 I'm Jen White. This is 1A. You're listening to the first recording ever made of Oh Bess, Oh Where's My Bess from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Porgy, the character, is black and the singer is white. What are we to make of that today? Today is the 4th of July. To celebrate the holiday, we're revisiting an episode of our series More Than Music. In this series, we take a topic in American music and explore its pertinence today. Here again is our guide, cultural historian Joe Horowitz.