black music

CALL FOR ACTION: Help Save the Center for Black Music Research 31

by Fredara Mareva • academic, news • Tags: , , , , , ,

Why do we know so much about the Delta blues? Why do we know so much about West African music traditions? It isn’t coincidental, it is because they are among the most well-researched and documented musical traditions. Researchers like Alan Lomax, Melville Herskovits, and Zora Neale Hurston did the painstaking work of collecting and documenting the music while institutions such as The Smithsonian,  Archives of African American Music and Culture, and others  do the important work of preserving the recordings and making them accessible for future generations. The vision of Dr. Samuel A. Floyd and the work of the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR)) is no different than these other researchers and institutions.

Yesterday, Howard Reich (@howardreich) wrote an Chicago Tribune article that informed us that the CBMR at Columbia College in Chicago is slated for elimination as a part of a plan to “increase resources.” Dr. Louise Love, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Interim Provost, is responsible for proposing a cost-saving plan that will help offset the school’s decreasing enrollment. The irony is that enrollment in Columbia College’s music program is increasing while the rub is that the CBMR is not housed in its music department, but in its Office of Academic Research. A final decision about the CBMR’s future will not be made until June 2012, but now is the time to voice your support for its important work.

For researchers, journalists, filmmakers, and authors’ archives, such as the CBMR, is our way of “diggin in the crates.” DJs tirelessly hunt for rare and beautiful records that popular culture has forgotten as a means of preservation and of returning them to contemporary performance. For us, institutions like the CBMR are critical to what we do because they have many of those records, along with photographs, letters, and many other artifacts that substantiate what happened during this past eras. Without these invaluable pieces of information most of the books we write, movies we produce, and research we generate would be conjecture.

Andrea Jackson is the Head of Archives Research Center at Robert W. Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center, which houses the Tupac Amaru Shakur Collection.  Jackson explains why archives such as the CBMR are important for everyday people and popular culture,

Archives and research centers are THE primary source for documentation of history, life, and culture (pun intended).   Archives serve many purposes – to collect and acquire historically relevant materials, to organize materials for optimum access, and for effective long-term preservation through various formats. Without such repositories, scholarship would not exist.  Emotional reactions to nostalgia are perfect examples of how deeply people respond to archival collections.  Consider the happiness or sadness we emote when watching shows like Unsung on TVOne, which relies heavily on historical footage to take the viewer back to a place they have been or a time they wish to experience.  Consider the connectedness we feel to artists who have transcended this life, when watching documentaries, news coverage, or specials featuring their sound recordings, photographs, and original documents.  Without sites of historical preservation like the Center for Black Music Research, we would not be able to experience those feelings.  The researchers and producers of shows like these rely on the expertise and knowledge of archivists to both guide them to desired information, and make the materials accessible.  Cultural memory is LOST without these sites dedicated to the tangible documentation of our existence.

Dr. Floyd founded the CBMR in 1983 because he realized that if he did not create an organization dedicated to preserving the untold and unsung stories of African American music that they would be lost entirely. Since then the CBMR has grown from a single office to an organization that “holds more than 5,400 cataloged books and dissertations, 11,000 sound recordings in all formats, 4,500 scores and pieces of sheet music, and 72 archival collections including personal papers or organizational records that contain research materials, published and unpublished music scores, manuscripts and typescripts, audio-visual recordings, paper-based and photographic materials, ephemera, publications, and oral-history interviews.” The CBMR continues to contribute valuable programming and access to important materials under the leadership of its current director, Dr. Monica Hairston-O’Connell.

But who cares about if academics can write books or if filmmakers can make films? We all should. This is how the narrative of Black music is created. This is how historical narratives are shaped period. The stories and people who get the most shine are those which are the best documented. CBMR is one of the most significant organizations dedicated to doing this work that we had. In his article Howard Reich perfectly stated the importance of the CBMR: “No other institution on the planet studies, archives, documents, disseminates, records and performs music from the vast diaspora of African-American culture as comprehensively as the Center for Black Music Research.”

He’s right. While there are many awesome archives around the country that are dedicated to preserving parts of the story of African American music, the CBMR is dedicated to documenting a diversity of genres and scope of the African diaspora that is unmatched.

