Optional preconference activity (additional charge), Backstage at the Museum(s)

8:30 a.m.
Registration

9:30 a.m.
Welcome
Welcome and Introduction Daniel Hammer, The Historic New Orleans Collection, and Tom Savage, moderator, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

9:50 a.m.
Unbinding Gentility: Southern Parlor Performance in the Nineteenth Century
Dr. Candace Bailey, North Carolina Central University

The artifacts of women’s musical culture in the nineteenth century have historically been dismissed as ephemera, which has resulted in misrepresentations of repertoire, music as a social construct, and degrees of musical accomplishment. Serious study of these items, however, reveals a wealth of information about how music functioned in women’s lives. This presentation focuses on women’s musical culture in Louisiana, with an emphasis on New Orleans, in order to illustrate a multifaceted and nuanced culture that used music as a means to mediate class, race, and education among antebellum women.

10:30 a.m.
Music for All: The Square Piano and the Democratization of Music in Antebellum America
Alexandra Cade, University of Delaware, Sigal Music Museum (virtual)

In the antebellum American South, the accessibility of the square piano transformed the landscapes and soundscapes of domestic music making. With an increasing number of piano makers working in urban centers across the country, the instrument’s design, technology, and availability underwent rapid changes in the decades preceding the Civil War. Closely intertwined with sheet music production and music education, the square piano imparted privileged southern women with a vehicle for aural agency. Through examination of surviving instruments and advertising ephemera of this significant nineteenth-century American industry, this presentation considers how piano makers catered their businesses toward the southern market.

10:50 a.m.
​Break 

11:05 a.m.
Porch and Dancehall Culture: Louisiana’s Homemade Instruments
documentary video premiere featuring Nick Spitzer, American Routes

11:35 a.m.
The Guitar in American Art: The Evolution of an Icon Dr. Leo Mazow, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The guitar figures prominently in the visual stories Americans tell themselves about themselves—their histories, identities, and aspirations. As meaningful to hear as it is fun to play, the guitar has unique expressive possibilities in the visual arts. This lecture explores the guitar’s symbolism in American art from the early 19th century to the present, demonstrating the instrument’s capability of denoting myriad historical topics, from race and ethnicity to class and gender—and the American music industry itself.

12:15 p.m. 
Lunch (on your own)

2 p.m.
Living with Automatic Music from the Past
Robert Skinner, independent scholar

For centuries, self-playing instruments have been a part of musical history as important as their human-played counterparts. From the grand Aeolian organ (such as the one displayed at THNOC) to the humble music box, these automata have delighted people in parlors, exhibition halls and museums. Robert Skinner has had the privilege of collecting and working with these musical examples of decorative art for decades and will present an overview of this almost-forgotten era of recorded sound, the mechanisms, and their makers. This presentation will also include examples of the music created by wonderful machines from the sublime to the over-the-top. 

2:45 p.m.
Ambiance in the Air: How the Phonograph Brought Music to American Homes
John McCusker, author and independent scholar 

Sound recording technology existed for more than two decades before the phonograph became a typical item in American homes. Why the lag, and how was consumer hesitance addressed by phonograph makers? What is the difference between a phonograph, a Victrola, and a Gramophone? How did the emergence of American music genres—jazz, blues, ragtime—drive the recording industry and the place of music in American homes?

3:30 p.m.
Break

3:45 p.m.
Canebrake: Rivercane and Rattlesnakes in the Music of the Gulf South
Dr. Jeffery U. Darensbourg, tribal councilperson of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation of Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas, with Dr. John DePriest, enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Tulane University

From basketry to blowguns, giant rivercane (Arundinaria gigantea) has been arguably the most important plant for the creation of material culture among many Indigenous southeastern communities for thousands of years. The canebrake is also the home of the rattlesnake, or the sinti hollo, or holy snake, whose likeness appears on clothing and in the dances of the Gulf South. This talk focuses on rivercane and rattlesnakes’ roles in music and dance, specifically the creation of flutes and regalia, both for Indigenous communities as well as in the north Mississippi fife and drum tradition.

