The Center for Black Music Research Collection contains materials that reflect many areas of Black music including collections from composers, ethnomusicologists, music researchers, music journalists, and also scores, published music, and audiovisual collections across all genres. These collection guides, or finding aids, provide access to materials held in archival special collections. The guide describes the organization and offers content information so researchers can discover relevant information.
Many musical works listed in these guides are handwritten; those listed with a publisher's name are printed. Please check the guides for more information.
Additional guides will be added as they are completed..
Please contact archives@colum.edu with questions.
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Guide to the Caleb Dube Collection
Columbia College Chicago
Caleb Dube was an ethnomusicology scholar and teacher who studied blues music through an anthropological framework. The Caleb Dube Collection primarily contain general research in the fields of cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology, along with more narrow research linking these two fields of study to Chicago, and the blues.
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Guide to the Charles 'Chuck' Suber Collection
Charles Suber
The Charles 'Chuck' Suber collection reflects his activities as the First Chorus columnist for Down Beat magazine, his work toward restoring funding to Chicago Public Schools for music and arts programs, and his interview by Richard Wang recalling memories and musicians from his life.
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Guide to the Charles E. Hamm Collection
Columbia College Chicago
Charles E. Hamm was a musicologist, composer, author, and educator, The collection centers around his research trips to South Africa in the early 1980s to study and collect materials for is unfinished book on the history of jive. Present in the collection are notes, clippings and other research materials on South African popular music and South African radio, including a manuscript of a book on township jive.
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Guide to the Cheryl A. Wall Collection of Margaret Bonds and Florence Price Manuscript Scores
Margaret Bonds and Florence Price
Cheryl A. Wall was a literary critic and English professor at Rutgers University who donated three manuscript scores to the CBMR – Troubled Water by Margaret Bonds with a handwritten autobiographical sketch by the composer on the back and two works by Florence Price, Negro Fantasy and Concerto in One Movement for three pianos. The Bonds score was given to Cheryl Wall by the composer and the two Price scores belonged to her aunt, Nannie Strayhorn Reid, a classical pianist and teacher in Chicago, Illinois.
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Guide to the Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson Collection
Columbia College Chicago
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was a composer, conductor, and pianist who composed classical, jazz, and popular music containing elements of spirituals, folk music, and blues. He was founding member and associate conductor of the Symphony for the New World, and had a long career as a composer includes activities in classical music, jazz, and film and television. The collection consists of scores, a scrapbook, programs, and publicity about his career from 1949 to 2004.