The contributors to the Record Review took popular music seriously,
wrote about it literately, and seemed to share a sense of how the sound and style of
popular music were bound up with contemporary social and political currents. I have
continued to use that same, now-tattered paperback copy of the Record Review and
its successor, The Rolling Stone Record Review, Volume 2, as a reference volume for the
subsequent 30 years, and two reviews from the first volume (plus the epigraph by Lu
Be We) made it into this book.
As is true of many things that happen during puberty, reading the Record Review
had an impact that could not have been foreseen at the time. I subsequently morphed
from music fan and fledgling musician to music student to professional musician to
music academic, yet these early encounters with music criticism continued to exert a
powerful fascination.

The Book’s Approach

In the course of teaching classes on the history of 20th- and 21st-century (mostly) U.S.
popular music for several years, I began to ponder ways to explore the interconnec-
tions among popular music, musical techniques, current events, and social identity
in a way that would make popular music as exciting and powerful for students as it
had become for me. I wanted to find material that could address several particularly
compelling questions: How did the musicians who made the music explain it? What
did the music sound like? Who listened to it? Why did they listen to it? How did they

1. The Rolling Stone Record Review (New York: Pocket Books, 1971), i.
2. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 19.
xiii

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xiv Preface
react? What was the dominant impression made by the music to society at large? Why
do some types of popular music still matter today?

Readings Offer Breadth and Flexibility

Over time, it became clear to me that one of the best ways to focus attention on
these questions and, in some cases, to suggest possible answers to them was to assign
source readings. Source readings challenge readers to re-create the context in which
the first expressions of excitement and arguments about value in various genres oc-
curred. This engagement with the social context is a large part of the reason why
source readings tend to stimulate critical thinking and lively discussions, as read-
ers relive the controversies and conflicts that accompanied significant events in the
history of popular music. The wealth of entries means that readers and instructors
using this book can pick and choose readings to correspond to a variety of interests
and emphases.

Readings Provide Diverse Perspectives

A collection of source readings provides a different sense of history than do more
conventional narrative histories, which tend to emphasize continuity. By contrast, the
sense of history that emerges from an anthology of source readings is more disjunct
in some respects, since different voices present authoritative versions of historical
events that may compete or conflict with one another. This unresolved quality can be
wonderfully stimulating. In this volume, for example, artists such as James Brown,
Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix can be seen through a prism of shifting
perspectives consisting of critics writing at different times, as well as interviews and
autobiographies of people involved in the creation of the music. This lack of resolu-
tion may also provide the impetus for classroom discussions.

Commentary Provides an Overarching Historical Backdrop

This book is a hybrid of sorts, differing from most other anthologies in that it fur-
nishes its own sense of linear history. In addition to the usual sort of material found
in headnotes (introductions to the entries), I have provided historical background
about different artists, eras, and genres. This was necessitated by several factors:
First, the large social and stylistic distances between genres grouped within the
larger rubric of “popular music” made transitions between some entries difficult.
It didn’t seem right, for example, to go from an entry discussing the aesthetic
innovation and cultural importance of disco to entries discussing the different
aesthetic and social context of punk, with only a headnote to function as a transi-
tion. ­Second, these transitional historical passages allowed me to discuss a broader
range of sources than I could include in the book as entries, and they opened the
book up to a wider range of uses.

Organization Allows Broad Usage

The book is arranged chronologically by decades, with the first part of the book
devoted to developments prior to the 1950s. Throughout this collection of source
readings, I’ve woven in commentary that provides context preceding the articles
and, on occasion, in the midst of them, thereby creating a hybrid text/reader. Thus
the book can be used either as the main text for a course or as a supporting reader.
In addition to courses on the history of 20th- and 21st-century popular music, the
content applies to courses on American music, American studies, media studies,
history, and sociology.

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 Prefacexv
The Selections
The documents in this collection may be grouped into two large categories: the first
includes articles from general-interest magazines, music magazines, newspapers, and
music industry publications, and the second includes interviews and autobiographies
of musicians and other participants in the music industry.

Journalism/Criticism
Works of journalism and criticism convey reactions to important musical develop-
ments at the moment they began to receive public attention. The interest in these
pieces—often written with a tight deadline in mind and with little thought for creat-
ing enduring historical narratives—comes from a palpable sense of excitement as the
pieces respond to, for example, the appearance of a new genre, the reinterpretation
of an old genre as it finds a new audience, or the impact of new technology on pro-
duction and reception. Journalistic criticism is particularly useful in communicating
a sense of unfolding events, since critics fill an important role mediating between
musicians, the music industry, and the audience.
Within the category of “criticism,” I have included a variety of different types
of writing about music, from articles and record reviews in magazines with a broad
readership, to excerpts from underground “fanzines,” to examples of “new jour-
nalism” in which the subjective impressions of the critic are highlighted. In decid-
ing which pieces of criticism to select, I sought out examples of critics who have
been historically influential, some of whom have played a role in the reception and
meaning of the music itself. One of the clearest examples of this synergy between
criticism, style, and meaning may be found in the debates that exploded in the late
1960s around rock aesthetics. These debates indicated a major shift in the reception
of post–rock ‘n’ roll popular music and continue to illuminate debates that still rage
whenever musicians and fans argue about their preferences. I also included accounts
that are not particularly hip or influential in terms of popular music criticism, not in
order to make fun of them or show how wrong the authors were, but because these
articles are useful for conveying widespread attitudes about popular music at that
time in a way that more specialized publications are not.
An interesting facet of working with journalistic sources is the variation in point
of view and tone between different publications. This may be confusing for students
because interpreting many of the entries often requires reading skills beyond those
needed for gleaning facts from a standard textbook. The headnotes are intended
to clarify some of the complicating factors. These include (to name only a few) the
assumed readership of the publication, the ongoing dialogue with other critics in
which the article might have been participating, and the larger issues in the music
industry and/or society at large to which the article might have been alluding.

Interviews and Autobiographies

I looked for statements by musicians that focused on their social and musical back-
grounds and on aspects of their music that had the greatest influence on others. I
concentrated on artists who had a significant historical impact even if they were not
necessarily the most popular in statistical terms during the period in which they
worked. I also sought the views of “backstage” figures who played an important
role in the history of popular music—it was often the vision of these entrepreneurs,
record producers, and engineers that led to the formation of new musical alliances
and the redrawing of the stylistic map. While it may be true that many of the inter-
views and autobiographies display the kind of self-serving revisionism that comes

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xvi Preface
with fi
­ rst-person re-creations of events long past, even in their idealized form these
recollections can still provide a good starting point for discussions.
I do not attempt to include every important personage in popular music dur-
ing the period covered here. Some figures, such as Nat “King” Cole and Bill Haley,
while they do not have entries devoted specifically to them, are mentioned in arti-
cles, headnotes, or interviews with and autobiographies of others. These omissions
are not intended as a slight or an indication of what I think is important so much as
they reflect the accessibility of primary materials that focus on these musicians. In
the case of certain genres, such as doo-wop, I had difficulty tracking down source
materials that I found acceptable. In other cases, I simply ran out of time, luck,
money, or some combination of the three. At any rate, I welcome suggestions for
future editions.

What’s New in the Fourth Edition?

The fourth edition includes eleven new entries, replacing the same number of entries
from the second edition; these include the following:
1. New articles on classic rock artists, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones that
will facilitate classroom assignments and discussion. The return of critical
overviews of the beginning of the 1970s and 1980s by leading critics Lester
Bangs and Robert Christgau. An emphasis on the central role of women in
punk rock. New essays on the impact of technology and mass media on the
circulation and social meaning of music, including topics such as streaming,
the interconnectedness of social media, and the legal battles over file-sharing.
The resurgence of political engagement in recent African American popular
music, with features on Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar.
2. An account of the meteoric rise in popularity of electronic dance music.

So What, Exactly, Constitutes Popular Music?

The organization of this book reflects my longtime interest in issues of genre. This inter-
est arose out of attempts to synthesize my experiences as a musician and as an academ-
ically trained music scholar; in other words, I sought a point of articulation between
music analysis—the formal or technical description of music—and the social meanings
and functions of music. Focusing on genre provides an ideal theoretical framework for
exploring such an interest, since genre may be understood as a way of categorizing
popular music so as to create a connection among musical styles, producers, musicians,
and consumers. Genres also underline how meaning circulates in a kind of “feedback
loop” that binds musicians, fans, and critics. Thus no one source rooted in any one of
these groups can act as the ultimate arbiter of musical significance. The focus on genre
in this book resembles that of a book like Philip Ennis’s The Seventh Stream: one that
relies on a model of popular music as an assemblage of several (or, as in Ennis’s case,
seven) simultaneous streams that cross, interweave, and diverge at different historical
moments. Although one may quibble over what constitutes the boundaries of a stream
at any given moment, the metaphor remains useful.
The main categorical or generic division, and one that occurs in every part of
this book, is that between black popular music and white popular music. While there
have certainly been moments of strong interconnection (the mid-1950s, for example),
at other times these two large categories really do seem to exist in separate, although
not necessarily equal, universes. This frequent sense of distance between musical
categories and my desire to contextualize the categories are two of the d ­ riving forces

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 Prefacexvii
behind what I referred to earlier as the “hybrid” nature of this anthology. The pres-
ence of these multiple streams is reflected in my title: I avoided calling this book The
Rock ‘n’ Roll Reader or The Rock Reader precisely because those terms seem somewhat
more limited to me, especially in that they are frequently understood as not includ-
ing the full range of African American popular music since World War II. The usage
of “rock,” for example, sometimes refers to all popular music after 1955; at other
times the term refers to popular music made by (mostly) white, (mostly) male musi-
cians after 1965. Neither “rock ‘n’ roll” nor the twin usages of “rock” do justice to the
rich range of genres that have dominated popular music of the past 50 years. Dave
Marsh’s notion of “rock and soul music” comes close to capturing the complex range
of styles discussed in this book and granting recognition to the importance of Afri-
can American musicians, although I felt it necessary to expand “rock” and “soul”
further by adding “pop.”3
One question that readers are bound to raise concerns the boundaries of popular
music itself. While my title, The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader, may project capacious-
ness in terms of styles and genres, I am sure that despite my best efforts, the issue of
inclusiveness will inevitably arise. It is, of course, not possible to include everything
(imagine how large a book that would be!); nevertheless, I believe that the material
presented here is diverse enough to encourage and enable the tracing of a variety
of histories with different points of emphasis. The ability to refocus on a varying
assortment of genres makes it possible to shift which dates, places, and personages
seem important.

