Learning Objective
Deepening the knowledge of black music and relevant literature. Reading a number of important texts on black music. Understanding how texts are written, by whom and for whom. Learning to evaluate academic and non-academic literature.

Course Description
A large amount of publications appeared over the past decades that deal with the music of black Americans. Not only histories of early American music, jazz, soul, blues, religious music, and classical music, but also (auto)biographies of musicians, criticism, and texts on the cultural, economic and sociological meanings of black music. Furthermore, a number of authors wrote books, novels and poetry that strongly refer to black music, most notably jazz and blues. In this reading-class, each student will read an individual list of articles and (chapters from) books .