Listening for Blackness — exhibit and writing by Addison Cox

In the mid-1800s, the United States was entering an era of intense political, economic, and social flux. With the end of the Civil War and the legal end of slavery in 1865, many questions surrounding political, cultural, and racial identity came to the forefront of American consciousness. One of the primary questions was “how does one ‘tell’ if another individual is Black?”

Of course, the primary indication of race, especially during this time period, hinged on the visual perception. Physical attributes such as dark, or darker, skin were easy markers of who was Black, and other features were imbued with the ability to racialize: the shape of the head, eyes, or nose; hair texture; and other markers became firmly embedded in a psuedo-scientific project to separate Blackness and whiteness as racial categories. However, at this same moment, a keen interest grew in determining other modes of racialization that existed beyond physical differences.

This project focuses primarily on the growing racialization of sound: speech, music, and other sonic projections became moments of potential race-ing. Thus, more questions entered into play concerning the determination of race, namely “what does it mean to ‘sound’ Black?’

In the literary sphere — where this project is primarily situated and focused — many attempts to answer these questions took on fascinating shapes that highlight the paradoxes, dangers, and possible moments of liberation concerning the codification of either Blackness or whiteness as fixed racial identities. These attempts also expose the complexities that come with representing sound or music through an inherently silent medium (that of the written word). Efforts from both Black and white authors centered on attempts to carve out a unique place in the American literary soundscape for the sound of Blackness or, what I term, sonic Blackness.

About sonic Blackness

Sonic Blackness is what is created when authors, artists, and musicians attempt to affirm and/or codify certain sounds, types of music, and songs as “sounding” Black or as existing as sonic representations of Blackness. This includes, then, not just music by Black artists, authors, and musicians, but also music about or that uses Blackness as a source for musical creation.

I am interested in the ways in which writers attempt to capture sonic Blackness — through dialect writing, phonetic spelling, the inclusion of song lyrics and tunes, or descriptions of vocal qualities — and, conversely, the ways in which creators use the irrepresentability of sonic Blackness and draw attention to its absence. The deployment of this conceptualization is in no way meant to affirm or perpetuate racist caricatures of Blackness, but instead to theorize and map a literary soundscape of Blackness by attending to the sounds that permeate and evade the imaginative sonic plains of the literary world. More than this, the focus on aural qualities of Black sound is an attempt to carefully draw out new considerations of how Blackness is constructed within 19th-century American musical texts.

About the exhibit materials

The works assembled here represent the three primary ways that I have seen sonic Blackness expressed or discussed, particularly within the late 1800s and early 1900s. Each book stands as a musical text with its own process of defining Black sound and music that emerges from a unique viewpoint. On the right and left of each musical text are two pieces of sheet music that encapsulate or respond to the ideas surrounding sonic Blackness as outlined within them.

Within this wide range of music and its varying representations of the relationship between sonic Blackness, music, and whiteness, we can see the potential for sonic Blackness to serve as both a violent demonstration of racism — as it does within minstrel music — as well as a source of community, liberation, and unity — as it does with the affirmation and celebration of spirituals. This display attempts to highlight the complexity and nuance of sonic Blackness as a form of racialization that is heavily encoded within both the American literary landscape and music landscape.

Addison Cox is a Phillips Fellow, 2024-25, for the Givens Collection of African American Literature and Life.

Exhibit details

What: Listening for Blackness in the Archie Givens Collection of African American Literature
Where: This display exhibit is located in the vitrine at the entrance to the Givens Collection, Elmer L. Andersen Library, room 213
When: Spring 2025
Hours: Open during library hours (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday; and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday)