 Matthew's class is where I learned about the history of blackface minstrelsy and its connection to the birth of the popular music industry in the U.S., what's now a multi-billion dollar industry. Blackface minstrelsy is the first original form of American popular commercial music. The sound of all these different genres, even country music, rock and roll, electronic dance music, all of it, the base of it, you can trace it back in some way quite often to a black musical localized origin.