A Note on Chronology and Sources

That this anthology provides a variety of routes through history by allowing the
reader to pick and choose from among the entries also underscores the fuzziness of
generic borders, in that our perceptions of these borders may shift, depending on
which points of view we consider. By the same token, a genre’s temporal boundar-
ies may also appear to be imprecise if we view them from different perspectives;
therefore, the histories of genres will not necessarily begin or end clearly on specific
dates. Acknowledging the lack of a specific point of origin for genres, however, does
not preclude the possibility that certain types of historical emphases within genres
will correspond more strongly than others to the perceptions of a particular socially
or culturally situated group. For example, from the point of view of the first wave of
baby boomers who came of age as fans in the 1950s, 1955 may seem like an obvious
date for the transformation of popular music. On the other hand, this date may seem
less important to those who formed strong attachments to popular music in the 1990s
or 1930s. That the book goes back to the turn of the last century suggests that the
intrageneric dialogue that we now associate with rock ‘n’ roll had already started by
the early decades of the 20th century.
Although I was tempted, I decided not to divide chapters by dates that create
the appearance of a significant point of arrival (e.g., 1955, 1964, and 1977) in order to
open the use of the book to those who disagree about when significant breaks occur.
Even the division by decades does not provide an easy solution, however, since many
artists who are presented here through autobiography or interview had careers that
spanned several decades, and their thoughts were inflected by the period in which

3. The phrase “rock and soul” comes from Dave Marsh, The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001
Greatest Singles Ever Made (New York: Da Capo Press, [1989] 1999).

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xviii Preface
they were written down, a period that may have occurred long after the time of the
musical events they are describing. This historical untidiness sometimes means that
readings referring to a single genre are spread out over two or more chapters.
This book is also very much a history of the different types of mass media
and trade publications about popular music since 1920. The surge of writing in the
late 1960s significantly altered the landscape of popular music criticism, a devel-
opment that is reflected in this book. Prior to the late 1960s, sources consisted of
music industry publications, such as Billboard and Variety; magazines that catered
to jazz aficionados, such as Down Beat and Metronome; the occasional feature piece
in a general-interest magazine or newspaper; and the odd interview or musician’s
autobiography (although it is interesting to note that many of the interviews and
autobiographies dealing with events from before 1960 were actually published after
1970, a phenomenon facilitated by the same boom that produced an abundance of
new publications). Whereas the problem with finding suitable material pre-1967 was
its scarcity, or the lack of variety in the type of sources, the surfeit of riches after 1967
creates the opposite problem of having too much material and too many choices.
In a few cases I have included pieces of a more scholarly hue that are particularly
illuminating about an issue occurring close in time to the publication of the piece,
thus putting these essays in a context similar to that of the journalistic work or the
trade publications. These scholarly works, along with several intensely researched
pieces that could easily pass for academic work even if their conventional assigna-
tion falls into the category of “journalism” or “trade publication,” emphasize how
hazy the line can be between the scholarly and the nonscholarly. However, while
some of the criticism here displays the thorough research and analysis that many
would associate with scholarly work, many of these pieces do not provide the type
of sustained analysis found in scholarship, nor do they usually contain in-depth
descriptions of musical style like those found in musicological studies. The work of
critics may seem remarkably prescient or spectacularly wrongheaded after the fact,
but it almost always tells us something about how people felt at the time the events
were happening. Scholars, with the benefit of hindsight, are able to work backward
from questions that interest them in the present to shock, surprise, or comfort read-
ers on the basis of how the authors perceive present-day attitudes toward their sub-
jects. Although I am a musicologist rather than a critic, I have emphasized criticism
and trade publications far more than scholarship because criticism better served the
goals of this book. An impressive expansion occurred in academic studies of popular
music in the 1980s and 1990s that would require a separate volume were I to attempt
to do it justice. For those hankering for a greater proportion of academic work, refer-
ences are given throughout to direct readers toward relevant scholarship.

Acknowledgments
In addition to thanking everyone I thanked in the first three editions, I would like to
express my appreciation for my research assistants: Farley Miller, Sean Lorre, Jennifer
Messelink, and Claire McLeish, who helped track down the new entries and narrow
the field of possibilities; and for the authors of the new entries in this edition for their
permission to use their work.
The encouragement of my new editor, Richard Carlin, provided the necessary
motivation down the homestretch; and to his indefatigable assistant, Jacqueline Lev-
ine. I can’t resist repeating my thanks to two people mentioned in the acknowledg-
ments of the first three editions: first, to Jan Beatty, editor of the first two editions,
whose dedication and enthusiasm for the project played a major role in its prepa-
ration; and second, to my partner Lisa Barg, guiding light in matters of the spirit

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 Prefacexix
and mind. Finally, I must mention my debt to our children, Sophie and Fred, whose
growing love of music and wide-open ears inspire me to keep listening and playing.
I extend my thanks to the following reviewers commissioned by OUP, who
helped enormously with the preparation of the new edition, including
Stephen Allen, Rider University
Brian Fauteux, University of Alberta
Paul Fehrenbach, Pennsylvania State University
Daniel Koppelman, Furman University
Rebecca Rinsema, Northern Arizona University
Benjamin Tausig, Stony Brook University
Edward Whitelock, Gordon State College

A Note on the Text

There are two kinds of footnotes in this anthology: those I prepared myself and those
that are being reprinted from the original source readings. I have indicated my notes
with numbers and the others with symbols.

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bra43588_fm_i-xx xx 05/24/19 04:12 PM
PART 1

Before 1950
1. Irving Berlin in Tin Pan Alley

For most of the 19th century in North America and Western Europe, popular
song publishing was built around a sheet-music trade aimed at home per-
formers. In the United States during the 1890s, organizers of the variety
entertainment known as vaudeville and theatrical producers increasingly
consolidated their offices in New York City, which had already become
the center of the music publishing business. Located first on West 28th
Street in Manhattan and then moving uptown (eventually to the neigh-
borhood between West 42nd and West 56th Streets), the area where the
publishers set up shop became known as “Tin Pan Alley,” a name that
would later stand for the kind of songs created there. In the close con-
nection between the stage and the publishing trade, both the vaudeville
circuit and the Broadway show relied on Tin Pan Alley songwriters for their
music; in turn, the stage, with its national circuits of theaters and touring
attractions, popularized and circulated this music among customers who
enjoyed listening to, singing, and playing it.
The decade of the 1890s dawned on a popular music scene domi-
nated by Victorian-style ballads and waltz songs composed by European
American songwriters such as Charles K. Harris, Paul Dresser, and Harry
von Tilzer. Before the decade was over, however, a vigorous new style
created by African American musicians called ragtime was introduced.
Both types of song (as well as others) persisted through the years 1900–
20, each developing in its own way. The classically trained Broadway
composer Jerome Kern brought a cosmopolitan harmonic and melodic
richness to the first type. As for ragtime, in the hands of the self-taught
Russian immigrant songwriter Irving Berlin, rhythm and exuberance
came to stand less for ethnic difference than for social liberation,
especially as expressed in such new dances as the grizzly bear and the
turkey trot. Songs from Tin Pan Alley (and from Broadway, its higher-
toned relative) were heard live on stages and in other entertainment
1

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2 Before 1950
venues across the country and overseas and on phonograph records
and player-piano rolls, as well as in performances conducted at home.1

It is fitting that the first entry in this anthology is authored by Charles

Hamm, a pioneering figure in the study of the popular music of the
United States.2 Hamm’s work on Irving Berlin (1888–1989) stands as the
definitive scholarly treatment of this major figure in American music, and
the following excerpt from his book on Berlin illustrates well the turn-of-
the-century milieu in which Berlin came of age and entered the music
business. Hamm’s account stresses the importance of ethnic ­identities—
Jewish American, Irish American, African American, and others—in forg-
ing a Tin Pan Alley style that was perceived as distinctly “American”
both within the United States and around the world; in Hamm’s words,
­Berlin’s songs “encode or reflect or perpetuate or shape or empower . . .
the culture and values of this complex community.” Other passages in this
excerpt emphasize important distinctions in the way authorship functions
in this type of popular music compared to classical music. Many of Berlin’s
songs were collaborations, not only with other songwriters, but also with
arrangers and “musical secretaries” who could transcribe his ideas into
musical notation for him. And while Hamm describes the primacy of sheet
music at this time for the circulation of commercial music—a medium that
makes songs appear similar in formal terms—he stresses how the appar-
ent standardized quality of these songs also enables a great deal of flex-
ibility in performance, allowing the song to be rearticulated in a multitude
of different contexts and genres. Differences in performance, in turn,
strongly affect the reception and meaning of the songs.3

Irving Berlin and the Crucible of God

Charles Hamm
What little we know of his early life has been pieced together from scattered offi-
cial documentation, journalistic coverage of his activities, an early biography by his
friend Alexander Woollcott, the lyrics and music of his earliest songs, and g ­ eneral

1. For more, see Richard Crawford, America’s Music Life: A History (New York: Norton, 2001);
and Alec Wilder, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1972).
2. See Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979);
idem., Music in the New World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983); and idem., Putting Popular Music
in Its Place (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
3. For a fascinating case study of how performance affects genre, see Hamm, “Genre, Performance,
and Ideology in the Early Songs of Irving Berlin,” in Putting Popular Music in Its Place, pp. 370–80.

