African American Culture In The 1950's

African-American presence was minimal on TV shows after 1953 was largely demeaning in the roles available in radio drama. But radio drama on the other hand offered wider possibilities for black stations like WDIA that began in 1947 in Memphis. Numerous stations devoted time to black radio in the 1950s and it became difficult to distinguish the colour of the musicians they were listening to as racial styles began to blur, which was an added advantage. This compelled Susan Douglas to call 1950s radio a “trading zone” between white and black culture revealing as much “about the emptiness and forced conformity of white culture as it did “about the new ambitions of blacks” (223). Folk music, jazz and rock ‘n’roll defined the period. Folk and jazz, the older forms underwent transitions postwar. Rock ‘n’ roll, a new trend emerged out of rhythm and blues, a strain of black music often called ‘race music’ in 1940s, which later became sound of the 1950s. Second half of the decade, particularly between 1956 and 1958,was ruled by Commercial imperatives and major labels. Creative musical energies were in full flow, not repeated until
Popular music in 1950s might have been an epitome of a ‘mass culture’ of consumption in the 1950s as called by Adorno and Horheimer, but musicians and performers were never far away from politicized discourses about region, race, sexuality and class