On Our Shelves

On Our Shelves is a general interest and educational resource tool created by the CBMR staff as a way of sharing information about black music worldwide. Our staff members have wide-ranging interests and areas of expertise but all authors and artists discussed below are represented in the CBMR library and archival collections. Please follow the links for additional information. The ideas and opinions represented here are not formal institutional endorsements or reviews.

Frederick Tillis. Freedom (New World Records 80455-2)
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This recording, released in 1996, is the first devoted entirely to the music of Frederick Tillis. It includes works for a number of performance media including chorus, string quartet, and solo voice. Another highlight is the composer's personal rendering of "Motherless Child" (on soprano saxophone). Particularly striking are the other references to spirituals on this recording. All four movements of Spiritual Fantasy no. 12 feature treatments of African-American spiritual themes in varied compositional treatments. From highly developed motivic fragments to extended contrapuntal episodes, this piece further fortifies the viability of African-American spirituals and folk songs as strong sources for creative ingenuity. A slight contrast to the recognizable themes in Spiritual Fantasy no. 12 and the more folk-oriented pieces is the terse choral work, Freedom. Using the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as inspiration, Tillis offers a highly personal statement that displays a modern compositional technique framed with an atonal (nonserial) palate. The final tracks on the recording present Tillis's poetry in colorful song settings that mildly stretch musical conventions of that idiom.

—Horace Maxile
"Freedom"

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. 100 Days 100 Nights (Daptone Records DAP-012)
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On a recommendation last year, I picked up the music issue of the Oxford American, an annual feature that includes essays on a wide variety of Southern musicians, plus a sampler disc containing tracks of their music. Among the artists featured was Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. As a fan of late-1960s and 1970s soul and funk, I loved their included track, “How Long Do I Have to Wait.” I was surprised to discover, however, that this wasn’t a band unearthed from the 1970s but one that was contemporary and still creating music. As Lindsey Miller (Oxford American, issue 54, 2006, p. 74) notes, “don’t call them retro-funk, and don’t slander them as revivalists. Jones and the Dap-Kings may be the funk-soul equivalent of Rip Van Winkle, passing by the last twenty years of music like it never existed but just as it was for Aretha [Franklin], J. B. [James Brown], Otis [Redding], George [Clinton], and Tina [Turner], their sound remains heart-thumpingly alive.”

—Laura Haefner
"100 Days 100 Nights"

The CBMR Library and Archives owns materials pertaining to soul performers of the late-1960s and 1970s in its Sue Cassidy Clark Collection.

Burning Spear. Marcus Garvey (Palm PALMCD 2122-2) (Originally issued on Island Records in 1975)
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Burning Spear was a renowned, politically charged reggae group that recorded their first single, "Door Peep," in 1969. They released their first album in 1973, and Marcus Garvey, their third album, was the first released by Island Records. The original lead singer, Winston Rodney, is now known himself as Burning Spear and won a Grammy for the album Calling Rastafari in 2000. If you love and appreciate reggae, you will appreciate Burning Spear. "Marcus Garvey" and "Red, Gold and Green" are two of my favorite tracks on this CD, both featuring beautiful bass and horn arrangements (by some of Jamaica's best studio musicians) behind Winston Rodney's emotional vocals.

—Linda Hunter
"Marcus Garvey"

The CBMR Library and Archives also owns numerous other reggae recordings. For more information about our collections, click here.

Thomas Dorsey. Georgia Tom (Thomas A. Dorsey): Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order (RST Records BDCD-6022) (2 volume set) (Previously released recordings.)

Before Thomas Dorsey became the beloved father of gospel music, he was a famous blues artist, first performing with Ma Rainey and later performing on his own. With Ma Rainey, he played piano, arranged music, and assembled her touring band, Wildcats Jazz Band. They last recorded together in 1928 as a trio, with Ma Rainey on vocals, Dorsey on piano, and Tampa Red on guitar. On his own, Dorsey performed and recorded as Georgia Tom, often teaming with Tampa Red. The two had a hit single in 1928 with "It's Tight Like That." Dorsey's solo blues career lasted less than four years; he gave up performing blues soon after the death of his wife and infant son in 1932.
This two-volume set of recordings documents Dorsey's solo blues career and his transition from blues to gospel. It begins with a 1928 vocal duet by Ma Rainey's Boys, with Dorsey accompanying them on piano. It continues with Dorsey performing solo under the pseudonyms Georgia Tom and Memphis Mose, with accompanying guitarists Tampa Red, Scrapper Blackwell, and Big Bill Broonzy. It ends with Dorsey's last blues duet with Tampa Red, "If You Want Me to Love You," his last blues solo, "M & O Blues," which he recorded under the pseudonym Railroad Bill, and his famous gospel tune "How About You," all recorded in 1932. As a gospel artist, Dorsey seldom recorded.

