BLACKSOUND explores how Black musical artistry has shaped the sound of America—from classical music and jazz all the way to blues, country, and popular music—and asks what happens when that artistry moves through systems of performance, ownership, commerce, and cultural memory.

In this year’s Paul J. Burgett Lecture and Community Conversation, award-winning musicologist, author, and Stanford University professor Matthew D. Morrison considers the extraordinary legacy of Black experience, cultural expression, and artistic traditions—and the structures that have shaped who gets to perform, profit from, claim, and preserve them.

At the center of the conversation is Morrison’s groundbreaking concept of “Blacksound.” Blacksound is not Black music itself, but the traces of Black sound and performance that have been appropriated, transformed, and absorbed into American popular entertainment. Morrison traces that process to the racial foundations of the American entertainment industry, examining how blackface minstrelsy, performance, intellectual property, and copyright helped turn representations of Blackness into commercial culture—often without corresponding ownership or power for Black creators.

Spanning Black musical expression across classical music and other Western musical traditions, the conversation centers on race, authorship, cultural ownership, influence, and the American musical canon, while highlighting the continuing innovation of Black artists who have created new sonic expressions across generations.

Morrison is the author of the acclaimed Blacksound: Making Race in Popular Music in the United States, winner of the 2025 PROSE Award for Excellence in Humanities and recognized by Rolling Stone and CHOICE among the outstanding music and academic books of 2024. His scholarship sits at the intersection of musicology, Black Studies, sound and performance studies, race, and intellectual property and copyright law.

Before the program, festival artists and audiences are invited to gather for a Community Fellowship Reception at 12:15 in the Wolk Atrium.