Emily Bingham: My Old Kentucky Home

In her new book, My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song, historian Emily Bingham untangles and reassesses the legacy of this popular tune. From its origin as a blackface minstrel sensation penned by Stephen Foster to its role as Kentucky’s state song and Kentucky Derby theme song, “My Old Kentucky Home” has worked its way into the bloodstream of American life. Few tunes are better known. But how well known really? Bingham asks: How can a melody be so memorable, yet so formed by forgetting?