In this talk, I examine how barbershop quartet singing functioned as a key battleground for debates over civil rights and racial segregation during the long civil rights era. Focusing on the international fraternal organization, the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA) from its founding in 1938 to its desegregation in 1963, I recount the largely unknown and undocumented segregationist period of American barbershop music. Barbershop served as a unique site for civil rights discourses for several reasons: its status as a uniquely American art form (that, consequently, had to uphold American values and freedoms), its prominent use of the metaphor of “harmony” (musical, racial, and societal), and its reach across virtually all social strata the U.S. and Canada during the mid-twentieth century. Drawing upon previously unexamined archival and personal documents, this I offer a rare behind-the-scenes look at how fraternal organizations discussed matters of racial segregation behind closed doors. In doing so, I unearth the stories and voices of several Black barbershoppers who mobilized their presence as political action, which ultimately led to SPEBSQSA’s desegregation. What emerges is a history of music, race, and civil rights that sheds light both on purposefully buried Jim Crow–era racism and the agency of Black amateur musicians who shaped the history of U.S. civil rights activism and reform.

As part of the Columbia Department of Music’s Colloquium Series.

https://music.columbia.edu/events/colloquium-clifton-boyd-nyu-listening-for-unsung-heroes-black-life-during-barbershops

Abstract: In this talk, I will trace the history of racial segregation in the Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS) from its founding in 1938 to its reluctant integration in 1963. At the heart of this project is a rich archive of letters and administrative documents that illustrate with remarkable candidness white barbershoppers' disdain for Black Americans and their commitment to combating the anti-segregationist politics of the civil rights movement. This aversion to singing and fraternizing with Black Americans is particularly ironic given their essential role in developing barbershop harmony at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet, the voices of several Black barbershoppers echo faintly within the archive, the moments of their exclusion marked but their musical and social lives otherwise absent. How might the history of racial segregation be retold from the perspective of those who were subjected to this anti-Blackness and disrupted the Society's exclusionary status quo? By supplementing the BHS's print archive with oral history interviews conducted with living descendants of the Black barbershoppers, I aim to bring these musicians' voices and experiences to the fore and to highlight their agency as actors in this history of institutional reform. This work redresses the historiographical harm done by white barbershoppers who purposefully buried the BHS's history of anti-Blackness and of Black barbershoppers, and lays much of the historical groundwork for my book project on how anti-Blackness and racial politics shaped the music-theoretical discourse of the barbershop community.

A 45-minute lecture by Philip Ewell (Hunter College, CUNY), followed by a 45-minute discussion panel featuring myself, Dwight Andrews (Emory University), and Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk (Emory University). (links to event description and to register)

Abstract: In certain languages the words for “history” and “story” are the same, as in French (histoire) or Russian (история). There are of course differences. “History” usually implies an accurate account of past events, a summary of what happened over a period a time, while “story” usually refers to events that may or may not accurately reflect on the past, embellished as necessary by the “storyteller.” But in this distinction race is rarely mentioned. Anyone, irrespective of race, can write histories or tell stories, yet with remarkable consistency in the academic study of music in the U.S., our histories have been written by white persons, usually men, passing from generation to generation with little divergence from the main narratives of “great works” of the “western canon.” And when a nonwhite voice challenges the white narrative, efforts to stifle that voice are swift and sever, and all too often whiteness will accuse nonwhiteness of “storytelling,” a common critique of Critical Race Theory these days. In short, white persons write histories, while nonwhite persons tell stories. In this talk I’ll expand on music’s histories and stories, and explain why, in fact, the common American music curriculum is still quite segregated along racial lines, like much of the country writ large, mostly because of the distinction between history and story. I’ll then suggest that we don’t need to “decolonize” the music curriculum—that’s too vague—but, rather, that we need to desegregate it and foreground race in our discussions so that all racial musics, and musical races, have a seat at the table and a voice in the conversation.

As part of Princeton University’s Musicology Colloquium Series.

Link for more information (free; Zoom link available upon request)

Abstract: In this talk, I examine how music theory has historically been instrumentalized within the Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS) to influence and affirm the Society’s discriminatory sociopolitical values. From the BHS’s founding in 1938 to its reluctant racial integration in 1963, the Society maintained an intense segregation policy that was particularly focused on the exclusion of Black American men. It was no coincidence, I argue, that language associated with segregation, miscegenation, and race science (“tainted” “pure,” “cross-breeds,” etc.) was also found in the pages of barbershop arranging manuals and other style treatises published in the mid-twentieth century. To what extent was the Society’s slogan “keep it barbershop” a euphemism for “keep it white”? This question also extends to gender: the BHS remained a fraternal, all-male society until as recently as 2018, when the Society decided to open membership to women as part of its “Everyone in Harmony” diversity initiative. As the BHS moves toward its newfound strategic vision, how must the Society adapt the barbershop style’s musical aesthetics to disavow the racist and sexist ideologies that undergird American barbershop culture?