Source: IRVING BERLIN: SONGS FROM MELTING POT: THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1907–1914
by Charles Hamm (1997): Extracts totaling 3700 words (pp. vi-viii, ix-x, 5,7–8,9,11, & 12–18) ©
1996 by Charles Hamm.

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 Irving Berlin in Tin Pan Alley 3
information about life and culture in the Lower East Side.* Born Israel Baline in
Tumen in Western Siberia on 11 May 1888,† the youngest of the eight children of a
cantor, Moses Baline, and his wife, Leah (Lipkin), he had come with his parents and
five of his siblings to the New World, arriving in New York aboard the SS Rhynland
on 13 September 1893. The family found temporary lodging in a basement apartment
on Monroe Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, then settled at 330 Cherry Street,
in the southeastern corner of the Jewish quarter, in a flat that remained the family
home until 1913.
The father was able to find only part-time employment, as a kosher poultry
inspector and a manual laborer, and, as in so many immigrant families, everyone in
the Baline household was expected to contribute to the family income. The mother
became a midwife, three of the daughters found irregular employment wrapping
cigars, the oldest son, Benjamin, worked in a sweatshop,‡ and young Israel peddled
newspaper and junk in the streets while attending public school and receiving reli-
gious instruction at a cheder. With the death of the father in 1901, matters became
even more difficult for the family, and Israel decided to strike out on his own:
[Berlin] knew that he contributed less than the least of his sisters and that skepti-
cal eyes were being turned on him as his legs lengthened and his earning power
remained the same. He was sick with a sense of his own worthlessness. He was a
misfit and he knew it and he suffered intolerably. Finally, in a miserable retreat
from reproaches unspoken, he cleared out one evening after supper, vaguely bent
on fending for himself or starving if he failed. In the idiom of his neighborhood,
where the phenomenon was not uncommon, he went on the bum.§

Faced with the necessity of supporting himself, the fourteen-year-old Israel fell
back on his one obvious talent: singing. According to Woollcott, he was paid for sing-
ing popular songs on Saturday nights at MacAlear’s Bar, not far from Cherry Street,
was hired briefly in the chorus of the road company for The Show Girl, which had
opened in New York on 5 May 1902, and briefly plugged songs from the balcony at
Tony Pastor’s Music Hall. Most of the time, however, he was one of the company of
buskers who, having learned the latest hit songs brought out by Tin Pan Alley pub-
lishers, “would appear in the bar-rooms and dance-halls of the Bowery and, in the
words of Master Balieff, ‘sink sat sonks’ until the patrons wept and showered down
the pennies they had vaguely intended for investment in more beer.Ӧ
Early in 1904, Izzy, as he was now called, found a more secure position as a sing-
ing waiter at the Pelham Café, a saloon and dance hall at 12 Pell Street in Chinatown
that was owned and operated by Mike Salter, a Russian Jewish immigrant whose
dark complexion had earned him the nickname Nigger Mike. Salter capitalized on
the location of his establishment in this sordid quarter to attract tourists, college

*Alexander Woollcott, The Story of Irving Berlin (New York: Putnam, 1925). Later biographies
include Michael Freedland, Irving Berlin (New York: Stein & Day, 1974) and A Salute to Irving
Berlin (London: W. H. Allen, 1986); Ian Whitcomb, Irving Berlin and Ragtime America (London:
Century Hutchinson, 1987); and Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin
(New York: Viking, 1991). See also Charles Hamm, “Irving Berlin’s Early Songs As Biographical
Documents,” Musical Quarterly 77/1 (Spring 1993): 10–34 and Vince Motto, The Irving Berlin Cata-
log, Sheet Music Exchange 6, no. 5 (October 1988) and 8, no. 1 (February 1990).
†
According to research conducted recently by Berlin’s daughters. See Mary Ellin Barrett, Irving
Berlin: A Daughter’s Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 98–99.
‡
Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer, p. 11.
§
Woollcott, The Story of Irving Berlin, p. 21.
¶
Ibid., p. 27.

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4 Before 1950
s­tudents, and other “slummers” looking for vicarious thrills in the bowels of the
city. In truth, though, “the sightseers usually outnumbered the local talent [at the
Pelham], and the grand folk who journeyed eagerly from Fifth Avenue to Nigger
Mike’s seeking glimpses of the seamy side of life were usually in the predicament of
those American tourists who retreat to some quaint village in France or Spain only
to find its narrow streets clogged with not strikingly picturesque visitors from Red
Bank, N.J., Utica, N.Y., and Kansas City, Mo.”*
Izzy served drinks to the patrons of the Pelham Café and also entertained them
by singing for coins tossed his way, specializing in “blue” parodies of hit songs of the
day to the delight of both regular customers and tourists. In his free time he taught
himself to play the piano, an instrument available to him for the first time in his
life at the Pelham, and tried his hand at songwriting, his first attempt being “Marie
From Sunny Italy,” written in collaboration with the Pelham’s resident pianist, Mike
Nicholson. For reasons never fully explained, he chose to identify himself in the pub-
lished sheet music of that first song as Irving Berlin, a name that he retained for the
rest of his life.
His way with lyrics came to the attention of representatives of the popular music
industry, who supplied him with the latest songs. Max Winslow, for instance, a staff
member of the Harry Von Tilzer Company, came often to the Pelham to hear Izzy
and was so taken with his talent that he attempted to place him in that publishing
firm. As Von Tilzer described the episode in his unpublished autobiography:
Max Winslow came to me and said, “I have discovered a great kid, I would like to
see you write some songs with.” Max raved about him so much that I said, “Who
is he?” He said a boy down on the east side by the name of Irving Berlin. . . . I
said, “Max, How can I write with him, you know I have got the best lyric writers
in the country?” But Max would not stop boosting Berlin to me, and I want to say
right here that Berlin can attribute a great deal of his success to Max Winslow. Max
brought Berlin into my office one day shortly afterwards, and we shook hands, and
I told him that I was glad to meet him and also said, “You have got a great booster
in Winslow.” Berlin told me that he had a song that he had written with Al Pian-
tadosi and said he would like to have me hear it. I said I would be glad to hear it.†

Even though Von Tilzer agreed to publish the song, “Just Like The Rose,” he didn’t
offer Berlin a position on his staff.
In 1908 Berlin took a better-paying position at a saloon in the Union Square
neighborhood run by Jimmy Kelly, a one-time boxer who had been a bouncer at the
Pelham, and moved into an apartment in the area with Max Winslow. Collaboration
with such established songwriters as Edgar Leslie, Ted Snyder, Al Piantadosi, and
George Whiting strengthened his ties with Tin Pan Alley, and in 1909, the year of the
premiere of Zangwill’s The Melting-Pot, he took a position as staff lyricist at the Ted
Snyder Company. . . .
Even though Berlin had left home as a teenager to pursue a life unimaginable
to his parents and their peers, he retained close ties with his family, as well as with
their community of immigrant Eastern European Jews. When he was the featured
performer at Hammerstein’s vaudeville house in the fall of 1911, as the wealthy and
world-famous writer of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and dozens of other songs, the
New York Telegraph for 8 October reported that “a delegation of two hundred of his
friends from the pent and huddled East Side appeared . . . to see ‘their boy,’ as one

*Ibid., pp. 49–50.

†
Unpublished typescript, “Story of Harry Von Tilzer’s Career,” Library of Congress, p. 123.

