12/04/2014
On Wednesday, December 10 , 2014 the Institute of Jazz Studies will present a Research Roundtable entitled: "I Been to Hear the Highest Kind of Opera Grand": Blues, "Good Music," and the Performance of Race on Record, 1920-1921 by Elizabeth Surles.
In the early twentieth century, record companies frequently used the designation "good music" as a catch-all category to describe serious art music selections, and the commercial and cultural value afforded to "good music" becomes audible on early vocal blues records made between 1920 and 1921 by performers including Mamie Smith, Lucille Hegamin, Mary Stafford, Lillyn Brown, Daisy Martin, Kate Crippen, and Ethel Waters. This presentation explores the stylistic melange on the earliest records by African American female blues vocalists in an attempt to understand better the dynamics of performative racial identity and musical expression at the start of an important era, when African Americans entered the music industry with increasing frequency.
Elizabeth Surles started as Archivist at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University-Newark in January 2014 . Prior to joining the Institute, she was Digitization Archivist and then Library Director at the American Alpine Club Library in Golden, Colorado. She formerly worked as a Graduate Assistant at the Sousa Archives and Office of Collections at the University of Illinois, where she earned master's degrees in musicology and library and information science and a certificate in special collections. Before her time in Illinois, Elizabeth served as the Starr-Gennett Foundation's Project Coordinator in Richmond, Indiana, where she worked to promote the history of Gennett Records.
The Research Roundtable runs from 7 to 9 PM in the Dana Room of John Cotton Dana Library, 4th floor, Rutgers University-Newark. FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. For directions: http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/maps/
