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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."

Over 800 Rare Pieces of Sheet Music on CD

Circa 1879-1910

IMAGES WILL LOAD MUCH FASTER FROM YOUR CD DRIVE THAN THEY DO HERE

Just a very small sample of the images included on the CD

(these are small thumbnail images see below for larger image examples)

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