Response: New Recipes for American Music Studies

By Kay Kaufman Shelemay

These thoughtful articles, initially answering Mary Wallace Davidson's request that the authors consider how libraries can provide materials needed for the study of American music today, touch on the intellectual frameworks for and the institutionalization of American music studies. All three also wrestle, either explicitly or implicitly, with the challenges of musical pedagogy. It is perhaps predictable that the papers offer less direct advice to librarians than a discussion about the very nature of American music studies. Along the way, Ramsey alludes to the pot liquor principle in African American cooking, inviting additional food metaphors that might characterize each author's agenda for American music studies. Ramsey calls for an academic venture that preserves the distinctive avors of traditional African American cuisine across boundaries of a broader Americanist fare. Cockrell, whom we learn from Ramsey is equally familiar with pot liquor from his own Anglo-American Southern upbringing, conjures a composite dish, perhaps similar to Huckleberry Finn's "barrel of odds and ends." Rasmussen proposes a smorgasbord that includes not just African American and Anglo-American cuisines, but also Native American, Middle Eastern, Danish American, and many other dishes as well.