Tastes and trends are complicated: some music is celebrated and studied, while other music is ignored. Even when the reasons seem obvious, they always involve a mix of factors—power, money, race, gender, ability, ambition, desire—and in hindsight often seem misguided, unfair or ridiculous.
Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton is remembered in jazz history as a foundational composer and musician, a reputation established by scholars more than half a century ago. How does Morton’s story change if we look at him through a different filter, as an early figure in the history of rap? Pursuing that question leads in surprising directions, back to eighteenth-century Scotland, and solves a longtime mystery about his theme song and nickname. It also leads to broader questions about why some of his most historically significant recordings were suppressed until the 1980s, and what else was obscured or destroyed in that process.
Those questions in turn lead to what we are suppressing, misunderstanding, or ignoring in the present—for example, the fact that despite Katy Perry’s extraordinary worldwide popularity, many professors of popular music seem comfortable dismissing her with the scholarly equivalent of “yuck.” Exploring and querying the forbidden is tricky, but in a time of fierce battles on and off campus about censorship, shaming, cultural appropriation and political correctness, it is particularly relevant to our work and in our lives.
ELIJAH WALD is a musician and writer whose books include Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues; How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: A History of American Popular Music among others. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology and sociolinguistics and his multiple awards include a 2002 Grammy.