Black Europe

Fully indexed and lavishly illustrated with over 2000 images, mostly in colour, Black Europe includes biographies of hundreds of individuals – politicians, performers, actors and entertainers – from the United States, Africa, the Caribbean and Europe who were active in Europe. Their biographies are illustrated with a treasure trove of documents, official photos and family pictures, as well as contemporary sheet music, concert posters and promotional flyers and postcards.

 

The majority of the rare sound recordings included with the book are made available for the first time in a modern format, and will provide fresh insights into black entertainment, the prehistory of jazz, the colonial era, and African languages and cultures.

Original recording sheets and hundreds of pictures showing cylinders and gramophone record labels illustrate the beginnings of the 20th century record business.

More than one hundred private and public archives from around the world have made their holdings available. The majority of the non-commercial recordings comes from the Archives de la parole (Paris), the Musée d’ethnologie (Paris), the Phonogramm-Archiv (Berlin), and the Humboldt Universtät (Berlin). These include some 750 cylinders and discs that have never been available before outside the respective research archives.

Add to that the „commercially“ issued ethnic recordings that have apparently survived only in single copies, such as those by the Pygmies from the Scarborough Museum Trust, West African religious and ethnic music from EMI Archives Trust, and Ethiopian recordings from a family estate. About half the boxed set is devoted to ethnic recordings unknown even to dedicated ethnologists.

 

The other half is devoted to African-American music on commercial records found mostly in private archives, notably the Berresford, Lotz, and Schmauder collections, complimented by images provided by Tony Hagert Vernacular Music Research.