“Wonders of Surry!” Exploring Broadsheet Ballads from the mid-Eighteenth Century

With over 260-million views on YouTube, Donald Glover’s (aka Childish Gambino) “This is America” actually repeats history. By that I mean to state that Glover is using song and wit to tell a story.[1]  As a cultural historian, I appreciated Glover’s approach to satirize deep-seeded problems in American society. But the expression of topics in musical form is nothing new.