800 Rare Pieces of
African American Sheet Music on
CD-ROM
Circa 1850-1920
800 COMPLETE pieces of sheet music on
a Single CD presented in a easy to use format!
The CD contains ALL 800 pieces of sheet
music, there is nothing more to buy and you do not
need an Internet connection to use the CD, it is completely self
contained.
(see Detailed Description and sample images
Below)
All Of The Sheet Music On This Cd Is Public Domain
And Can Be Performed Royality Free!
"This collection consists of 800 pieces of African-American
sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920."
"The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum
black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of
the same period. Numerous titles are associated with the novel and the play
Uncle Tom's Cabin."
"Civil War period music includes songs about African-American
soldiers and the plight of the newly emancipated slave."
"Post-Civil War music reflects the problems of Reconstruction
and the beginnings of urbanization and the northern migration of African
Americans. African-American popular composers include James Bland, Ernest
Hogan, Bob Cole, James Reese Europe, and Will Marion Cook. Twentieth century
titles feature many photographs of African-American musical performers, often
in costume. Sheet music of this period further documents the emergence of
African-American performers and musical troupes, first in blackface minstrelsy,
and later at the beginnings of the African-American musical stage in the
late 1890s."
"The turn of the century period includes rags and the so-called
"coon" songs, whose strident racial images have lost none of their power
to shock. Twentieth century titles feature many photographs of African-American
musical performers, often in costume. The music associated with World War
I depicts the African-American soldier, and the period ends with works that
point to the age of jazz, blues, and the lively African-American musical
theatre of the 1920s."
" Particularly significant and important in the Collection
are the visual depictions of African-Americans which provide much information
about racial attitudes over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
For example, current discussions of the perceptions of African-American men
find historical models and sources in the images of these men on sheet music
covers for the entire period. Two archetypes, the rural, uneducated plantation
"darky" figure (Jim Crow) and the urban, flashily dressed, fast-talking figure
(Zip Coon) can be traced through sheet music covers and lyrics from the 1820s
(before the period established for this project) through the 1920s. The ways
in which these archetypes evolve in the public mind are clearly demonstrated
in the sheet music. The plantation "darky" comes to include the "Uncle Tom"
character, the "contraband," the migrant worker, the sharecropper; the urban
figure emerges ominously as the "bully" in the post-Reconstruction era, and
is also seen as the gambler, the cake-walker, the "swell". All these notions
are clearly documented in the sheet music and afford much material for
investigation."
" The sheet music covers often include scarce and otherwise
unavailable portraits of performers well-known in their day, including many
African-American performers. Included are lithographic portraits of Cordelia
Howard, the first "Little Eva" in the play of Uncle Tom's Cabin, reproduced
from a Joseph Brady daguerrotype; vignette portraits of the well-known
African-American composer James A. Bland, best known for "Carry Me Back to
Old Virginny"; and halftone portaits of such major figures of the
turn-of-the-century African-American musical theatre as Bert Williams and
George Walker, Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson, and Aida Overton Walker,
great stars of the period, and many others. The transition from minstrelsy
to the forms of the African-American musical theatre is clearly depicted
in this music. Nowhere is this more evident than in the covers that depict
African-American performers both in character in the old minstrelsy costumes
and as themselves in conventional modern evening dress."
"The inclusion in the project of not only the covers but digitized
images of the musical notation and the lyrics means that researchers may
examine, for example, the evolution of the "cake-walk" through the numerous
versions present. Further, it is possible to explore the use of dialect and
the evolution of slang terms in lyrics spanning seventy years. Researchers
may compare the cover depictions of African-American related dance with the
descriptions in the lyrics, illuminating an often elusive aspect of culture,
and will be able to study the compositional techniques of African-American
composers such as Ernest Hogan, James A. Bland, Sam Lucas, Dan Lewis, James
Reese Europe, and Will Marion Cook. Perhaps most importantly, it will allow
researchers to trace the history of themes such as religious beliefs, the
status of women, attitudes toward multiracial individuals (particularly women),
the impact of northern migration and urbanization on southern rural workers,
among many other topics reflected in this form."
"This digital collection places before the scholarly community,
students at all levels, and the general public a significant body of material
that illuminates in a direct, vivid, and dramatic way many aspects of American
culture and society from the 1850s to the 1920s, including theatre, music,
and dance, publishing history, music printing and illustration, as well as
a variety of social concerns and events from abolitionism and the Civil War,
the problems of Reconstruction, urbanization, the African-American soldier
in three wars, and the social position of and attitudes toward African Americans
throughout a critical period in history."
PLEASE NOTE!!!!!
This CD is a record of the historic past and
should be viewed as such.
These historical documents reflect the attitudes,
perspectives, and beliefs of different times.
These documents may contain materials and language
offensive to some readers.
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