Guide to BIPOC musicians and related literature

The impact of Afro-Brazilian culture, both inside of Brazil and abroad, has been immense, particularly in the area of popular culture. Audiences around the world are familiar with it through the work of popularizers such as Carmen Miranda or films such as the 1959 classic Black Orpheus. However a much richer and more complex story lies behind these popular images, one that spans from the long slave trade that flourished in Brazil between 1538 and the 1850s to the more recent rise of urban black and cultural nationalist movements of the 1970s and beyond.This less well-known history is the subject of John Gray's latest bibliography. While primarily about music the literature it documents reflects on all aspects of black life and culture in Brazil from language and religion to gender relations and race.

Gray, John. Afro-Brazilian Music: A Bibliographic Guide. Nyack, NY: African Diaspora Press, 2014.

In spite of its relatively small size Cuba has had an inordinately large musical influence both inside the Caribbean and abroad. From the rhumba (son) craze of the 1920s and '30s to mambo and cha-cha-cha in the 1950s and '60s and the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon of the late '90s, Cuba has been central to popular music developments throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, the United States and Europe. Unfortunately, no one has ever attempted to survey the extensive literature on the island's music, in particular the vernacular contributions of its Afro-Cuban population. This unprecedented bibliographic guide attempts to do just that. Ranging from the 19th century to early 2009 it offers almost 5000 entries on all of the island's main genre families, e.g. Cancion Cubana, Danzon, Son, Rumba, and Sacred Musics (Santeria, Palo, Abakua, and Arara), as well as such recent developments as timba, rap and regueton. It also provides sections on Afro-Cuban musical instruments, the music's influence abroad, and a biographical and critical component covering the lives and careers of more than 800 artists and ensembles.

Despite the influence of African American music and study as a worldwide phenomenon, no comprehensive and fully annotated reference tool currently exists that covers the wide range of genres. This much needed bibliography fills an important gap in this research area and will prove an indispensable resource for librarians and scholars studying African American music and culture.

A companion to the author¿s earlier volume Jamaican Popular Music, this landmark new work helps fill a major gap in the reference literature. For the first time ever it offers students and researchers an in-depth guide to the large body of materials available on masquerade and popular music traditions of the English-speaking Caribbean. Comprised of some 3400 annotated entries it documents a literature, both popular and scholarly, that now spans more than 85 years and ranges across disciplines as diverse as social and cultural history, anthropology, ethnomusicology, literature and economics.
The book"s main focus is on three tightly intertwined topics: Carnival, calypso and steel pan, and how each has evolved, both inside of Trinidad, their most important hub, and abroad in the large West Indian enclaves of New York, London and Toronto. The Carnival side of this trinity, a critical showcase for the region"s music and dance styles, is treated comprehensively. This includes an unprecedented level of detail on each of the four major Caribbean Carnivals,Trinidad Carnival, Brooklyn's Labor Day Carnival, London's Notting Hill Carnival, and Toronto's Caribana; as well as important precursors such as Harlem's West Indian Day Parades of the 1940s and '50s and the early London Carnivals organized by Claudia Jones. Carnival's musical aspects, both calypso and steel pan, are also covered in depth. In the case of calypso that encompasses all of its various forms, from its antecedents in kalinda stick-fighting to the "jump and wave" soca of today. A multitude of contemporary offshoots (e.g., binghi, chutney soca, ragga soca, ringbang, and gospelypso) are also documented in full. Numerous other sources help illuminate calypso's central role as a vehicle for social and political commentary and its perspective on issues as diverse as immigration, race and gender relations, and national identity. Steel pan, calypso's cousin, is discussed from the music's introduction on the regional and international scene in the 1950s to its more recent role in the music programs of North America and Great Britain. A substantial Biographical and Critical Studies section documents the contributions made to these traditions by almost 600 individual performers and ensembles.
Citations span from 1852 to 2012, with the bulk having been published between the 1930s and 2012. They encompass musical and cultural analyses, ethnographies, oral histories, popular histories and reportage along with a wealth of archival, audio-visual, and electronic resources. The book concludes with an extensive reference section that includes a list of Sources Consulted, a guide to relevant Libraries and Archives, two appendices, and separate Author and Subject Indexes.