4:30 p.m.
The Cajun Accordion: From the Front Porch to the Dancehall
Andre Michot, member of the Lost Bayou Ramblers, with Dr. Nick Spitzer, American Routes

Sometimes called “squeeze boxes,” diatonic button accordions came to Louisiana from Germany in the late 19th century, eventually becoming a staple of Cajun music. The accordion became prevalent after World War II, and soon its syncopated style could be heard on front porches and in dance halls across southwestern Louisiana. Musician and accordion maker Andre Michot continues to preserve and maintain cultural traditions centered around the Cajun accordion. Dr. Nick Spitzer, host and producer of American Routes, and Michot will discuss the important history of the Cajun accordion in Louisiana’s heritage.

5:15 p.m.
Champagne Reception
featuring Grammy Award–winner Andre Michot and friends

8:45 a.m.
Registration

9:30 a.m.
Welcome and Introduction
Daniel Hammer and Tom Savage

10 a.m.
“From Every House a Constant Tuting May be Listnd to Upon One Instrument or Another”
Amanda Keller, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

In the colonial era, music was as pervasive as it is today. Music could be heard in daily life in the work fields, in the campsites of the militia, in the slave quarter, the church, the theater, the ballroom, and the parlor. Writer and politician Landon Carter wrote in his diary during a visit to Williamsburg in 1771, “From every house a constant tuting may be listnd to upon one instrument or another, whilst the vocal dogs will no doubt compleat the howl.” This lecture will explore how people in the greater Williamsburg community interacted with music in their daily lives and how music brought these culturally diverse communities together in a variety of different spaces in the eighteenth century. These musical exchanges allowed for cross-cultural exchange, including American Indian and enslaved and free Black musical influences, which ultimately helped create something that sounded entirely new in early America.

10:45 a.m.
Break

11 a.m.
New Acquisitions and Highlights from The Collection
Lydia Blackmore and Nina Bozak, The Historic New Orleans Collection

The Historic New Orleans Collection actively collects books, documents, art, and artifacts relating to the history and culture of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Gulf South. Curators Nina Bozak and Lydia Blackmore will present some recent highlights of the collection. 

11:45 a.m.
Visual Evidence: Unraveling the Story of the 8th Cavalry Mexican Military Band
Dr. Josh Kun, University of Southern California, with Oscar Rossignoli

This talk will explore the history of the 8th Cavalry Mexican Band as told through various historical objects—sheet music, ephemera, and photographs—associated with their presence in New Orleans in the late 1800s. In addition to revisiting the archives, Kun will also discuss his 2021 artistic project for P.5 (Prospect New Orleans 5), Over and Over the Waves, which connected the Mexican Band’s history to 21st-century histories of music and migration in New Orleans through an original sound mix, an exhibition, and live performances of newly commissioned compositions inspired by the band’s repertoire. Kun will be joined by acclaimed New Orleans pianist Oscar Rossignoli.

12:15 p.m.
Lunch (on your own)

1:45 p.m.
Suiting the Southern Sound: Country and Western Costumes
Holly George-Warren, author and independent scholar

Since the 1930s, country music has been closely identified with visual style, with fashion playing a key role in defining artists’ public personas. Decorative western suits, embellished with figurative embroidery, colorful fringe, and sparkling rhinestones, became de rigueur among artists like Louisiana’s Webb Pierce, Faron Young, and Jimmy C. Newman; Alabama’s Hank Williams; and Texas-born stars Gene Autry, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, and George Jones. These lavish outfits often boast imagery symbolizing hit songs or the artist’s name, and were created by custom tailors—Nudie Cohn, Rodeo Ben, Nathan Turk, and Manuel Cuevas—who immigrated to America from Eastern Europe and Mexico. Mississippi-born Marty Stuart, who outfits his band in custom-made suits and has amassed a collection of historic costumes, says country artists “wore rhinestones as if they were badges on a uniform.”