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 Irving Berlin in Tin Pan Alley 5
man among them expressed it, when he stopped the show long enough to tell the
audience that ‘Berlin was our boy when he wasn’t known to Broadway, and he had
never forgotten his pals during his success—and he is still our boy.’” The account
goes on to say that “all the little writer could do was to finger the buttons on his
coat and tears ran down his cheeks—in a vaudeville house!” In addition, according
to the Telegraph, “the home [on Cherry Street] is envied by all who are invited into
it from the original neighborhood where Berlin first saw the light. There his mother
and sisters enjoy the benefits—all of them—of his first years’ royalties.” In 1913 he
moved his mother into a new home at 834 Beck Street in the Bronx, in what was then
a much more fashionable neighborhood, and on opening night of his first musical
show, Watch Your Step, he shared his box at the New Amsterdam Theatre with his
mother and his sisters.
In addition to maintaining his ties to his own community, Berlin was very much
a part of New York City’s radically multicultural milieu, which encompassed, in
addition to his own group, Jews who had been in the United States for several gen-
erations; other recent immigrants to the New World from such places as Italy, Sicily,
Portugal, and Turkey; Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians who had come over a gen-
eration or two ago; Americans of British heritage who had a much longer history in
the United States and who had largely shaped the nation’s political, educational, and
cultural life; and some blacks, who were still very much on the fringes of ­American
society. . . . Berlin had personal and professional association with many people
outside his own ethnic group: Chuck Connors, a friend and protector during his
early days in Chinatown; his first collaborator, Mike Nicholson; Edgar Leslie, born
in Stamford, Connecticut, and a graduate of the Cooper Union; the Irish-American
George M. Cohan and the Dublin-born Victor Herbert, who became mentors and
friends. He associated as freely as was possible at the time with such black musicians
as Eubie Blake. And he fell in love with and married Dorothy Goetz, a Catholic, and
some years after her tragic early death married another Catholic.
Berlin, then, was a product of the multiethnic and predominantly immigrant/
first-generation community of turn-of-the-century New York City, of which the Jew-
ish enclave of Manhattan’s Lower East Side was merely one component. His early
songs, like those of his peers on Tin Pan Alley, encode or reflect or perpetuate or
shape or empower—depending on how one views the social function of popular
music—the culture and values of this complex community.
Remarkably, though, despite their regional origin and character, Tin Pan Alley
songs came to be accepted far beyond the community in and for which they had been
created. A parallel suggests itself. At exactly the same time, a quite different com-
munity, this one of African Americans, was forging its own body of popular music,
created for and performed within its home community at first but eventually finding
favor elsewhere as well. This music was jazz, and its acceptance by people outside its
home community, like that of Tin Pan Alley songs, seems to be explainable by this
observation: Although it retained important aspects of the character and the distinc-
tive musical style of the people who created it, it also accommodated and assimilated
enough external aspects of America’s older and more dominant culture to make it
easily accessible to those outside the community as well.

Creation, Collaboration and Originality

. . . Writing a Tin Pan Alley song was both a complex and a corporate process. As
Berlin described his own working method, he would begin with an idea for “either a
title or a phrase or a melody, and hum it out to something definite. . . . I am working

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6 Before 1950
on songs all of the time, at home and outside and in the office. I gather ideas, and then
I usually work them out between eight o’clock at night and five in the morning.”*
He would jot down lyrics as they came to him, on whatever material was at hand;
some of his unpublished lyrics are written on scraps of paper or on hotel or business
stationery, and others were typed out by a staff member of his publishing house.
In the next stage, words and music would be worked out more fully in collabora-
tion with another songwriter and/or an arranger. Berlin’s first biographer describes
the genesis of Berlin’s first song, “Marie From Sunny Italy”:
It was agreed that [Berlin and Mike Nicholson] must publish a song. Nick, of
course, would invent the tune and [Berlin] must write the words, for which, they
said, he had a knack because he was already famous in Chinatown for the amus-
ing if seldom printable travesties he improvised as the new songs found their way
downtown. . . .
This masterpiece was wrought with great groaning and infinite travail of the
spirit. Its rhymes, which filled the young lyricist with the warm glow of authorship,
were achieved day by day and committed nervously to stray bits of paper. Much
of it had to be doctored by Nick, with considerable experimenting at the piano and
a consequent displeasure felt by the patrons at Nigger Mike’s who would express
their feelings by hurling the damp beer cloths at the singer’s head. Truly it might be
said that Berlin’s first song was wrought while he dodged the clouts of his outraged
neighbors.
Finally the thing was done and then the two stared blankly at the bleak fact
that neither of them knew how to record their work. Nick could read sheet music
after a fashion but he had no notion how to reverse the process. . . . [W]hen the song
was finally transcribed, the work was done by a young violinist who shall remain
unidentified in this narrative because he has since clothed himself in the grandeur
of a Russian name and betaken himself to the concert platform with the air of a
virtuoso just off the boat from Paris.
Next the masterpiece was borne with shaking knees to Tin Pan Alley, where it
was promptly accepted by Joseph Stern for publication.†

Some songwriters were primarily lyricists, writing texts to which more musi-
cally adept collaborators added music, and at the beginning of his career Berlin was
considered to be one of these. . . .
Berlin wrote both words and music for almost two thirds of his early songs, and
in later years it became the exception for him to collaborate with another songwriter.
He described the advantages of being both lyricist and composer this way:
Nearly all other writers work in teams, one writing the music and the other the
words. They either are forced to fit some one’s words to their music or some one’s
music to their words. Latitude—which begets novelty—is denied them, and in
consequence both lyrics and melody suffer. Writing both words and music I can
compose them together and make them fit. I sacrifice one for the other. If I have a
melody I want to use, I plug away at the lyrics until I make them fit the best parts
of my music and vice versa.*

Even when Berlin was writing both words and music for a song, he was still
engaged in collaboration. Like other songwriters of the day, he depended on ­someone

*Quoted in Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (New York: Penguin, 1990),
pp. 57–58.
†
Alexander Woollcott, The Story of Irving Berlin (New York: Putnam), pp. 65–68.
*Green Book Magazine (February 1915) cited in Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving
Berlin, pp. 55–56.

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 Irving Berlin in Tin Pan Alley 7
else to take down his tunes in musical notation and to work out details of the piano
accompaniment; as he put it, “when I have completed a song and memorized it, I
dictate it to an arranger.Ӡ Though he has often been criticized for this, it was in fact
standard procedure for Tin Pan Alley songwriters, even those fluent in musical nota-
tion, from Charles K. Harris on. . . .
The point of this discussion of the Tin Pan Alley mode of song production is not
merely to justify the inclusion in the Berlin canon of pieces written by him in collabo-
ration with others but, more important, to underline that the creation of a popular
song is a vastly different process from the composition of a classical piece. And the
difference between popular and classical music extends far beyond the mechanical
details of how a new piece within each genre comes into being to such issues as the
concept of “originality” and the relationship of music and its composers to the com-
munity for which it is created. . . .

The Material Form of Tin Pan Alley Songs

Tin Pan Alley songs were disseminated primarily in the material form of published
sheet music. Production of such a piece began with its collaborative oral creation and
its subsequent capture in musical notation, as described earlier, after which the song
was sent off to be engraved. . . .
In their material form as published sheet music, Berlin’s early songs appear to
exhibit a high degree of uniformity, among themselves and also in relation to pieces
by other songwriters. Structurally, virtually every one of them is made up of the
same component parts:
1. a brief piano introduction, drawn usually from the final bars of the chorus or
the beginning of the verse
2. a two- or four-bar vamp, with melodic and rhythmic material drawn from
and leading into the verse
3. two (or sometimes more) verses, usually sixteen or thirty-two bars in length,
depending on the meter of the song
4. a chorus, usually equal in length to the verse, with first and second endings.
The first ending indicates a repeat of the chorus; the second gives instruc-
tions for either a da capo return to the introduction or a dal segno return to
the vamp
The songs also appear to be quite uniform in melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic
style. Texts are set in a predominantly syllabic fashion, to mostly diatonic tunes con-
fined to a vocal range of an octave or less, with an occasional chromatic passing note.
Harmonies are tonal and triadic, shaped into two- or four-bar phrases, with second-
ary dominants and other chromatic chords sometimes lending variety. Modulation
may lead to another key for a phrase or two, and from early on Berlin had a man-
nerism of abruptly shifting a phrase to a key a third away from the tonic, without
modulation.*
Most of what has been written about Berlin’s early songs takes this sheet music
as the primary (and often only) text, and most recent performances of these pieces are
more or less literal readings from this text. But the songs were rarely performed just

†
Green Book Magazine (February 1915), cited in Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer, p. 57.
*For a general discussion of the musical style of these songs, see Hamm, Irving Berlin: Early
Songs, vol. 1, pp. xxv–xxviii.

bra43588_pt01_001-066.indd 7 05/27/19 04:50 PM

8 Before 1950
as they appear on the printed page. A literal reading from the sheet music results in
a performance shaped as follows:
• piano introduction
• vamp
• first verse
• chorus with first ending
• repeat of chorus, with second ending
• vamp
• second verse
• chorus with first ending
• repeat of chorus, with second ending
But we know from period recordings and other evidence that this sequence was subject
to change in performance. Only the first verse might be sung, or additional verses not
found in the sheet music might be added. The chorus might be sung only once after
each verse, “catch” lines of text might be interpolated into the second chorus, or there
might be a completely different set of lyrics, not found in the sheet music, for the sec-
ond chorus. The singer might alter notes in the melody or deliver the entire song in a
semispoken way without precise pitches. The accompaniment might take over for a half
or a full chorus without the singer(s), the instrumental introduction might be repeated
after the last chorus, or the song might end with a coda not found in the sheet music. . . .
The problem with taking the notated form of these songs as the primary text,
then, is that, unlike compositions of the classical repertory, which throughout the
modern era were assumed to be “ideal objects with an immutable and unshifting
‘real’ meaning,”† a popular song may be “rearticulated” in any given performance.‡
In other words, “dissemination of [a popular song] as printed sheet music was only
the beginning of its history; it then became fair game for performers, who according
to the conventions of the genre were free to transform [it] in details of rhythm, har-
mony, melody, instrumentation, words, and even overall intent.Ӥ
Throughout its history, popular music has been marked by the extraordinary flex-
ibility with which its text has been treated by performers, and also by the variety of
meanings that listeners have perceived in these songs. Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks At
Home” was sung by amateurs clustered around pianos in private parlors, performed on
the minstrel stage in blackface, sung on the concert stage by famous performers of the
classical repertory, interpolated into stage versions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, sung around
campfires by groups of Civil War soldiers of both sides, reworked into elaborate display
pieces for virtuoso pianists and trumpet players, paraphrased in classical compositions
by Charles Ives and others, and quoted in Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”
In each instance, the overall shape, stylistic details, and the performance medium were
different, as was the meaning of the song for its performers and listeners.*

