In the tradition of the music being talked about...

Jeff Sharlet discusses and reinterprets Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor's Faking It: the quest for authenticity in popular music (via Cursor). My favorite bit, because it is so telling of the times:

... Leadbelly, a favourite of folk aficionados who to this day perceive him as a giant of "black music", even though the vast majority of his fans were white. (When white producers brought Leadbelly to New York City in 1935 to play "traditional" music, Life magazine declared in a headline: "Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel".)