African American Song

Notes, Sept, 2007 by Edward Komara

African American Song. Published by Alexander Street Press. http://aamu.classical.com (accessed November 2006-March 2007). [Requires an audio-enabled computer with an Internet connection. Microsoft Windows users need Windows 98 or later; Internet Explorer 6 or higher, Netscape 8 or higher, Firefox 1.0 or higher, or Mozilla Suite 1.7.11 or higher; Macromedia Flash Player 7 or higher; and Windows Media Player 10. Macintosh users need Apple OS10 or higher; Safari 2.0 or higher or Netscape 7.2; and Macromedia Flash Player 7 or higher. Library subscriptions begin at $995 annually for three simultaneous users.]

African American Song was introduced in January 2006 by Alexander Street Press (ASP) as an addition to its online music databases Classical Music Library (reviewed in Notes, 60, no. 4 [June 2004]: 1009-1012 and 61, no. 4 [June 2005]: 1057-1059) and Smithsonian Global Sound (reviewed in Notes, 62, no. 3 [March 2006]: 776-780). Many college and university interdisciplinary programs in music, folklore, American studies, and African American studies have pressing and immediate needs for audio resources, yet they often lack the money to purchase them, or to catalog them after acquisition. To consider the suitability of this resource for such programs, this review will explore depth and breadth of repertoire, quality of performance, usability, sound quality, and value. During the course of this review, I will try to identify some basic characteristics of African American song, especially in contrast to classical music, which may be more familiar to many Notes readers. I will address the content scope in its own right, and then appraise the service's ability to provide the music.

Projected to contain 50,000 tracks, the site currently has approximately 17,400 tracks, that is, distinct performances of individual songs. Through the end of March 2007, the content has come from two labels, Document Records (16,222 tracks) and Rounder Records (1,215 tracks). Document was founded as a blues reissue label in the mid-1980s in Vienna by Johnny Parth. In 1990, Parth established his CD catalog with the aim of issuing the "Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order" of every pre-1943 ("Prewar") blues and black sacred recording act, except those like Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith whose music was already reissued by Sony/Columbia and other major labels. The audio quality of Document compact discs varied from track to track, depending on the transfer qualities on the tape copies sent by contributing collectors. The CD booklet notes drew their discographical data from the third edition of Robert M. W. Dixon and John Godrich's Blues and Gospel Records 1902-1943 (Chigwell: Storyville, 1982); the fourth edition with the contributions of Howard Rye published by Oxford University Press did not appear until 1997. By the end of 1998, the label had largely achieved its goal, having issued over 600 compact discs, and citing in its printed catalog the issues from other labels that would gather the rest of prewar blues and black sacred recordings listed in Dixon, Godrich, and Rye. In 2000, Gary Atkinson acquired Document and moved it to Scotland, adding new issues, and refurbishing the sound of older and more popular Document recordings with new transfers. African American Song appears to have all or nearly all of the blues and black sacred series, since 16,222 tracks would fill about 650 CDs of twenty-five tracks each, and the Document Web site (http://www.document-records.com/) lists approximately 750 discs in its catalog (sixty-four of which are devoted to early white country music, and hence not included in African American Song). Therefore African American Song will have nearly all of prewar blues and black sacred music as originally recorded and issued by eighteen recording firms.

The remainder of the current content comes from Rounder Records (http://www.rounder.com/), which has been active since 1970, releasing new albums by elder musicians and new talent alike, with the occasional reissue. Its original scope was folk music, field recordings, and what today would be called "roots music." The choices from Rounder recordings for African American Song are less comprehensive in range, but more select within each genre, and more recent than the historically-oriented catalog of Document. Indeed, some Rounder albums are given incomplete, as acknowledged with the message "The following track list may not be complete as it excludes tracks that do not conform to the editorial selection criteria of African American Song." Nonetheless, the chosen selections help to expand the scope of coverage, chronologically from 1943 to the present, and geographically from the southern U.S. to the northern and western U.S. and beyond, to the Caribbean, to embrace blues, soul, prison work songs, and reggae, among other styles. In addition to recordings issued originally on the Rounder label, there are those selected from its subsidiaries and associates Heartbeat, Bullseye, and Flying Fish.