†
Carl Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, trans. J. B. Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), p. 150.
‡
See Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes & Philadelphia: Open Univer-
sity Press, 1990), particularly pp. 16–32.
§
Charles Hamm, review of The Music of Stephen C. Foster: A Critical Edition, ed. Steven Saun-
ders and Deane L. Root, Journal of the American Musicological Society 45, no. 3 (1992): 525–26.
*For a book-length discussion of the varied and changing meanings of Foster’s songs, see Wil-
liam Austin, “Susanna,” “Jeanie,” and “The Old Folks at Home”: The Songs of Stephen C. Foster from
His Time to Ours (New York: Macmillan, 1975).

bra43588_pt01_001-066.indd 8 05/27/19 04:50 PM

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Cordova. These rare and interesting evidences of Moslem dexterity
no doubt originally formed part of a fountain; they belong to the most
advanced period of the khalifate; the forms are somewhat grotesque,
but the mechanical execution is not inferior in delicacy to that of the
best examples of the present age. Cufic legends are inscribed upon
them, and there are indications that their eyes were formed of
precious stones, as was the custom in Moorish Spain.
The frequent recurrence of the lion among the sculptures of
Moslem civilization attests the symbolic importance with which that
animal was regarded by those whose religion prohibited the
representation of every species of animal life. In Arabic tradition that
royal beast had acquired an important, almost a sacred, significance.
With the eagle, it had been assigned a place in the eighth heaven of
the Mohammedan faith. From the earliest ages its strength and
ferocity had awakened the awe of the superstitious and imperfectly
protected tribes of the Desert. It was recognized as the
representative of power; the emblem of energy, nobility, and
courage. With the Spanish Arabs, these sentiments of fear and
respect were intensified by considerations of policy, custom, and
tradition. In the enchanting gardens of palaces reared by the
greatest khalifs stood bronze statues of lions with eyes of rubies and
emeralds. They were the supporters of the arms of the Nazerite
kings. Their marble effigies guarded the entrance to the royal mint. In
the famous court of the Alhambra, they replaced the twelve oxen that
sustained the brazen laver of Solomon, of which the fountain of that
palace is an imitation. The Moslem princes of the Peninsula gloried
in the title of “Lion of Battle.” Arabic tradition was in time confirmed
and strengthened by the influx of Persian ideas through constant
intercourse with the Orient, where the lion was a symbol of the
Principle of Good.
The art of damascening metals was, as the name itself implies, of
Syrian origin, and was practised as early as the twelfth century. In its
application to arms and armor the Moorish artificers of Spain had no
superiors. Exquisite specimens of their skill have descended to our
time, not only in helmets and cuirasses,—trophies of many a bloody
field,—but in the suits eagerly sought after in intervals of peace by
the knights of Christian Europe. The arms forged upon the Tagus,
whose waters, it was supposed, possessed some peculiar property
that imparted an unrivalled temper to blades of steel, were famous
even during the Visigothic domination. Under the Moors, however,
the weapons that issued from the armories of that ancient city
attained their greatest excellence and reputation. Toledo did not by
any means enjoy a monopoly of this manufacture, which was carried
on with great success in many other towns; the swords of Seville
especially enjoyed a wide and deserved celebrity. This chosen
weapon of the Arab was cherished with peculiar pride and fondness.
Upon its hilt and scabbard were lavished the finest efforts of the
enameller’s and the jeweller’s art. The temper of its blade was of
such perfection that an iron rod could be easily cloven without its
edge exhibiting the slightest blemish. Broad and heavy, as was
required by the rough usage they were destined to undergo, these
weapons were curiously wrought with gold and silver tracery,
alternating with quaint or pious inscriptions. No nation excelled the
Spanish Moslems in the costly and exquisite adornment of their
arms. The hilts were not infrequently of massy gold enriched with
many colored enamels and set with gems. The scabbards, of purple
or scarlet velvet, glittered with filigreed and jewelled mountings. Of
most capricious forms were the guards, sometimes representing the
heads of elephants or dragons, at others carved in ovals, globes,
and crosses; always inlaid with arabesques of the precious metals,
representing floral designs and intricate geometrical figures, with the
omnipresent legend, suggestive of the unquenchable fervor of the
Moslem faith.
The peculiar veneration with which the Hispano-Arab regarded his
favorite weapon is thus disclosed by the beauty and excellence of its
form and materials and by the sacred texts inscribed upon its blade.
Many considerations contributed to invest the sword with a religious
character, and to enhance its moral influence as well as its material
value. Its adoption was intimately connected with the most cherished
associations of the Arab race. Its use was derived from the Hebrews,
that nation of common ancestry, mode of life, and historical
traditions. It was carried by the cherubim who guarded the gates of
Paradise. The Khalif Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, whose valor
was proverbial, rejoiced in the appellation of the “Sword of God.”
Although not a weapon adapted to the desultory warfare of a
nomadic people, it had won the victories of Islam from the Pyrenees
to the Himalayas, from the Oxus to the equator. It had established
the prowess of the champion of the tribe in many a chivalric
encounter before the camel’s-hair tents grouped in the unbroken
solitude of the Desert. Its manufacture, perfected at Damascus, had
travelled to the Spanish Peninsula in the train of the Ommeyade
partisans, who sought protection and honor under the beneficent rule
of that famous dynasty; and it was in Syria that Biblical and Koranic
tradition placed the forge of Tubal-Cain, the first of smiths and
armorers. Popular superstition imputed to it many mysterious and
talismanic attributes, such as the emission of peculiar odors and the
utterance of a groan at the death of the owner. In the Arabic
language, as already stated, a thousand different names are used to
designate the sword, a fact which indicates the significance attaching
to this weapon, ever in the hand of the warrior, as well as the infinite
capacity of the idiom in which its varieties and its qualities are
expressed.
The last epoch of Moslem civilization was especially remarkable
for the ingenious processes and exquisite workmanship developed in
the fabrication of vitreous mosaics and filigree jewelry. The Moorish
craftsmen understood the difficult art of encrusting metals with
various crystals and artificial stones; their enamels were of every
color and of exceeding fineness; their goldsmiths had acquired such
dexterity that they could make a single grain of that metal, beaten
into a sheet, cover a space of fifty-six square inches. Their wares,
originally Byzantine in style, kept pace with the progress of other
branches of artistic industry, and, before the close of their
domination, were not inferior in any respect to those made in Italy
and Germany four centuries afterwards.
In the glyptic art, as developed by the Spanish Arabs, the
inclination to the mysterious and the supernatural, common to all
members of the Semitic race, found full expression. The traditional
seal of Solomon, whose wonderful power made the forces of nature
and the genii of the spirit world alike subservient to his will,
confirmed the hereditary belief of the Moslem in amulets, charms,
and talismans. The device of that famous ring is variously supposed
to have been the ineffable name of God, or a star formed by the
combination of two equilateral triangles. Be this as it may, its magical
virtues were a part of the creed of every uneducated Arab, in whose
mind the idolatrous and superstitious practices of Paganism seemed
ineradicable. The imaginary talismanic qualities of certain stones—
such as the carnelian, the garnet, and the onyx—had far more
connection with their popular use than any passion for ornament or
love of display. Many were regarded as specifics for various
ailments, others were efficacious in averting the malign influences of
sorcery. The engraving of gems conformed to the general principles
and characteristics of the arts as pursued by the Arabs. The process
of the cameo does not seem to have been adopted by them, but the
word itself, which does not exist in the vocabularies of antiquity,
would seem to be derived from the Arabic kamh, meaning “hump” or
“projection.” The name or monogram of the owner, a verse of the
Koran, a wreath of entwined foliage, a complex design of geometric
lines and curves, these were the sole objects upon which the talents
of the artist might be legitimately exercised. As in ancient Egypt,
when the name of Deity appeared in the inscription, it was placed on
the highest part of the stone; and this concession to celestial dignity
was observed even in the signets of the proudest of sovereigns.
Here also artistic skill was greatly hampered by the prohibition
relating to the representation of animal life, but no example of its
violation in this department of the arts is known to exist. The
engraved stones of the Spanish Mohammedan period are notable for
the sharpness of their lines, the harmony of their patterns, and the
grace and delicacy of their ornamentation. Signets formed the
greater number, but amulets constituted no small part of the
productions of the Moorish lapidary. The hand, symbolic of the five
cardinal precepts of Islam, and the heart, whose mystic influence is
still tacitly recognized even by Christian nations, were the favorite
forms in which objects of this kind were carved. These two were
considered as especially efficacious in counteracting the dreaded
power of the evil-eye. The inscription of the signet was not only a
mark of the individuality of the owner, but indicated his piety by its
