Publications

With the Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African musicians, Eileen Southern (1920–2002), who served on the faculty of Harvard University and before 1971 was known primarily as a Renaissance scholar, created a long-needed resource and a major research tool. It is the first single comprehensive volume of its kind that "attempts to correlate materials" concerning Afro-American and African professional musicians "from a historical perspective" (Preface). It contains information on well over 1,500 figures, the earliest being Sebastian Rodriguez, born ca. 1642, an African drummer who was active in Mexico and died in El Paso; the birth cutoff date is 1945 (with some obligatory exceptions, such as Kathleen Battle and Wynton Marsalis). Coverage is not limited to the United States and Africa. Sixty-five musicians from Canada, South America, and Europe are included as well. This is not another dictionary confined to jazz musicians, gospel performers, or those engaged in minstrelsy; it is a survey of the lives of black men and women who have contributed to any aspect of musical history, and as such an enormously useful reference book.