—Janet Harper
"Lonesome Man Blues"

Eileen M. Hayes and Linda F. Williams, eds. Black Women and Music: More Than the Blues (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007)
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As the back cover states, Black Women and Music is the "first interdisciplinary volume to examine black women's negotiation of race and gender in African American music." Musicians represented work in the fields of classical, electric blues, hip hop, jazz, gospel, musical theater and the avant-garde. They are vocalists, instrumentalists, composers, conductors, emcees, and announcers; the essays draw from musicology and ethnomusicology as well as rhetoric and theater, English, women's studies, writing, and performance.This collection is not chronological, is not meant to be comprehensive, and does not invest in canon-building. However, it does present an impressively wide range of experiences, questions, genres, and approaches organized in three broadly thematic sections. The first, "Having Her Say: Power and Complication in Popular Music," considers gender and race issues in hip hop, electric blues, and musical theater, as well as how they are negotiated by artists and audiences. The second section, "When and Where She Enters: Black Women in Unsung Places," looks at black women's musicking in under-examined contexts such as those of the gospel announcer, the contemporary jazz musician, the jazz avant-garde, and "women's music" scenes. The third and final section, "Revisiting Musical Herstories," recovers black women's histories in concert music. Black Women in Music provides clear evidence for the fact that music making has historically been and continues to be an arena in which black American women explore and create identities that consider categories of race, gender, class, generation, and sexuality. Furthermore, black women put these experiences in the service of racial critique, spirituality, advocacy, sexual politics, racial uplift, and survival. This book is inspiring and necessary.

—Monica Hairston

In addition to owning a copy of this and other books on black women musicians, the CBMR Library and Archives also houses the collection of Melba Liston, jazz composer, arranger, and trombonist.

Louis "Sabu" Martínez and Arsenio Rodríguez. Palo Congo (Blue Note 22665)
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This peculiar but remarkable Blue Note release first caught my attention because of the title (referring to Kongo-related spiritual practices in Cuba) and the presence of the renowned Cuban musician and composer Arsenio Rodríguez ("El Ciego Maravilloso"). Given the label that issued it, I expected a Latin-inflected jazz outing of the kind that had become common in New York by the 1950s. Instead, I was surprised by a largely Afrocuban excursion. Although nominally Sabu Martínez's project, the album owes at least as much to Rodríguez. Martínez, a Harlem-born conguero and percussionist, was closely associated with jazz in his younger years, having played and recorded with some of the most important figures of his time, such as Art Blakey; but he was equally active in Latin popular music. This album shows how comfortable he was in both Afrocuban and broader Latin musical settings. It includes a version of Rafael Hernández's famous "El cumbanchero," a Puerto Rican-style plena, a number of pieces credited to Sabu Martínez himself, and an extended jam starting with a quote of Moisés Simons's iconic "El manisero" ("Peanut Vendor")-all of which allow Rodríguez to stretch out with impressive solos on the guitar-like Cuban tres, an instrument he helped make famous. Particularly noteworthy are "Billumba-Palo Congo," in which Arsenio plays the part of a palero (ritual specialist), engaging in a call-and-response exchange and oration partly in Cuban KiKongo (Congolese language); and "Aggo Elegua," a sacred chant in the Yoruba-related Lucumí (Santería) tradition. These suggest the depth of Arsenio Rodríguez's knowledge of the Afrocuban spiritual traditions that were an important part of his cultural heritage and strongly influenced his musical production. To me, this album speaks of the vitality and prominence of the Afrocuban cultural presence that intersected in interesting ways with the jazz scene in New York during the 1940s and 1950s. Although the session was recorded in stereo, the album was originally released on LP only in mono. This CD release makes it available in stereo for the first time, and the sound quality is unusually crisp and vivid for a recording made a half century ago.

