Interpreting the African-American Musical Past: A Dialogue

Samuel A. Floyd Jr. and Ronald Radano

The following dialogue between Samuel Floyd and Ronald Radano developed from a series of written exchanges and conversations over the course of the summer of 2008. It was prompted by Floyd's essay "Black Music and Writing Black Music History: American Music and Narrative Strategies," which appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Black Music Research Journal (guest edited by Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr.), and its characterization of Radano's book Lying Up a Nation: Race and Black Music (2003). What ensued became for both scholars a remarkable intellectual journey that they have offered to share with BMRJ readers. Floyd and Radano have rearranged their written communications—which appear here largely verbatim—in order to fit a series of key topics that emerged out of the conversation and have added additional information to give the dialogue greater formal coherence.