formulas from the Koran, a love of ostentation too frequently a trait of
the Arab character, and hardly reconcilable with the constantly
inculcated spirit of religious humility. On the other hand, the more
devout Moslems were always accustomed to remove their rings
during the hour of prayer.
In none of the countries of Europe did the ceramic art attain such
excellence in materials, design, and execution as in Mohammedan
Spain. The conquest of Africa was the first signal for its
development, and from that time its progress was steady and rapid.
The fragments of porcelain dating from the khalifate, while showing
Byzantine features, reveal the germs of that perfection of form and
style which characterize the vases of the latest period, when the
products of the potteries of Valencia and Malaga were exported to
the utmost limits of the commercial world. Even the shattered
specimens of unglazed clay that have come down to us are
remarkable for the symmetry of their lines, and suggest the finest
models of Grecian and Roman origin. The influence of Persia—
whose colonists settled at Granada, and whose traditions exerted
such a marked effect upon the civilization of the Peninsula—is
plainly discernible in all the most elaborate efforts of the potter’s skill.
Besides the island of Majorca, whose towns were noted for their
ceramic wares, eight cities of Moorish Spain were engaged in this
lucrative and artistic branch of industry. Of these Malaga ranked first;
the extraordinary lustre by which her ceramics were distinguished
defied imitation. The peculiarity of this pottery consisted in the
brilliancy of the enamels, into which one or more metals were
introduced in such a manner as not to interfere with its transparency
and yet to retain all the beautiful reflection to be obtained from a
metallic surface. This unique appearance has been supposed by
some writers to have been produced by alloys of different kinds, laid
in a stratum of almost inconceivable thinness upon the bisque. By
this means a play of colors, iridescent in character, was obtained,
whose brilliancy or softness was dependent upon the predominance
of one or the other of the metals employed. The glaze was effected
by the application of silicates. In this method of decoration silver and
copper were most frequently used, along with those gorgeous colors
whose harmonious adaptation to ornament of every description was
so thoroughly understood by the Moorish artist. When the copper
was united with silver the latter diminished the intensity of lustre, and
produced the most superb effects. The combinations of different
metals exhibited an indefinite variety of beautiful hues, whose
exquisite delicacy could only be compared to the iris-like refraction of
mother-of-pearl. This singular process imparted the double quality of
transparency and distinctness of coloring in a very high degree, for,
examined at an angle and in a strong light, the sheen of the metallic
ingredients could be readily discerned, while at the same time the
tints which formed the base of the ornamentation appeared with
undiminished brilliancy through the shining and transparent enamel.
It is scarcely necessary to observe that the finishing operations of
these works of art demanded the greatest skill and experience.
The forms of the Hispano-Arab vases were suggestive of those of
the classic amphoræ. Largest above the centre, and tapering rapidly
towards the base, they were designed to be placed in metallic stands
or upon hollow wooden pedestals. Their curves were exceedingly
graceful, their decorations most profuse and elaborate. The handles
were large and massive; in some instances covered with
arabesques, in others representing hands grasping human eyes,—
talismans against demoniac influence. The designs of the latter were
often radically different in the same vase, yet they harmonized so
perfectly with the work as a whole that the closest inspection was
required to detect any want of resemblance. The colors most
affected by the Arab potter were blue, white, black, brown, and
yellow, and their dexterous and exquisite combinations afford
convincing proof of his remarkable proficiency.
While this industry—probably originally derived from Assyria and
Egypt—was improved by the Etruscans and brought to perfection by
Greece and Rome, it disappeared with the influx of the barbarians,
who trampled in the dust every token of European civilization.
Revived during the early years of the khalifate, its history is a record
of continued improvement.
The traditions of the Orient, the models of antiquity, the absorbing
passion of the Persian for flowers, were all adopted and perpetuated
in Mohammedan Spain. The beauties of the rose and the tulip were
celebrated alike by the poets of Andalusia and Cashmere; and the
national predilection for the blossom of the latter is recalled by its
appearance upon the magnificent and unique vase of the Alhambra.
The Moorish potters did not restrict themselves to the more brilliant
colors; they possessed also neutral tints, and, by the skilful blending
of both, succeeded in producing that perfect harmony of design and
tone which is perhaps the greatest charm of their artistic efforts.
They anticipated by three hundred years the methods rediscovered
by Palissy, which wrought such a revolution in the manufacture of
porcelain. The Moorish secret of metallic enamelling is now
completely lost, along with the pre-eminence once enjoyed by Spain
in every department of the ceramic art, and few specimens of pottery
of undoubted Arabic origin remain. The royal ordinances published
by Ferdinand IV. and Charles V., at the instance of the Inquisition,
prohibited the possession of articles of Moorish manufacture, and
were, no doubt, directly instrumental in causing the destruction of
innumerable objects of priceless value, whose discovery might result
in the confiscation of property and a lingering death by torture.
The mosaics which were such a prominent factor of the
architectural decoration of the Mohammedan period constituted a
notable branch of this important industry. The use of vitrified
materials in building is an art of high antiquity. It was familiar to India,
China, Assyria, long anterior to the dawn of historical narration.
Glazed tiles were used in the palaces of Chaldea twenty-three
hundred years before the Christian era. They covered the interior
walls of the pyramid of Sakkarah, the oldest in Egypt. The
fragmentary specimens found in the ruins of Assyrian cities are
identical in color with those preferred by the Arabs. The Greeks
employed them in the embellishment of the temple of Theseus. They
were adopted by the Arabs in the construction of the tomb of
Mohammed. Among the Moors of Spain, the process reached its
greatest development, and the permanent character which
distinguishes it has preserved for the admiration of modern times
some of the most original artistic effects wrought by the prolific
genius of Hispano-Arab civilization. Suggested by the Byzantine
mosaics, from which, however, it differed essentially in material and
design, it was never able to rival them in splendor, although in
durability it far surpassed those rich and brilliant productions of the
artists of Constantinople. The patterns of the latter were floral, those
of the former geometrical. In the one, the effects were produced by
colors seen through minute cubes of glass; in the other, by intricate
combinations of opaque pieces of porcelain.
Like all articles manufactured in the Moorish potteries of Spain,
mosaics were subjected to a long and tedious method of
preparation. They underwent a threefold baking process before and
after painting and when glazed. Metals were used in their
composition, and in rare instances the peculiar iridescent decoration
for which Malaga was renowned was employed. The evident
costliness of this must have prevented its adoption, except in
edifices of the greatest importance, for no example of it exists even
in the Alhambra.
The fabrication of leathern hangings—whose surface exhibited
the play of many hues brightened with gold and silver—was early
one of the specialties of Cordovan industry, from which city it derived
its name. Superb effects must have been produced by this curious
tapestry, embossed and gilded, stamped and embroidered with
graceful arabesques, and suspended between rich and capricious
cornices of stucco and dadoes blazing with a score of colors in
mosaic. These elegant hangings find no counterpart in modern
decorative art save perhaps in the finest binding of a book.
Goatskins formed the material, but the process by which they were
prepared and ornamented passed away from the Peninsula with the
expulsion of the Moriscoes, and its memory alone remains in the
leather of Morocco, the most valuable known to commerce.
In the perfection of their textile fabrics, the Spanish Moors
demonstrated their infinite superiority to all contemporaneous
nations. In other kingdoms of Europe, silk was reserved for the use
of royalty. Constantinople alone, by reason of its relations with the
Orient, was able to provide a limited supply of this precious material.
From Sicily the manufacture had been introduced into Spain, and, as
already mentioned, was the most lucrative industry of Granada in the
days of its greatest prosperity. After the eleventh century, in both
those countries all classes used this fabric, elsewhere regarded as
so valuable; the garments of men and women of the middle class of
Granada were made of it, as were also the uniforms of the royal
guards of Norman Palermo. The lightness and strength of these silks
were remarkable, and their beautiful ornamentation displayed to the
utmost the finished efforts of the designer and the artisan. The great
Moslem banner captured at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa and
preserved in the Abbey of Las Huelgas near Burgos is an elegant
example of the weaver’s art. Upon the ground of crimson silk appear
inscriptions, medallions, and interlacing curves, interwoven in blue,
white, green, and yellow. The harmonious arrangement of these
colors denotes the exercise of the greatest taste and dexterity.
Throughout the maze of graceful designs the name of God appears
thousands of times, emblazoned in gold. In the patterns of the cloaks
and robes of royal personages, mingled with brilliantly tinted
