Performing Rights: Race, Intellectual Property, and the U.S. Recording Industry

This course explores the links between U.S. recording industry histories, intellectual property law, and evolving ideas about cultural and economic value in Black music. Subtopics will include unfair contracts in the 1920s "race records" industry; copyright and jazz standards; white imitation of 1950s rhythm and blues performance; sampling lawsuits during hip-hop's Golden Age; and current debates about AI, race, and the future of musical creativity. In addition to music-historical texts, our readings will include selected legal documents, which students will learn to analyze for their cultural and rhetorical significance. Time permitting, we will also visit Stanford's Archive of Recorded Sound. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement at 4 units only.