The Pot Liquor Principle: Developing a Black Music Criticism in American Music Studies

By Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr.

This essay reects on black musical culture in the United States and its criticism with an eye toward how these ideas implicate new directions and areas of potential growth in the burgeoning eld of American music studies writ large. We cannot fully understand American music and its study without intensely engaging the parts that comprise its sum. The relationship of African American musical studies to American music studies remains a symbiotic and dynamic one and, therefore, we must keep in mind that any discussion of either should recognize that they simply would not exist in their present forms without each other.