arabesques, rich floral embroidery, and formulas from the Koran,
appeared portraits of the owners, in the colors of nature, depicted
with consummate skill. The tiraz, or tunic of Hischem II., preserved in
the Museum of the Academy of History at Madrid, is the only
specimen of this branch of the textile fabrics for which the khalifate of
Spain was so celebrated now to be found in the world.
Modern science with all its improvements has never been able to
equal in strength and delicacy of texture the products of the Moorish
looms of the Peninsula. The extraordinary permanence of the dyes
employed in these fabrics constitutes one of their best established
claims to superior excellence. Of the few examples which have
survived the revolutions of ages, little, if any, diminution of brilliancy
in color is discernible. In this department of industry, also, Asiatic
influence, transmitted successively through Byzantine and Sicilian
channels, was disclosed in the manufactures of Mohammedan
Spain, a country whose life and traditions have bequeathed to our
times so many impressive reminiscences of the luxurious Orient. In
numerous other fields of industry was the artistic and inventive spirit
of the Hispano-Arab artisan developed,—in damascened treasure-
chests of iron and steel, the complicated structure of whose locks is
the wonder of the mechanic of to-day; in furniture, inlaid with
precious and aromatic woods, and embellished with ebony, tortoise-
shell, and pearl; in gem-incrusted caskets of ivory and onyx which
Christian superstition has not deemed unworthy to enshrine the
relics of her saints; in manuscripts, upon whose bindings fortunes
were lavished, embossed with jewels, glittering with silver, lapis-
lazuli, malachite, and gold.
The art of calligraphy, so greatly appreciated by the Arabs that it
was styled The Golden Profession, and in which the Spanish
Moslems acquired extraordinary proficiency, was developed, under
the Khalifates of both the East and West, to a condition of almost
absolute perfection. Before the invention of paper, their parchments
exhibited a luxury which far surpassed that of the Byzantines, until
that time the most renowned calligraphists in the world. The skins
they used had a ground of gold or silver or were dyed of various
colors,—scarlet, green, purple, blue, and black; their lustre was so
great that they reflected light like the polished surface of a mirror.
Their inks were also of many kinds; their brilliancy and durability
exceeded those of any known to modern manufacture; the writing in
distinctness, accuracy of alignment, and elegance—
accomplishments in which the Mussulmans of Spain, who wrote a
peculiarly graceful hand, excelled all the other nations of Islam—
rivalled the most finished labors of the compositor; in epistles and
documents destined for royalty the characters were written in liquid
gold. The manuscripts were enriched with illuminations, an art which,
carried into France and Italy, was subsequently borrowed by the
mediæval monks, whose missals represent the highest, and, indeed,
almost the sole, artistic manifestations of their time. The designs of
the Arabs were not only geometric, floral, and grotesque, they
included medallion portraits and representations of men and animals
delineated with astonishing skill. These products of Moorish talent
and ingenuity have, so far as is known at present, entirely perished;
their curiously wrought borders, without the mysterious and
unintelligible script which was supposed to contain formulas for the
invocation of evil spirits, were alone sufficient to proscribe them.
The knowledge of the various mechanical processes referred to in
this chapter—methods by which the artistic conceptions of Arabic
genius were endowed with form and stability—has absolutely
vanished. Not only is this the fact, but even all tangible evidences,
upon whose existence was dependent the reputation for proverbial
dexterity enjoyed by the Moorish artisan, have been destroyed, and
we are forced to rely for their enumeration and character upon the
vague and imperfect accounts of ill-informed and often unfriendly
historians. In the eyes of the fanatic Castilian, everything derived
from Moslem sources was necessarily tainted with heresy. The
articles of luxury displayed in such profusion by the vanquished were
indisputable proofs of mental superiority, and, as such, offensive to
his pride. He denounced the splendidly bound and embossed
volumes of the libraries as magic scrolls, whose contents should be
regarded by good Christians with every demonstration of aversion
and contempt. The mysterious and unfamiliar characters of the
Arabic alphabet assumed in his superstitious eyes the symbols of
witchcraft, sorcery, and incantation. He hastened to prohibit the use
or preservation of the souvenirs of Moslem culture and power by
sumptuary laws, whose provisions were enforced by every resource
of original and ingenious cruelty. In the estimation of the clergy,
Mohammedanism, blasphemy, and scientific knowledge were, to all
intents and purposes, synonymous terms. Without taste to admire or
capacity to emulate the achievements of Arabian skill, alike
inestimable for their variety and excellence, they could at least
annihilate the material evidences of that civilization whose
monuments were at once an open challenge and a secret reproach.
How thoroughly this congenial task was performed has been
described in these pages. No people mentioned in history who rose
to eminence in the various arts that contribute to national glory or
domestic happiness have left behind them so few memorials upon
which their title to superiority can be founded. But while the
architectural remains have been defaced and destroyed, the libraries
abandoned to the flames, the mechanical processes that gave to the
world artistic results unrivalled in that age and unapproached in this,
have been neglected and forgotten, priceless treasures, representing
years of industry, broken to pieces for the sake of the materials of
which they were composed, tens of thousands of skilful artisans
exiled, plundered, murdered, there still remained in the public mind
the impression insensibly produced by contact with a race of
superior attainments, which, in its turn, was destined to form the
germ of a new and far more widely extended civilization.
Africa, despite its innate barbarism, exercised some influence on
the arts in Spain. As the Moslem conquest was planned in that
country, so it subsequently became the avenue by which
architectural and artistic ideas were transmitted to the people of the
Peninsula, many of whom were natives of its soil. By the latter, still
under the spell of Ommeyade culture and traditions, the crude,
robust, and semi-barbaric conceptions of Mauritania were, however,
soon refined and improved beyond recognition. The door of the
Mosque of the Aljaferia at Saragossa, and an arch in the Cathedral
of Tarragona, are almost the only remaining examples of the
primitive African style. The Almohade princes made a more distinct
and permanent impression on architecture than any sovereigns who
had preceded them. They introduced many novel and striking
features in exterior mural ornamentation. They were the first to make
use of the raised terra-cotta work, the graceful festoons, the glazed
bricks of many colors, which render the Giralda of Seville the most
elaborate and majestic tower ever reared by the hand of an architect.
While the largest and most superb, this magnificent minaret had yet
many counterparts, in all but size, throughout the provinces of
Moorish Spain. Those attached to the mosques of Toledo, Valencia,
and Almeria were but little inferior to it in elegance. Their
prominence, and the uses to which they were destined, were
sufficient to insure their early demolition. The modified African style
differed from that of the khalifate in that it was more florid than
graceful, and exhibited a barbaric love of pomp rather than an
inclination to observe the principles of good taste and just
architectural proportion.
The artistic relics of a people are the surest criterion of its manual
dexterity, its material progress, its intellectual culture. The paucity of
souvenirs relating to the Hispano-Arab period has in certain quarters,
as already mentioned, raised serious doubts as to the claim of that
race to mediæval supremacy.
The same skepticism as to the influence of the literary and
philosophical principles adopted and promulgated by the
Mohammedans of Spain prevailed for centuries. After a closer
acquaintance with the educational facilities they possessed, the
scientific methods they employed, the intimate mercantile relations
they established with every state accessible to commerce, the extent
of that influence becomes strikingly apparent. Even among the
descendants of the conqueror, bound by faith and tradition to eternal
hostility, it was, and is still, manifested in a thousand forms. There is
to-day in the Spaniard far more of the romantic and artistic
temperament of the Saracen, whose blood is a reproach, than of the
sullen ferocity of the Goth, whose lineage is the glory of Castilian
ancestry. Reminiscences of that domination which seven centuries of
warfare were required to overthrow survive in the forms and
ornamentation of garments; in the terms, the construction and the
pronunciation of language; in the crude imitation of mosaic effects; in
the florid sculpture of magnificent cathedrals. In other countries of
Southern Europe, their traces, while not so marked or general, are
none the less distinguishable; Moorish customs and traditions,
eminently congenial to the national disposition of Gaul and Latin,
reacted strongly upon the literary and social life of France and Italy.
In the latter country the glowing artistic conceptions of the Arab
speedily succumbed to the omnipresent examples of classic genius;
in France they were somewhat more persistent; in both countries
they exercised no unimportant influence in the suppression of
barbarism, in the promotion of efforts that tend to the material
improvement of society, in the cultivation of politeness, in the revival
of letters.
 CHAPTER XXX
AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, AND COMMERCE OF THE
EUROPEAN MOSLEMS. THEIR MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND
AMUSEMENTS

