Harlem’s Black and Jewish Music Culture 1890-1930

December 14, 2012 by rness | 2 Comments

Currently on view at the Harlem restaurant, Settepani, is “Harlem’s Black and Jewish Music Culture 1890-1930,” an exhibit of framed sheet music that tells a story of collaborations between the neighboorhood’s black and Jewish composers, performers, and music publishers during the late-19th century into the 1930s. The exhibit illustrates “the rich musical life that was prevalent in Harlem in the late 1800s and early 1900s” and includes music performed by the Jewish singers Sophie Tucker and Belle Baker and written by black composers including Bert Williams, Eubie Blake, W. C. Handy and C. Luckeyth Roberts. The New York Times article “Harlem Music Culture, Black and Jewish” explains that as John T. Reddick, Harlem historian, was amassing his collection of ragtime, jazz, blues and patriotic marches, he was also was conducting research and discovering that many of the performers lived side by side on the streets of Harlem.

 

Two of Brown University Library’s sheet music collections are incredibly complementary to Reddick’s collection and exhibition. The African-American Sheet Music collection chronicles the rise of African-American musical theater. The works of African-American popular composers, including James Bland, Ernest Hogan, Bob Cole, James Reese Europe, and Will Marion Cook are a prominent feature of the music of this period. The Yiddish Sheet Music collection is focused on the Yiddish-language musical stage from the 1880s through the 1940s. Notable performers and theatrical personalities represented are Molly Picon, Bores Thomashefsky, David Kessler, Jacob Adler, Aaron Lebedeff, Abraham Goldfaden, Mrs. Regina Praeger, and Cantor Gershon Sirota, among many others. The sheet music covers are image-rich in cover art, often including strident racial images which have lost none of their power to shock. The covers often include scarce and otherwise unavailable portraits of African American and Jewish performers who were well-known in their day. The collections include references, on-line resources, and contextual materials, such as a slideshow illustrating “A Century of African American Music.”

“Harlem’s Black and Jewish Music Culture 1890-1930: Selections from the Sheet Music Collection of Harlem Historian John T. Reddick” is on view at Settepani until Febuary 28th. Reddick is guiding a cultural walking tour of historic Harlem which explores connections and highlights sites associated with Harlem’s Black and Jewish music culture until December 30th.