This volume presents not only the first comprehensive account of the growth of black popular music, but also that of American popular music, explored from the black perspective. Shaw believes that popular American music is neither white nor black, but a fusion, and the result of an interplay. Focusing on five key black styles--minstrelsy, spirituals, ragtime, jazz, and the blues, he analyzes their origins and development and their entry into popular white culture. He examines the precise nature of black contribution to American popular music, how the white commercialization of the black original has affected the black style as well as the white, the result of that relationship, and the dialectical character of the change. He concludes with a look at the contemporary scene.