750–1609

Disappearance of the Memorials of Arab Civilization—Agricultural

System of the Spanish Moors—Its Wonderful Perfection—
Irrigating Apparatus—The Tribunal of the Waters—The Works of
Ibn-al-Awam—Universal Cultivation of the Soil—Mineral
Resources of the Peninsula—Manufactures—The Great Moslem
Emporiums of the Mediterranean—Commerce—Its Extensive
Ramifications—Articles of Traffic—Commercial Prosperity of
Sicily—The Magnetic Needle—Gunpowder and Artillery—War—
Coinage—Characteristics of the Khalifs—Demoralization of the
People—The Bath—General Prevalence of Superstition—Social
Life of the Moslems of Europe—Privileges of Women—Polygamy
and Morals—Slavery—Amusements—The Game of Chess—
Other Pastimes—Dances—Music—Equestrian Sports—The Bull-
Fight—The Tilt of Reeds—The Course of the Rings—Hawking—
Peculiarities of Hispano-Arab Civilization—The Crusades—Their
Effect on Christendom—Unrivalled Achievements of the Moors in
Europe—Conclusion.
In all the vast domain of historical inquiry there is probably no
subject which has been treated with such studied neglect, with such
flagrant injustice, as the civilization of the Arabs in the Spanish
Peninsula. Its story has been written in the majority of instances by
the implacable enemies of those who founded and promoted it.
Theological hatred has lent its potent aid to the prejudice of race and
the envy arising from conscious inferiority to deny or belittle its
achievements. The greatest of Moorish princes have been
represented by zealous but malignant churchmen as barbarians,
persecutors, idolaters. The accumulated wisdom and labor of
centuries manifested in rare copies of the literary treasures of
antiquity, chronicles descriptive of epochs now veiled in hopeless
obscurity, elegant productions of the most accomplished poets of
Cordova and Seville, innumerable treatises of mathematical and
physical science, have been consigned to the flames by ignorant
prelates, who regarded these precious works as copies of the Koran
or works on magic and necromancy. Others, which the negligence of
clerical enmity permitted to escape for the time, were subsequently
ruined by damp, by insects, by accidental conflagration. The
carelessness of inappreciative governments, aided by the stupidity of
the masses and the innate levelling tendencies of the uneducated,
the invasions of foreign armies and the vicissitudes of revolution,
have wrought the partial or complete destruction of many of the
noblest monuments of architectural genius that ever illustrated the
history of any people. The defiled ruins of mosque and palace, the
mutilated fragments of products of the industrial arts whose form and
materials indicate the highest degree of mechanical knowledge and
classical culture, the remains of that wonderful system of irrigation,
whose perfection was the secret of Moorish prosperity and opulence,
constitute almost all the remaining data by whose aid we may
attempt to picture the splendors and the glory of the mighty Khalifate
of the West. No just idea of the greatness and power of the
Peninsula under the Ommeyade sovereigns can be formed from the
present condition of even those states whose inhabitants in physical
aspect, mental disposition, manners, habits, and industry have
preserved, in a striking degree, the characteristics of their
Mohammedan progenitors.
It has been happily remarked that “facts are the mere dross of
history.” The rise and fall of dynasties, the evolutions of armies, the
recital of battles, sieges, and skirmishes, the enumeration of captives
and booty, the exultation of the victor, the distress of the vanquished,
the crimes and excesses engendered by sedition, have, it is true, in
all periods of the world, been considered the most important, often
the only, subjects worthy of historical narration. These, however, are
but the manifestations of conditions upon which are dependent all
that is valuable and all that is instructive in the noble science which
depicts the occurrences of past ages. The true interest and utility of
that science, the benefits to be derived from the lessons it teaches,
the warnings pronounced by the triumphs or the disgrace of its
heroes, the application of principles by which universal prosperity
may be advanced and national disaster diminished or wholly
averted, are not usually apparent to the superficial and careless
observer. They are to be laboriously traced in the analysis of the
incentives of human actions; in the gradual development of schemes
of ambition; in the contention of religious sects for political
supremacy; in the exhibition of the prejudices, the foibles, the
superstitions of mankind; in the incessant mutations of social life; in
the delineation of manners. No event is too trivial, no custom too
unimportant for notice, which, by even its most remote
consequences, may serve to disclose the motives of a government
or illustrate the policy of a nation. The prevalence of certain habits,
the existence of certain inclinations are often of more weight in
determining the career of a people than the fortunate issue of a
campaign or the disastrous result of a revolution. It is in the chronicle
of prosaic, every-day existence that we must search for the origin of
momentous events, that we must study the philosophy of history.
One great cause of the phenomenally rapid establishment of
Islam was polygamy, which absolutely confiscated the means of
racial propagation. Mohammed, like Moses and all other ancient
lawgivers, recognized and inculcated the supreme importance of the
increase of mankind,—a principle on which was founded Phallic
Worship as well as the widely diffused practice of Communal
Marriage. The vast power of its empire was dependent upon the
culture of the soil and the marketing of the products of labor, in which
no people were more successful than the Arabs. Its decline is
attributable to the many inherent faults of its political and religious
organization; to the uncertain course of royal succession; to the
implacable spirit of tribal enmity which survived and dominated every
other feeling; to the inevitable want of harmonious co-operation
existing between the numerous and conflicting elements
representing a score of nations governed by force; to the
treasonable schemes of zealots, envious of the consideration
extended to literary merit; to the social corruption incident to a
society abandoned to boundless prodigality, vice, and luxury.
 The agricultural system of the Spanish Mohammedans, who
understood the soil and the resources of their country better than
any nation that has ever inhabited it, was the most complex, the
most scientific, the most perfect, ever devised by the ingenuity of
man. Its principles were derived from the extreme Orient, from the
plains of Mesopotamia, and from the valley of the Nile,—those
gardens of the ancient world where, centuries before the dawn of
authentic history, the cultivation of the earth had been carried to a
state of extraordinary excellence. To the knowledge thus
appropriated were added the results obtained from investigation and
experiment; from the introduction of foreign plants; from the adoption
of fertilizing substances; from close and intelligent observation of the
effects of geographical distribution and climatic influence.
The statesmanlike policy pursued by the khalifs was productive of
incalculable advantage to every branch of agriculture. As previously
stated, accomplished botanists, provided with unlimited funds, were
regularly despatched to the most fertile regions of the East,—to
Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hindustan,—under instructions to collect seeds
of useful plants and fruits for experimental cultivation in the royal
demesnes. There is scarcely a country in the temperate zone to-day
which has attained to even a moderate degree of civilization, whose
inhabitants are not the beneficiaries of this zeal for agricultural
improvement constantly manifested by the sovereigns of Moorish
Spain, nor one, unhappily, which is willing to even reluctantly
concede to those entitled to the gratitude of nations credit for that
progressive spirit which has contributed so essentially to the physical
well-being and advancement of mankind.
The divine origin assigned to agriculture by Arabic as well as by
Persian tradition had almost as much to do with its development as
the imperative necessity which demanded its practice. The rural
economy of every people was diligently explored for advantageous
suggestions by the Moors of the Peninsula. Their tastes, although
the pursuits of their ancestors were pastoral and manual labor of
every description is distasteful to a nomadic and predatory race,
seemed to adapt themselves at once to the circumstances of their
new environment. Their progress in that science is not less striking
than the rapid succession of their military triumphs. No nation in so
short a period achieved such extensive and important conquests. No
people so quietly abandoned the excitements resulting from the
profession of arms and embraced the toils of a sedentary life as the
Arabs of the Peninsula. No sooner did they change their mode of
existence than they began to excel in the new pursuits to which they
devoted themselves. Many inducements were afforded by the
cultivation of the soil, whose results, despite its hardships, seemed
to more than counterbalance the benefits to be derived from life in
large communities. The Koran declared it to be especially
meritorious. The air of the country, like the atmosphere of the Desert,
seemed congenial to independence. The vast estates acquired by
the followers of Musa, their wealth, and the social superiority which
they assumed, did much to incite others to emulate their example. In
villages and on plantations larger harems could be maintained, and
more numerous families could be reared than in cities,—
considerations of great weight in the mind of the luxurious and
ambitious Moslem. Every encouragement was afforded by a
succession of wise and generous rulers to those who embraced an
agricultural life. A considerable portion of the country which had
never been subjected to tillage because of its aridity became
suddenly metamorphosed, as if by the wand of an enchanter. Barren
valleys were transferred into flourishing orchards of olives, oranges,
figs, and pomegranates. Rocky slopes were covered with verdant
terraces. In districts where, according to ancient tradition, no water
had ever been seen, now flowed noisy rivulets and broad canals.
Where marshes existed, the rich lands they concealed were drained,
reclaimed, and placed under thorough cultivation. On all sides were
visible the works of the hydraulic engineer,—which supplied the
necessary moisture to the fields by every device then known to
human skill,—the reservoir, the well, the sluice, the tunnel, the
siphon, the aqueduct. The ingenuity of the Moors improved methods
of terrestrial culture, for centuries regarded as perfect by many highly
civilized nations. They adopted and extended the irrigating system of
Egypt. They appropriated the Persian wheel, which, with the rows of
jars on its periphery and propelled by cattle, served as a pump; or,
driven by the rapid current of streams, distributed the waters of the
latter through lands of higher level. Some of these wheels were very
large, not infrequently attaining a diameter of seventy feet; one at
Toledo was ninety cubits high. Their number was immense; within an
area of a few square leagues five hundred might often be counted.
Fields were surveyed and grades ascertained by means of the
astrolabe. The public works constructed for irrigating purposes were
on a gigantic scale. The artificial basin near Alicante, elliptical in
shape, is three miles in circumference and fifty feet deep; the dam at
Elche is two hundred and sixty-four feet long, fifty-two feet high, and
a hundred and fifty feet wide at the bottom; that over the Segura,
near Murcia, is seven hundred and sixty feet long and thirty-six feet
in height. The aqueduct at Manesis, in Valencia, is seven hundred
and twenty feet long, and is supported by twenty-eight arches. The
principle of the siphon, familiar to the Arabs eight hundred years
before it was known in France, was utilized to a remarkable degree
in the Moorish hydraulic system. The length of the curve in the great
siphon at Almanzora is five hundred and seven feet; the diameter of
the latter is six feet, and it passes ninety feet under the bed of a
mountain stream. The subterranean aqueduct at Maravilla, which
waters the plain of Urgel, is a mile long and thirty feet in diameter;
that of Crevillente, north of Orihuela, is fifty-five hundred and sixty-
five feet long and thirty-six feet in diameter. All of these underground
conduits are cut through the solid rock. The masonry of the
reservoirs is of the finest description, and the cement made use of
has become harder than stone itself. Contingencies are provided for
with such skill and foresight that no overflow occurs, and no damage
ever results, even in time of the greatest inundations. The excellence
of construction which characterizes these massive works of Arab
engineering genius is demonstrated by the fact that they have
needed practically no repairs in a thousand years.
As was necessary under the conditions which prevailed in a
region where water was so valuable, the greatest care was
exercised in its apportionment and distribution. The irrigating system
of the khalifate was governed by a peculiar code of laws, perfect
familiarity with whose provisions was only to be obtained by a life-
long experience. The strictest economy was enforced. All waste was
forbidden. The water conducted from one canal to another was used