Upon first thought race and sound would seem to have little to do with each other: sound is an audible phenomenon, and race is commonly understood to be a visual category.  But sound and race have a long and complex history in American culture, from the white fascination with (and attempts to imitate) the music of slaves in the early 19^th century to the immeasurable impact of black musical forms on American music throughout the 20^th century and beyond. This is a course about how Americans have used sound to think about race, and how they have used ideas about race to think about sound and musical performance. We will listen to recordings but we will also explore the ways people thought about, wrote about, and formed understandings of sounds that they heard, and how these sounds contradicted or confirmed ideas about racial difference. Most basically, we will examine the ways Americans have told stories about sounds that they’ve made and heard, and how these have doubled as stories about themselves, and each other.