Live Music in America: A History from Jenny Lind to Beyoncé by Steve Waksman (review)

Reviewed by: Live Music in America: A History from Jenny Lind to Beyoncé by Steve Waksman Chris Durman Live Music in America: A History from Jenny Lind to Beyoncé. By Steve Waksman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. xiv, 677 p. ISBN 9780197570531 (hardcover), 190; ISBN 9780197570548 (paperback), 37. 99; also available as ebook, ISBN and price vary. Illustrations, bibliography, index. End Page 651 In his well-sourced and well-written study Live Music in America: A History from Jenny Lind to Beyoncé, Steve Waksman document s how performance practices and concert venues, business practices of the music industry, innovations in transportation and communication, audience expectations, class and race relations, and sound reinforcement technologies have all evolved tremendously over the last two centuries—and have all impacted and been impacted by the business of live music performance in the United States. Developments in each of these areas have transformed society in both glaring and subtle ways and have encouraged and enabled more and more people of vastly different cultural backgrounds to experience live musical event s. Whole new industries supporting live music performance have emerged, contributing significantly to US economic vitality and benefitting industries outside of concert promotion. While Waksman focuses primarily on live music performed in large venues for large audiences—and on the people, places, and technologies that enable the live music industry to exist, flourish, and grow—he does frequently comment on smaller events, such as nightclub performances, that often better enable diverse people to meet and mingle in a hospitable space. He explains how live musical events have contributed more than is typically acknowledged to the shared culture and history of the US and to the breakdown of many social barriers, including, importantly, those in the area of race relations. In tracing live music in the US from the early 1800s to 2018, Waksman makes a strong case that live music has long been a significant catalyst for social engagement, shared cultural experience, technological and business innovation, and social change, as well as an economic driver of great importance. By tracking the development of the live-music industry in the US over an extended period, Waksman shows convincingly that our involvement in and support of live music has indeed changed us as well as our shared culture. Waksman chooses to begin his study with one of the most famous tours ever taken by a musician in the US, the early tour of "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind in the 1850s. In this chapter, as throughout the book, he provides a historical background to the subject at hand, discusses the social conditions of the time, explains the business conditions that impacted the performers and performances, reveals the technological and architectural developments facilitating the performances, and tells revealing historical anecdotes that illustrate the state of live performance in the US. In the case of Lind's tour, for instance, Waksman reveals how show-man and promoter P. T. Barnum marketed her appearances to appeal to people of all classes and emphasized her perceived high moral character at every opportunity. Waksman notes how the repertoire she performed was a mixture of classical art music and some of the more popular music of her time, giving most people in the audience a chance to hear a work they recognized. The spaces in which she performed were typically large enough to accommodate many people; the tickets, while expensive for their day, were within the bounds of most middle-class budgets. With these concerts, Barnum subtly promised the possibility of social uplift that might accompany being exposed to the perceived high culture surrounding classical music, and by providing tickets for better seats at a higher price, he offered middle-class attendees the opportunity to interact with and to see themselves as members of the upper class. In his chapter on the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Waksman shows how, conversely, the perceived exclusivity of End Page 652 classical music and the classical concert hall could also be used to elevate the social strata of the performers. In 1871, when the Jubilee Singers began to tour as part of an effort to raise funds for Fisk University—which opened in Nashville in 1866 to educate the. . .