Black music historian

Jet, Dec 17, 2001

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Caption: BLACK MUSIC HISTORIAN: Acclaimed actor stager Harry Belafonte takes a break at a New York recording studio and is pleased that the compilation he began some 40 years ago, The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music, was finally released this year. The project, which the 74-year-old performer launched in 1961 and worked on for 10 years, is an audio history of early Black music that spans four centuries, from tribal chants of African clans to the blues of Black Americans. Released on BMG's Buddha Records, the recordings are a five-CD boxed set. The project almost never saw the light of day after it got lost in the shuffle when RCA, the record label that was backing the project, went through changes and was purchased by BMG in 1986. Several years passed before a vice president of BMG's Buddha Records discovered the recordings and set about the work of getting the music released.