A Preliminary Bibliographical Guide to Periodical Literature for Black Music Research

of a comprehensive guide to periodical literature in the field before the 1950s. Poole's Index to nineteenth-century periodical literature virtually ignores the topic of black music, as does the Reader's Guide. Though The Music Index and RILM have attempted to address this omission in recent years, their indices access the contents of only a few select periodicals published since the middle of our century and are far from complete. Bibliographic control of periodical literature in black music will undoubtedly come in the next few decades as more detailed research of the field continues. The problem of gathering this data will be more complex than indexing identifiable music journals because of the manner in which information about black music has traditionally been disseminated by the American press since the early 1800s. For example, only five periodicals to date have been identified as journals devoted specifically to black American music research.1 They are (1) The Musical Messenger, black America's first music journal, founded ca. 1886 by Amelia Tilghman in Montgomery, Alabama; (2) The Negro Music Journal, founded in 1902 in our nation's capital by J. Hillary Taylor; (3) Living Blues, published in Chicago since 1970 by Jim and Amy O'Neil;2 (4) The Black Perspective in Music, established in New York in 1971 by Eileen and Joseph Southern; and (5) Black Music Research Journal, founded at Fisk University in 1980 by Samuel Floyd and transferred to Columbia College in 1983. Each of these publications has contributed pioneering research to the field and covers a broad spectrum of topics. Of these five publications only Living Blues, The Black Perspective in

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Black music · Literature · Movement (music · Visual arts · History · Music History and Culture · Race, History, and American Society · Theater, Performance, and Music History