Photo by Joseph Turner Keiley, 1898 (printed 1901). From the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Object number S/NPG.79.26 Native American (Yankton Dakota), Music, Education, Activism Zitkala-Ṡa (Red Bird / Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876-1938) Zitkala-Ṡá wrote several works exploring the tensions of holding Indigenous cultural identities, while operating within a hostile, assimilationist mainstream world. Her books …
Alan Jabbour in his office at the National Endowment for the Arts, Columbia Plaza, June 1974. Alan was the director for the new Folk Arts program. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer. Syrian American, Folklore, Music Alan Jabbour (1942-2019) Dr. Alan Jabbour’s public presentations, teaching, and the many initiatives he supervised, all championed cultural conservation, pluralism, ethnic …
Photo from University of California Press via Columbia College African American, Music, Archives Samuel A. Floyd, PhD (1937-2016) A music educator, archivist, and historian, Samuel A. Floyd Jr’s goal was to document and preserve the spectrum of Black music in written and performed forms to express African Diasporic cultures across genre, time period, geographic region, …
Photo from the Journal of Gospel Music African American, Music Horace Clarence Boyer, PhD (1935-2009) Horace Clarence Boyer was a performer/scholar of African American gospel music who educated others on the performance and compositional practices of the music tradition. Horace Clarence Boyer was born in 1935 in Winter Park, Florida, the fourth of Climmie L. …
Father-and-son mariachi musicians Roberto and Lorenzo Martinez. Arlington, Virginia, 2003. photograph by Alan Govenar Nuevo Mexicano, Music, Activism Roberto Martínez, Sr. (1929-2013) Roberto Martínez influenced generations of musicians through his songwriting, performances, and recordings, offering constant support and encouragement to younger musicians. Surrounded by traditional northern Nuevo Mexicano music, Martínez went on to form the …
Photo by Gordon Parks African American, Documentary Photography, Film, Music Gordon Parks (1912-2006) Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was born the youngest of fifteen children in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. His parents, Andrew Jackson Parks and Sarah Ross Parks, made a modest living through farming. After his mother’s death, Parks left home at age …
Image from The University of New Mexico Newsroom Mexican American, Folklore, Music, Lexicography Rubén Cobos (1911-2010) At age 16, Rubén Cobos and his penniless family arrived in Albuquerque from San Antonio, to say goodbye to his older sister Consuelo, a Presbyterian teacher who died from TB in a sanatorium a month later. Having escaped Piedras …
Esley Riddle in the 1960s African American, Music Lesley (Esley) Riddle (1905-1979) Lesley “Esley” Riddle was an African American Piedmont and bottleneck slide guitar picker and mandolin player, who was instrumental in collecting and teaching songs throughout African American, Appalachian Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina communities. Born in 1905 in Burnsville, North Carolina, Riddle grew …
Photo from The Peachite Vol. II, No. 2, Folk Festival Number, March 1944. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. African American, Music, Ethnography John Wesley Work III (1901-1967) John Wesley Work III was from a family of professional musicians and folklorists who taught at Fisk University for three generations. As a scholar, he not only …
Photo from The Peachite Vol. II, No. 2, Folk Festival Number, March 1944. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. African American, Music, Folklore, Education Willis Laurence James (1900-1966) Willis Laurence James was a musician, composer and music director, educator, concert violinist, lecturer, folklorist, and ethnomusicologist of African American religious and secular music traditions of the …