AMS Lecture Series: 'Raw Power' and 'Pure Rock and Roll': Musicality and Race in Early American Punk
The American Musicological Society and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame collaborate on a lecture series that brings scholarly work to a broader audience and showcases the musicological work of the top scholars in the field.
Our spring lecture will feature presentations by a musicologist:
Evan Rapport (The New School), “'Raw Power' and 'Pure Rock and Roll': Musicality and Race in Early American Punk”
About the Program
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, American punk developed as a distinct musical style—one that expressed many of the transformations American society was undergoing at the time. Raw and direct, punk presented an unvarnished view of racial tensions, the growth of American suburbia, and the changing stakes of what it meant to express “whiteness” and “blackness” in music. Join Evan Rapport as he explores some of the main currents that led to the formation of the punk style, from transformations to blues resources (and the obscuring of those blues connections) to the refashioning of musical styles associated with the late 1950s and early 1960s meant to be heard in contrast to the blues, such as early rock and roll, doo-wop, and “girl groups.” Rapport will discuss the often misunderstood but crucial role of American experimental rock, including the music of Ohio's underground rock scenes- establishing connections between punk and many complex issues of race in the US.
The American Musicological Society and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in Cleveland, Ohio, collaborate on a lecture series that brings scholarly work to a broader audience and showcases the musicological work of the top scholars in the field. The AMS / Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Lectures provide a public forum that brings music research to a broader audience.
About the Presenter
Evan Rapport is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at The New School. He is the author of Damaged: Musicality and Race in Early American Punk (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) and Greeted with Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York (Oxford University Press, 2014), and he is currently writing a book about soprano saxophonist and composer Steve Lacy. He is also a saxophonist and composer, and his chamber opera A Dying Person (A Goyses), written with librettist Daniel London, premiered at New York’s Center for Jewish History earlier this year.
