Alive in the Sound Black Music as Counterhistory

"Uncovering striking and novel parallels across various forms of African American music while challenging conventional formulations of identity and historical periodization, Ronald Radano upends settled wisdom around African American music and presents a new historical and critical model for its development." - George E. Lewis, author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music

"Ronald Radano's ambitious, well-researched book challenges some assumptions of the distinctness of Black music in the United States. Through careful scholarship and compelling argument, Radano demonstrates that the critical production of Black music as distinct from other US music produces notions of US culture, and produces the frameworks through which notions of music-in-general develop. Alive in the Sound is a significant achievement and a major book." - Anthony Reed, author of Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production