[Ads-l] Still Further Antedating of "Race Music"

[Shapiro, Fred]

race music (OED 1935)

1890 Lafcadio Hearn Two Years in the French West Indies 425 (Google Books)

My friend, Henry Edward Krehbiel, the musical lecturer and critic, — at once historian and folklorist in the study of race-music.

NOTE: I am beginning to think that there were two discontinuous, perhaps coincidental meanings of "race music": (1) synonym for folk-music from around the world; (2) specific term for African American music, eventually becoming a commercial term similar to "rhythm and blues."

Fred Shapiro


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