2:30 p.m.
Opera and Its Material Culture in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans
Dr. Charlotte Bentley, Newcastle University, United Kingdom

This talk explores how opera permeated the social and cultural life of nineteenth-century New Orleans by looking at a range of music-themed materials intended for use within the city’s theaters and beyond their walls. Together, these items help us understand the fascinating position New Orleans occupied within the rapidly expanding operatic world of the period, and they also give us new and exciting glimpses into the lives of the people whose efforts made the city a flourishing hub for opera.

3:15 p.m.
Break

3:30 p.m.
Ceremonial Objects of the Easter Rock Traditions, with short documentary film screening
Dr. Joyce Marie Jackson, Louisiana State University

The Easter Rock is an annual ritual centered on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and involves spiritual-based music and the performance of circular movements or ring shouts in a plantation church in Northern Louisiana. A carefully constructed assemblage of symbolic icons and intricate performance practices, the Easter Rock ritual is drawn from a variety of contexts: baptisms, funerals, jubilees, revival camp meetings, as well as non-Protestant African-derived religious traditions. This pre–Civil War ritual provides an alternative lens to view African American women in this rural sacred space through “hidden transcripts.” For this research, Dr. Jackson draws heavily on ethnographies of current participants and observations. Accompanying the presentation will be the fifteen-minute documentary film Easter Rock./p>

4:30 p.m.
Bubbles at Brennan’s Happy Hour (optional, with special pricing available for forum attendees)
Roost Bar in Brennan’s Restaurant, 417 Royal Street

8:45 a.m.
Registration

9:30 a.m.
Welcome and Introduction
Daniel Hammer and Tom Savage

9:45 a.m.
Decorative Arts of the Gulf South Field Report
Sarah Duggan, The Historic New Orleans Collection, with DAGS field work interns

The Decorative Arts of the Gulf South (DAGS) project at The Historic New Orleans Collection catalogs historic objects made or used in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama dating from the eighteenth century to 1865. Its discoveries about Gulf South material culture are available in a free online database hosted by the Louisiana Digital Library and managed by THNOC staff. These artifacts shed light on everyday life in the past and the complex economic networks fueled by the enslavement economy. Annual DAGS summer internships give graduate students and emerging professionals the opportunity to learn about Gulf South history while gaining hands-on cataloging experience. This year’s team documented historic objects in Iberia Parish and other parts of the Bayou Teche region in south Louisiana.

10:15 a.m.
Congo Square: The History of a Sacred Place Told through Its Objects
Freddi Evans, author and independent scholar

This presentation will cover the known material culture of the nineteenth-century Sunday gatherings of enslaved and free people of African descent in Congo Square. It will include musical instruments that the gatherers modeled after prototypes from their homelands; the wide range of clothing that gatherers wore, such as tignons, a headwrap that both enslaved and free women wore; and popular food items that were part of the economic exchange, such as pralines, calas, and ginger beer. Other items of material culture include slave passes and emancipation papers, which some gatherers carried with them daily.

11 a.m.
Break

11:15 a.m.
Preserving Landmarks of New Orleans Music History
Jordan Hirsch, ACloserWalkNola.com

This presentation will cover the preservation efforts currently underway at several music history landmarks in New Orleans, including the Eagle Saloon, Iroquois Theater, and Karnofsky building on the 400 block of South Rampart Street; Perseverance Hall in the Seventh Ward; and the Dew Drop Inn and Buddy Bolden house in Central City. It will explain how each site’s architecture relates to the city’s musical heritage, from the birth of jazz to rhythm and blues.

Noon
Closing Remarks
Daniel Hammer and Tom Savage

12:30 p.m.
Brunch (optional, with additional charge)
Arnaud’s Restaurant, 813 Bienville Street