—Kenneth Bilby
"Tribilin Cantore"

In addition to owning a copy of this and other recordings featuring Arsenio Rodríguez, the CBMR Library and Archives also owns a copy of David F. García's M.A. thesis, "Arsenio Rodríguez and the Reevaluation of Afrocuban-influenced Popular Music: Linguistic and Musical Codeswitching in the Afro-son" (University of California-Santa Barbara, 1997) and his recently published book, Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music (Temple University Press, 2006). Both of these studies pay close attention to the strongly African-influenced cultural milieu from which Rodríguez emerged and are highly recommended.

Dena J. Epstein. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003)
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Dena Epstein's Sinful Tunes and Spirituals was first published in 1977; in 2003 the University of Illinois Press issued a new paperback edition with an updated preface by the author. No further editing was required: Sinful Tunes is the product of exhaustive scholarship, and it has never been superseded. It appeared at a time when new attention was being paid to black music studies, and with her thorough and unassailable scholarship, Epstein was able to lay to rest, once and for all, the misconception that no African elements had been retained in black American culture.
Two things about Sinful Tunes make the book especially appealing: extensive quotes and Epstein's description of the earliest attempts to preserve the heritage of black music through publication of transcriptions. Epstein quotes extensively from her sources. She uses early published letters and diaries, reports, and descriptions, along with archival materials, to present slave music as it was perceived by contemporaries, even when the music is described unsympathetically or incompletely by people who had no idea what they were hearing. There is enough evidence presented to draw conclusions opposite from theirs, and the numerous quoted passages bring the times and the music to life.
The final chapters of Sinful Tunes are devoted to the collection and publication of slave music just after the Civil War, culminating in Slave Songs of the United States edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison and published in New York in 1867. Slave Songs presents a collection of spirituals and a few secular songs from the time before popularization by the Jubilee Singers and other performers solidified the repertoire.
Sinful Tunes is a scholarly book but by no means a dry or boring one; in fact it's just the opposite. Epstein brings the music and its context vividly to life through lively writing and quotation of original sources.

—Suzanne Flandreau

Related resources in the CBMR Library and Archives include the papers of Dena J. Epstein, which reflect her painstaking research in a time before e-mail, when everything was accomplished on-site or by letter. The Epstein collection also reflects the repercussions of Sinful Tunes in Epstein's own career (she became an authority on the banjo, among other things) and on her subsequent research publications. Also in the CBMR Library is an original 1867 edition of Slave Songs of the United States, from the estate of Robin Hough, as well as several reprint editions of this seminal book.

Roberta Flack. Killing Me Softly (Atlantic 82793-2)
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Released in 1973 (Atlantic), this recording features the hit single "Killing Me Softly With His Song." That single won the 1974 Grammy award for Record of the Year and set Roberta Flack as the only artist to win this award for two consecutive years. She won the 1973 Grammy with her rendition of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." Sonically situated between the small ensemble sound of her first album (First Take) and the more orchestrated arrangements of her second album (Chapter Two), Killing Me Softly features clean horn arrangements and solo cello amidst the rhythm section (piano, bass, guitar, drum) accompaniments. The horn arrangements help propel the soul-pop choruses of "No Tears (In The End)" and "River," both of which suggest a strong kinship to church influences. Eloquence is at the center of "I'm The Girl." This ballad features only Flack's voice, piano, and cello. Shifting from a semi-rubato introduction to the song's first refrain, this track revisits—in its own soulful way—the form of American popular song from the 1930s. The title track is the most popular on this recording, and it inspired the 1996 award-winning cover by the Fugees (on their album The Score). "Killing Me Softly With His Song" displays the depth of Flack's vocal quality and the inventiveness of her vocal and ensemble arrangements. The string and horn arrangements aside and accredited to collaborators, she is credited with the arrangements on this recording.

—Horace J. Maxile Jr.
"Killing Me Softly With His Song"

Sones de México. ¡Que Florezca! (Sones de México SM 1196)
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Sones de México Ensemble Chicago has been a friend of the Center's for many years. In 1995, the ensemble performed twice with the Center's Ensemble Kalinda Chicago, illustrating African influences on popular music in Mexico. Juan Díes and Victor Pichardo, the ensemble's artistic director, prepared a set of music drawn from the son tradition and that incorporates performance styles and forms found in Tabasco, Campeche, Veracruz, Guerrero, and Oaxaca, all coastal regions to which African people were brought. Foot tapping, percussion instruments such as the cajón, bells, shakers, and jawbone were featured, as were mimetic dances ("El Zopilote/La Iguana"). Much of this repertoire is included on the ¡Que Florezca! CD in Part IV-Negritud.
Sones de México is now a full-time and critically acclaimed professional ensemble that performs in Chicago and on tour (http://www.sonesdemexico.com). Their most recent recording, Esta Tierra Es Tuya (This Land Is Your Land), was nominated for a Grammy Award as Best Folk Album in 2007. The ensemble will perform at the Center's 2008 National Conference on Black Music Research. Tickets are available online at http://www.colum.edu/cbmr/conference2008/Tickets_to_Special_Events.php.

