Soundscapes of Liberation: A Conversation with Celeste Day Moore

In this episode, Dr. Hettie V. Williams discusses the sound of African American music in post-war France and within the larger African Diaspora with Dr. Celeste D. Moore. Williams is Director of the Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and Moore is Associate Professor of History at Hamilton College in New York. Moore is a historian of African American culture, media, and Black internationalism in the twentieth century and her first book Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Mustic in Postwar France (Duke University Press, 2021) won the Chinard Prize from the Society of French Historical Studies. This conversation is focused on Moore’s award-winning book Soundscapes of Liberation and the ways that Black musicians engaging in identity-making processes in France and around the globe. Moore contends that popular Black music forms such as jazz facilitated new forms of power and protest in post-war France and the world. In her sweeping history, Moore interrogates a swath of sources including newspapers, music catalogs, magazines, recordings, images, memoirs, photographs and print media. For more information about Moore visit her website: Celeste D. Moore and to order her book visit here Duke University Press