Southern History Remixed

How popular music reveals deep histories of racial tensions
in southern culture  



Southern History Remixed
spotlights the key role of popular music in the shaping of the United States South
from the late nineteenth century to the era of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1940s,
’50s, and ’60s. While musical activities are often sidelined in historical
narratives of the region, Michael Bertrand shows that they can reveal much about
social history and culture change as he connects the rise of rock ‘n’ roll to
the civil rights movement for racial equality.

In this book, Bertrand traces a long-term
culture war in which white southerners struggled over the region’s cultural
complexion with music serving as an engine that both sustained and challenged
white supremacy. He shows how rock ‘n’ roll emerged as a working-class genre with
biracial sources that stoked white racial anxieties and engaged the region’s
color and culture lines. This book discusses the conflict over southern identity
that played out in responses to jazz, barn dance radio, Pentecostal and gospel
music, Black radio programming, and rhythm and blues, concluding with a close
look at the popularity of Elvis Presley within a racially segregated society.

Southern
History Remixed suggests that both Black and white
southerners have used music as a tool to resist or negotiate a rigid regional hierarchy. Urging
readers and scholars to take the study of popular music seriously, Bertrand
argues that what occurs in the music world affects and reflects what happens in
politics and history.



A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and
Randall M. Miller