…die Fülle des zusammengetragenen Materials verdient eine Verbeugung – und in so geschlossener Form hat man die schwarze Musik in Europa noch nie verfolgen können. Diese Box ist ein Meilenstein in der Geschichte jener Musik, die wir heute so gerne und oft auch schnöde einfach als Schlager oder Pop bezeichnen. Hier liegen die Wurzeln unserer Unterhaltungsmusik, hier hat alles begonnen.

 

Uwe Golz, Deutschlandradio Kultur, 09.12.2013

Just a few words to express my admiration and give you my congratulations for this wonderful work! I’ve received the heavy box some days ago but I’m finishing a contribution to a Festschrift and will not have the time to examine it carefully for a time. I’ve just looked some pages and it’s amazing.

All the best from Valencia

 

Jorge García

I am stunned! We just received our Black Europe set yesterday. I have, obviously, not been able to sit down with it yet, but we all hungrily page through it. Congratulations on the publication of this *huge* project!

We are preparing now the fall issue of CBMR Digest, which I hope to finish editing by the end of next week. I can certainly use the copy you provided earlier (below), but do you have any additional promotional materials that you can send me, including images that we can publish with your permission? Do you have reviews that we can link to, etc.?

I hope to have lunch with Sam Floyd next week, and I can’t wait to take the set with me to show him.

Again, I am stunned,

 

Morris A. Phibbs, Deputy Director, Center for Black Music Research, 14.11.2013

Subject: Fwd: BLACK EUROPE

I have just received #147/500 of the new Black Europe production. It is quite astonishing. (I can hardly lift it ! ). With 44 discs ! and color photographs ! and informative biographies ! Thank you so much. It will take me many hours to appreciate all that is here.

I am particularly impressed with the African material which is all new to me. Also to read about and hear Afro-Am artists who are merely dim legends until now.Thank you again, Tony Hagert

Here’s more about the African material from one who knows it in some depth.

For those who have not kept abreast of this project, please see the attached announcement ( scroll down to very end ). That’s TWO books plus the 44 discs !

Some of the African material is indeed outstanding and in remarkably good sound quality considering their age. The Madagascan valiha, the Senegalese cora, the Baule flutes, the Pygmy folk songs, the Congolese speaking drums, the Amharic masinko, the Jaunde xylophone, etc etc.
Among the African-Americans my favourite is Pete Hampton, a name completely forgotten in the US (as are almost all the others brought to life again, with the exception of Josephine Baker)

 

Thornton Hagert, Vernacular Music Research

Congratulations to Jeffery Green, Rainer E. Lotz, Howard Rye and their team of contributors on the release of Black Europe, a 44-CD, two-book set devoted to „the sounds and images of black people in Europe pre-1927.“ To even conceive of such an undertaking is impressive; to have realized it so vividly is quite breathtaking.

 

Mark (David) Miller. Canadian writer, photographer

I received this set last week – couldn’t really afford it but bought it for myself as an early Xmas present. A truly remarkable piece of work. The music on the CDs is one thing but the books that go with it are just incredible. Wonderful to see all the ephemera. The people behind it should win the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for historic music reissues. I look forward to volume 2

 

Colin Bray, Director, Jazz Oracle Record Company, Toronto, Canada

Got one for our library, and I got one too. This is a REMARKABLE, GROUNDBREAKING, BEAUTIFUL, BREATHTAKING set. It will take years to digest, but what a sumptuous, fulfilling feast. GET SOMEBODY OR SOME INSTITUTION NEAR YOU TO GRAB THIS UP BEFORE THEY ARE ALL GONE. ONLY 500 LUCKY PLACES IN THE WORLD. Hmmm–I was restraining my enthusiasm!

 Steve Tracy, Professor of Afro-American Studies , University of Cincinnati

In this day of age i am glad to see this. not enough has been done about pre jazz and early jazz of African and African diaspora music. Fela Kuti’s grandfather, for instance, has his recorded performances here, this is far more than a „Black Jazz in Europe“ set – even though I, for one would want EVERY record made of black jazz musicians in Europe before 1945. I will buy it when I move back east – it is THAT essential. Thank thou Rainer for working on such an important project, now what is the progress on the Briggs and Wooding sets that STILL have not been issued that you have worked so much on.

 

Yves Francois, trumpeter and jazz band leader, Chicago

I received my copy of Black Europe last week and was more than somewhat overwhelmed by it all.  I have only managed to play nine CDs so far and have been browsing the books in a totally random fashion.Given time I will be reading every word of the text.

What a fantastic document you have produced – a piece of musical and social history research that will probably remain the last word on the subject for many years to come, if not always.The amount of research in to lives and works of these, mostly, obscure artist is mind-boggling.

Congratulations on a superb work that should be in every public library and university that claims an interest in Black history and culture. You have right to feel a warm glow of self-satisfaction.

I will be submitting a review to For The Record magazine, although it will be aimed at a non-specialist readership, rather than one with a deep interest in the subject.

 

Bill Dean-Myatt, author, Scottish Discography