At the turn of the twentieth century, a scientific debate unfolded over the extent to which African American vocal music could be transcribed using conventional Western notation systems. My talk examines two competing transcription approaches that developed out of this debate around 1920. I argue that transcription techniques not only constituted and reflected different ways of musical knowing, but also functioned as political tools in broader struggles over race, representation, and scientific authority.

In the early 1920s, music psychologist Carl Seashore developed a laboratory device that mechanically transcribed vocal features such as intonation and vibrato from musical recordings. This shifted attention from musical structure to vocal performance as a measurable object of knowledge. In a large-scale and applied project, Seashore’s team used this device to analyze Race Records Recordings by artists such as Bessie Smith, Paul Robeson, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers. They aimed to identify supposedly race-specific vocal traits and treated the resulting data as scientific evidence of mental capacity. As a proponent of the eugenic movement, Seashore sought to use these findings to support educational policies reinforcing Jim Crow segregation.

Although Seashore’s team relate to research by Black Intellectuals at historically Black Colleges, they dismissed its academic value – especially the work of John Wesley Work Jr. Drawing on his experience as choir director and performer with the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Work had published a significant study on the cultural meaning of spirituals. He treated songs as historical witnesses to slavery and focused on melodic transcription, believing that the distinctive intonation of African American singing – expressing the presence of the Holy Spirit – could not be captured in notation. To study and preserve this form of vocal expression, he relied on a performative approach rooted in the lived experience of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. His goal was to protect the historical wisdom of the enslaved through vocal ensembles at Black colleges and activate this legacy in the fight against racial oppression.

By contrasting these two approaches – one rooted in data-driven epistemology, the other in artistic-performative research practice – my talk explores how the African American singing voice became both a scientific and political object. It shows how different research practices shaped authority over the meaning of African American expressive culture.