This is a personal issue for me. I have poured through the CBMR’s research journal. I have attended their conferences. I have even been fortunate enough to present at their Symposium on Ray Charles. The work of the CBMR has directly nurtured my evolution as a scholar. I am passionate about the work that the CBMR and other organizations like it do because they are protectors of the legacy and contributions of African American music that often go ignored and dismissed by institutions that serve other interests.

I fervently encourage you to join us in a letter writing campaign to show support for the work of the CBMR. Please take a moment to send a note of support for the CBMR and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble to the following:

Dear, President Carter,

This is my letter in support of the preservation of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College. I am gravely concerned about the proposed plan to eliminate the CBMR, which would eliminate access to invaluable resource that document the evolution of African American music. Its contribution to knowledge includes on campus Columbia College students and extends to all of us who appreciate the history of African-derived music from around the world. There is no other organization that provides the comprehensive level of research and programming that CBMR does. I believe that the access they provide to rare recordings and collections is an important cultural service that needs to be preserved.

Sincerely,

Please send to:

Dr. Warrick Carter, Ph.D.

President of Columbia College

wcarter@colum.edu

Prioritization Team responsible for making recommendations to the President

blueprint@colum.edu

 

 

 

The Invisibility of Black Independent Artists 0

by Fredara Mareva • Uncategorized • Tags: , , , , ,

So John Blake wrote a column on CNN.com about how the radio doesn’t play songs about Black love anymore.

While he was right in that you won’t hear torch songs on your local Hot/Magic/Jamz FM station, his justification for that lack and his assignment of blame were completely wrong.

Blake starts the article with a solid point with which many people would agree:

Listening to black music today is depressing. Songs on today’s urban radio playlists are drained of romance, tenderness and seduction. And it’s not just about the rise of hardcore hip-hop or rappers who denigrate women.

But then he takes a sharp turn towards flat out wrong:

Black people gave the world Motown, Barry White and “Let’s Get It On.” But we don’t make love songs anymore.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think that the above sentence was the logical conclusion of the first two: the radio doesn’t play songs about love and romance anymore because Black people don’t make them anymore. Damn. That *would* be depressing. IF IT WERE TRUE. The reality is that the Black independent music pool is teeming, damn near overflowing, with songs about love, romance, tenderness, and seduction. So the real issue is: why aren’t these songs included in the aforementioned urban radio playlists?

Rather than address the role of corporate radio deregulation and loss of Black radio ownership, Blake blames the artists themselves. To me, the implications of his logic are two-fold dangerous. First, they reinforce the mainstream perspective on Black music rather than advancing the conversation about Black music. His CNN column could have been a fantastic platform to enlighten audiences about all the great love music that Black folx are *still* creating. But no, the conclusion about the dearth of radio love songs must surely be that negros were on crack and aint got no daddies. Yuck. That leads to the second reason his justifications are dangerous, he is giving a pathological explanation for why Black folx can’t seem to deal with love. Academics and journalists LOVE to use the fucked up circumstances of being Black in America to explain why Negroes stopped doing something or can’t do something. This all too familiar tune goes a lil somethin like this:

“Why don’t black people graduate from high school? Cuz they smoke crack. Why can’t Black women get married? Cuz they aint got no daddies. Why are there so many Black men in prison? Cuz we stopped going to church”

I’m not suggesting that personal responsibility is not a part of the equation, because it is. But in this case, personal responsibility is exactly what compels artists like Bilal, The Foreign Exchange, Jill Scott, Avery Sunshine, Dwele, and countless others to make music DESPITE the fact that they will not get mainstream urban radio play or a Grammy nomination. If you’re writing columns for CNN you should at least be informed about what does exist.

So Sunday night I went on a rant about this article, but after thoroughly discussing it on and offline my perspective evolved. I still think the article isn’t great but there are two useful takeaways for independent soul artists The good news: the overwhelming response and amens the article received means that there is a market for your music. The bad news: whatever you think you’re doing to connect to said audience isn’t enough because people still don’t know you exist. I’m an  optimist, so I look at this as a challenge to figure out what to do differently and better.

That’s the continued difficult, but not insurmountable challenge. That’s what this space is about: exchanging ideas, best practices, and resources so that artists can build sustainable careers for themselves. The truth is that as a groundswell and infrastructure builds around these artists, results will come more quickly and easily. Hope you stick around and add your two cents.

P.S. Shout out to the folx over at Creative Loafing for shining light on the artists that are apparently invisible.