—Morris A. Phibbs
"La Bamba"

In addition to owning a copy of this CD, the CBMR Library and Archives has a large collection of recordings, books, and dissertations that deal with the African presence in Latin America.

Gabriel Banat. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow ( Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, 2006 )
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Last February, in preparation for writing a paper on Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, I read Gabriel Banat's 1990 Black Music Research Journal article "Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Man of Music and Gentleman-at-Arms: The Life and Times of an Eighteenth-Century Prodigy." The following month, I was staffing the registration table at the CBMR/SAM conference in Chicago. As I was talking to conference participants, I noticed a man holding a picture of a person who seemed familiar to me. I walked over to him, took a closer look at the picture and said, "Excuse me, sir, but are you by any chance holding a picture of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges in your hand?" He replied, with a grin, "Why, yes, I am!" I realized immediately that I was finally meeting Gabriel Banat in person.
Shortly thereafter, in the spring of 2006, Banat published his much-anticipated The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and Bow. A retired New York Philharmonic violinist and specialist on classical compositional techniques, Banat is ideally positioned to understand the significance of the Chevalier. To me, Banat's archival research is unparalleled; he includes facsimiles of numerous certificates, contracts, army files, and other documents that he used in order to chronicle the Chevalier's life. Many previous biographers have unknowingly perpetuated the myth that Alexandre Dumas based his The Three Musketeers character, D'Artagnan, on the Chevalier. Banat debunks this and other legends surrounding the famous French prodigy and replaces them with the most thorough account of the Chevalier's musical, athletic, and revolutionary contributions to date. Banat's enthusiasm and dedication are inspirational, and I applaud his truth-seeking attitude.

— Melanie Zeck

Bloc Party. Weekend in the City (Vice Music 94598-2)
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Influenced by such bands as Sonic Youth, the Cure, and Joy Division, and led by singer/guitarist Kele Okereke, the child of Nigerian immigrants, London-based band Bloc Party released its first album in the United States, Silent Alarm, in 2005 to much critical acclaim. The band's second album, Weekend in the City, released in 2007, features introspective dark lyrics about love, death, and urban living, as well as the band's previously displayed energetic dance music.

— Laura Haefner
" Hunting for Witches "

Al Green. Gets Next to You (Right Stuff/Hi Records 72435-42679-2-5)
(Originally issued on Hi Records in 1971.)
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Gets Next To You has always been one of my favorite Al Green albums. With this 1971 record, Green began a run of several classic albums for the Memphis label Hi Records released during the early 1970s. Although it wasn't his first Hi release, it's clear from listening to Gets Next To You that by this time Green had found his unique singing style, and producer Willie Mitchell had fully developed the legendary "Hi Records sound," with its tight rhythm section, funky horn bursts, sultry backing vocals, and innovative but often spare arrangements. Like many of Green's albums that came soon afterward, Gets Next To You showcases his brilliant songwriting (illustrated by the record's biggest hit, "Tired of Being Alone") as well as his astonishing ability to reinterpret (and even reinvent) other people's songs, particularly the Temptations' "I Can't Get Next to You," Freddie Scott's "Are You Lonely for Me Baby," and the Doors' "Light My Fire." Although the record has almost everything you might need (Southern soul, funk, gospel, and even blues and rock) in one place, it contains absolutely no filler, clocking in at less than thirty-four minutes and leaving you wanting more. Although perhaps not quite as celebrated as Green's later masterpieces (namely Let's Stay Together, I'm Still in Love With You, and Call Me), Gets Next To You certainly achieves the excellence of those records and is an indication of great things to come.

— Andrew Leach
" Tired of Being Alone "

In addition to owning a copy of this and other Al Green recordings, the CBMR Library and Archives also owns several recorded interviews, original photographs, and other materials relating to Al Green in its Sue Cassidy Clark Collection.