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?