Adzinyah, A.K. ed.
Let Your Voice Be Heard!
Songs from Ghana and Zimbabwe. CT: World Music Press, 1984.
Nineteen unusual call-and-response songs, story songs, game songs and multipart songs from the Akan people of Ghana and the Shona of Zimbabwe.
Albertson, Chris.
Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues.
New York: Walter Kane & Son, 1975.
This book is a collection of thirty-three songs with vocal/piano arrangements that were sung by Bessie Smith, and includes a short biography.
Bebey, Francis.
African Music, A People’s Art.
New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1975.
This book is about African music; its forms, musicians, instruments and the place of music in the life of the people. It has many illustrations and an excellent discography.
Brooks, Gwendolyn.
Maud Martha.
Chicago: Third World Press, 1953.
A story about how an African American woman who had to face poverty, an unsatisfactory social life and the feeling of being trapped, was able to overcome her problems.
Brown, Sterling and Hughes. Langston, Selected Poems CT: Yale Teachers’ Seminar, 1997
Busnar, Gene.
The Rhythm and Blues Story.
New York: Julian Messner, 1985. The times, sounds and the people that inspired the music of today; from the slave songs to rock and roll, Motown and to Soul and Rap.
Cohn, Lawrence, ed.
Nothing But the Blues: the Music and the Musicians.
New York: Abbeville Press, 1993.
A collection of expert overviews on the major aspects of the blues by different writers, including its roots, the country tradition, women and the blues, the gospel tradition, urban blues, East Coast Piedmont styles, white country blues, and the blues revival of the 60’s.
Cone, James.
The Spirituals and the Blues.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972. A history and criticism of the spirituals and blues.
Ferris, William.
Blues from the Delta.
Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978.
Recordings of, and interviews with, Delta blues musicians from 19678-1976 explain how records and a new generation of blues singers were reshaping earlier blues songs. The singers explained how they composed lyrics for performances.
Handy, W.C. ed.
Blues: an Anthology.
New York: Collier MacMillan Publishers, 1975.
Fifty three of the very best blues compiled by W. C. Handy, called the “Father of the Blues.” They are arranged for voice, piano and guitar.
Kersey, Dr. Robert E. Ed.
Just Five Plus Two
. USA: Belwin Mills Corp., 1975 Over seventy American folk songs with lyrics designed to promote a systematic introduction of tonal configuration from the basic pentatonic scale to the complete diatonic scale.
Lomas, Alan.
The Folk Songs of North America
. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1960.
Over three hundred folk songs with musical notation and lyrics, representing the north, the southern mountains and backwoods, the west, and the negro south, and including their history and related practices.
Megill, Donald D., and Demory, Richard S.
Introduction to Jazz History.
New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993.
This book is a cohesive introduction to jazz by an examination of its’ history from the beginning to the present, and concentrating on two specific areas—an exposition of jazz styles as they evolved, and biographical sketches of significant musicians.
Mann, Woody.
The Blues Fakebook.
New York/Paris/London: Oak Publications, 1995.
This book is a collection of tunes, lyrics, and rare photographs of eighty years of blues performers, representing many styles and composers.
Morrison, Toni.
Jazz.
New York: Plume/Penguin Publishers, 1993.
This is a story of a triangle of passion, jealousy, murder and redemption, of sex and spirituality, of slavery and liberation, of country and city, of being male and female and African American. Its lyric style plays on elemental themes, as in the blues and jazz styles of music.
Murray, Albert.
Train Whistle Guitar.
Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1974. This novel is about coming of age in the south in the 1920’s, and resonates with the cadences and idioms of African American speech and music.
Randel, D.M. ed.
The New Harvard Dictionary of Music.
Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1986
Seminar:
The Blues Impulse,
Yale Teachers Institutes. Dr. Maurice Wallace, 1997.
Spirituals and Gospels.
New York: Wise Publications, 1975.
Fifty great spirituals and gospels together for the first time; arranged for piano vocal/easy organ, plus an organ registration page.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992.
Titon, Jeff Todd.
Early Downhome Blues.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
This is a musical and cultural analysis of the early blues, based on recordings from 1926-1930, interviews, recollections of singers and audiences and workers in the record industry.
Toomer, Jean.
Cane.
New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1988
This book was originally published in 1923, and is considered a principal literary masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance. It is an innovative literary work—part drama, part poetry and part fiction.
