Season 4, Episode 7

From its beginnings, the eugenics movement has looked to music: for foundational figures like Francis Galton and contemporaries like Charles Murray, the child-prodigy composer or violinist could serve to demonstrate that talent was innate and inherited, and thus could be bred. The horrendously racist implications of such a vision have long been understood, but the relationship between music and eugenicist thought has received scant attention. In this dark but important conversation, musicologist Alexander Cowan reveals the central role of music to eugenicist philosophy, and how myths of musical talent have undergirded myths of racial supremacy.

Alexander Cowan is a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge.

If you’re interested in learning more about Dr. Cowan’s work, check out:

• The essay “‘The Musical Mind is the Normal Mind’: Reimagining Musicianship for Eugenics,” in The Science-Music Borderlands: Reckoning with the Past, Imagining the Future
• This post on Spotify and DNA in Sounding Out!
• This post on music and ethics on the Sonic Circulations site

Sound Expertise is hosted by Will Robin (@seatedovation), and produced by D. Edward Davis (@warmsilence). Please subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and/or Spotify. Questions or comments? Email soundexpertise00 @ gmail

A written transcript of this episode is available here; thanks to Andrew Dell’Antonio for volunteering to prepare transcripts for the show!