This exhibition is an in-depth survey of the African American roots of popular music and show business in the United States. On display are significant and visually arresting printed artifacts of the shared African- and European-based musical tradition established in colonial America, a cultural synthesis that continues to shape our nation’s identity. These first flowerings of the trans-oceanic dynamic triggered by the African slave trade, sometimes referred to as the “Black Atlantic,” played a foundational role in the development of jazz, rhythm & blues, and rock ‘n roll, and initiated a set of structural parameters and comedic archetypes that have become hallmarks of the American performing arts in theater, film, radio and television. The 19th- and early 20th-century books, pieces of sheet music, and other ephemera included in the exhibit are drawn from the personal collection of Exhibition Curator, John Davis (Brown, Class of 1979) and the holdings of the Brown University Library. Mr. Davis’ archive of rare 19th-century printed musical African Americana, is the bedrock of his career as a concert pianist devoted to works influenced by black culture of the American Deep South.