Gray, John. Creative Improvised Music: An International Bibliography of the Jazz Avant-garde, 1959-Present. Nyack, NY: African Diaspora Press, 2019.
Creative Improvised Music picks up where Fire music left off, focusing on the literature on American free jazz and European free improvisation published since the early 1990s, as well as older works and archival material not included in its predecessor. Users will find information on the music’s pioneers as well as hundreds of other improviser-composers, ensembles, and collectives that have emerged in recent years.

The volume includes a detailed subject index that offers a key to all of the book’s sections and a way to quickly pinpoint citations by topic, geographical location, personal name, and instrument.

The inaugural volume in ADP's Black Music Reference Series, From Vodou to Zouk is a landmark bibliography documenting vernacular music traditions of Haiti and the French-speaking Caribbean. Its nearly 1300 entries cover all of the French-speaking islands, in particular Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana, as well as their overseas enclaves in France, the United States and Canada. Most works are in English, French, and Spanish, with the bulk having been published between the 1930s and 2008. Of particular note is the strong representation of sources from the Caribbean and France not found anywhere else. A scholarly foreword by ethnomusicologist Julian Gerstin helps to contextualize the history of the region and its vibrant musical legacy.

Based on 15 years of research Jamaican Popular Music offers nearly 3700 entries on the evolution of the island's commercial music scene from the calypso-like mento of the late-1940s and 50s to the roots reggae revolution of the 1970s and the dancehall boom of the 1980s and beyond. It also provides in-depth coverage of the music's diffusion to more than 51 countries abroad along with a biographical section documenting the careers of some 800 individual artists, producers, dancers, filmmakers, and others. Sources range from fanzine interviews and newspaper reportage to scholarly theses and journal articles published in Jamaica, Australia, Asia, Europe, Africa, and North and South America. Much of this material is cited here for the first time based on the autho'ss analytic indexing of some 150 arts, music, humanities and social science journals.

The result is a ground-breaking effort offering insights into all facets of the local, regional and transnational impact of Jamaican popular music.

Meadows, Eddie S. Jazz Scholarship and Pedagogy: A Research and Information Guide. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006.

"Jazz: Research and Pedagogy" is the third edition of an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites in the field of jazz. Since the publication of the 2nd edition in 1995, the quantity and quality of books on jazz research, performance, and teaching materials have increased. Although the 1995 book was the most comprehensive annotated jazz bibliography published to that date, several books on research, performance, and teaching materials were omitted. In addition, given the proliferation of new books in all jazz areas since 1995, the need for a new, comprehensive, and annotated reference book on jazz is apparent. Multiply indexed, this book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared in the field over the last decade.

For more than a quarter century African Music, the author's acclaimed 1991 bibliography, has been a standard reference work on the subject. Now, at long last, we have its companion. Comprised of entirely new material, Music of Sub-Saharan Africa offers users a comprehensive guide to the enormous literature which has emerged on sub-Saharan music and dance in recent decades.

This much expanded and revised edition is organized into five easy to navigate sections—General Works; Musical Instruments; Regional Studies; African Music Abroad; and Biographical and Critical Studies—allowing users to quickly access the information they need. It also includes a detailed subject index which offers a key to all of the book's sections and another way to quickly pinpoint citations by topic, genre, instrument type, geographical location or ethnic group.

This publication is not a standard catalogue. Part A comprises five invited papers, each of which touches on a topic directly or indirectly related to the music of China in the twentieth century Barbara Mittler provides a brief account of C. C. Liu's life and his researches; Helen Woo writes on the significance of The C. C. Liu Collection; Chan Hing-yan traces and criticizes some of the main trends of the modern Chinese orchestra over the past 60 years; Yu Siu-wah anatomizes Sun Wenming's Liu Bo Qu, painstakingly going through every minute detail to demonstrate the musical logic of this seemingly humble masterpiece; and Harrison Ryker scrutinizes the issue of polytonality, a strategy seen by many Chinese composers in the last 50 years as a way to enhance "Chineseness" in their compositions, though Ryker, by and large, uses works of European composers to explicate his arguments. The inclusion of these articles will no doubt elevate the scholastic value of the current publication. Part B consists of the catalogue of library materials related to new music of China donated by Liu Ching-chih to the University of Hong Kong.