Welcome aboard!

This site is your one-stop learning platform for MSH 245, The American Musical Experience. Exploring tabs you can access all reading material and multimedia resources.

This site was developed by Dr. Agustina Checa with the support of the Leonard Lief Library at Lehman College. It is openly licensed via CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Content shared within this site may have different copyright licenses, if so, these are specified. If you are an instructor hoping to access more materials about this class (alternative readings, grading rubrics, assignments, feel free to reach out to agustina.checa[at]lehman[dot]cuny.edu).

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Class overview

The American Musical Experience (MSH 245) is a course to learn about the history of music in the United States. Throughout our overview of different musical expressions we will study traditional, folk, and religious music, and popular music styles of past and current relevance (jazz, blues, soul, rock, country, hip hop, and others).

The focus on “experience” encourages us to examine both the many mediations through which music was made available to people in America throughout history (from shellac discs and print scores, to TikTok and Spotify); as well as the social and political contexts framing the production and circulation of different music styles throughout time.

Let’s do this!