New description: The music history of the United States encompasses many richly varied strands—native, imported, learned, vernacular. This course focuses on the music created and consumed by large numbers of Americans, primarily in Anglo-American and African American cultures. Attention to specific performers (“artists”), especially female, redresses the likely gender imbalance of a course oriented mainly towards composers. In rough chronological order students learn about the nation’s hymns (including shape-note traditions) and spirituals, minstrel tunes, ragtime, early pop music and “evergreens,” jazz, American orchestras, the blues, rock ’n’ roll, and hip-hop. Students also engage the concept of “phonograph effect,” as introduced by Mark Katz: the way recording technology fundamentally reshapes not just American music but the way that we experience and think about music. Prerequisite: MUSC 101 or MUSC 111 or MUSC 143 or MUSC 211.