BU PhD Patricia Peknik Publishes First Book on French Louisiana Music
BU History Ph.D. Patricia Peknik, currently Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts at Berkeley College of Music, has published her first book, French Louisiana Music and Its Patrons: The Popularization and Transformation of a Regional Sound. Based on her 2015 dissertation, the book analyzes the remarkable odyssey of French-language music created by the descendants of Acadian and Afro-Caribbean migrants. In particular, Peknik reconstructs the ways that, from the first recordings in the 1920s to the transformation of the genre by the 1970s, the spread of this regional sound was driven by local, national, and international elites who saw the music’s traditions and performers in the context of larger social, political, and cultural developments, including the folk revival and the civil rights and ethnic revival movements. Peknik illuminates how the music’s history and meaning were interpreted by a variety of actors who brought the genre onto a national and global stage, revealing the many interests at work in the popularization of a regional music.
