Research Guides: Music: BIPOC Musicians

Discover BIPOC Music

Freely available resources

***Institute for Composer Diversity*** (highly recommended)
- Composer Diversity Database - search profiles of composers from underrepresented groups by facets like ethnicity, gender identity, dates, genres, etc.
- Works Diversity Database - search wind band, orchestral, and art song repertoire
Africa Diaspora Music Project - a listing of over 2,000 pieces--primarily focused on opera, art song, and orchestral music--by composers of the African diaspora (primarily West and Central Africa)
African American Art Song Alliance list of Black composers - a large list of Black composers who regularly composed art songs
Black and Brown Composers from Latin America - a list of composers from Latin America who lived prior to 1800. Arranged by nationality.
Black Music History Library - a regularly updated, extensive bibliography of writings about black music in many different genres
Center for Black Music Research browse list of creators - a large list of Black composers with materials represented in the Center for Black Music Research
Chamber Music America: Composers Equity Project - a large list of Black, Latinx, Asian, Middle Eastern, Native American, female, and gender non-conforming composers
Inclusive Early Music - a living bibliography maintained by members of the American Musicological Society focused on music before 1600, but inclusive of music through 1750
Music by Black Composers - a site with several interesting offerings including composer directories, a bibliography of writings, and a few specific repertoire lists
- Living Composers Directory
- Historic Composers Directory - particularly unique amongst many of the resources readily available
Music of Asian America Research Center - amongst other things, offers a large bibliography of materials related to Asian American music, as well as biographical essays
National Association of Native American Music - an organization dedicated to preserving the past and promoting the future of Native American music
- National Music Archive list - a massive list of all the recordings of music by Native American musicians in this association's archive

UCI Libraries Resources

African American Music Reference This link opens in a new window
Contains essays and liner notes related to blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.

Includes books like the following: African American Music, A Chronology: 1619-1995;
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America; The Color of Jazz: Race and Representation in Postwar American Culture; The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters; Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age

Black Classical Musicians and Composers, 1500-2000 by Rodreguez King-Dorset
ISBN: 9781476669762
Publication Date: 2019-04-24
Covering the lives and works of such composers as Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Scott Joplin and Margaret Alison Bonds, this book examines the black classical music legacy with profiles of key artists who made valuable contributions that impacted classical music from the 16th through the 21st century
Latin American Classical Composers by Martha Furman Schleifer (Editor)
ISBN: 9780810888715
Publication Date: 2016-01-16
Now in its third edition, Latin American Classical Composers: A Biographical Dictionary provides a singular English-language resource for biographical information on hundreds of composers from Central and South America and the Hispanic Caribbean. Painstakingly gathered from a wide variety of sources, the information updates and expands previous editions and fills in the gaps left by the other major English-language music dictionaries and encyclopedias.Entries provide biographical data comprising full names, birth and death dates and locations, background, education, and training, as well as selective works lists more than 2,300 composers.
Encyclopedia of African American Music by Emmett G. Price (Editor); Tammy L. Kernodle (Editor); Horace Maxille (Editor)
ISBN: 9780313341991
Publication Date: 2010-12-17
Showcases all facets of African American music, including folk, religious, concert, and popular styles of today. Illuminates the profound role that African American music has played in American cultural history.
International Dictionary of Black Composers by Samuel A. Floyd (Editor)
ISBN: 1884964273
Publication Date: 1999-04-01
*ebook*
Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: an Encyclopedic History by Malena Kuss (Editor)
ISBN: 0292702981
Publication Date: 2004-10-01

An annotated bibliography of Korean music by Bang-song Song
Bibliography of Black Music by Dominique-Rene De Lerma
ISBN: 0313213402
Publication Date: 1981-04-30
Black Music in the United States by Samuel A. Floyd; Marsha J. Reisser
ISBN: 0527301647
Publication Date: 1983-05-01
Chinese music : an annotated bibliography by Frederic Lieberman
Choral Music by Afro-American Composers by Evelyn D. White
ISBN: 081081451X
Publication Date: 1981-08-01
The Choral Music of Latin America by Suzanne Spicer Tiemstra
ISBN: 9780313282089
Publication Date: 1992-03-19
Creative Improvised Music by John Gray
ISBN: 9780984413485
Publication Date: 2019-07-15
An Index to African-American Spirituals for the Solo Voice by Kathleen A. Abromeit
ISBN: 0313305773
Publication Date: 1999-01-30
Music by Black Women Composers by Helen Walker-Hill
ISBN: 0929911040
Publication Date: 1995-03-01
Music of Sub-Saharan Africa by John Gray
ISBN: 9780984413478
Publication Date: 2018-04-03
String Music of Black Composers by Aaron Horne
ISBN: 9780313279386
Publication Date: 1991-10-16
Biographical Background and a Bibliography of Composers of African Ancestry and Their String Music-African Composers-African American Composers-Afro-European Composers-Afro-Latino Composers-String Music Index-Unaccompanied String Solos-Two Instruments-Three Instruments-Four Instruments-Five Instruments (Strings with Other Instruments)-Six Instruments (Strings with Other Instruments)-Seven Instruments (Strings with Other Instruments)-Eight Instruments (Strings with Other Instruments)-Nine Instruments (Strings with Other Instruments)-Ten Instruments (Strings with Other Instruments)-Eleven Instruments (Strings with Other Instruments)-Twelve Instruments (Strings with Other Instruments)-String Instruments with Woodwinds-String with Percussion-Strings with Tape/Electronic Instruments-String Orchestra -- Sols/Soli concerti with Orchestra-Chamber Orchestra-Solo Voice with Strings and Other Instruments-Choir and Orchestra-Orchestra with jazz Group-Multi-Ensembles and Orchestra-Opera-Ballet-Discography-Bibliography

African American Music by Mellonee V. Burnim (Editor); Portia K. Maultsby (Editor)
ISBN: 9780415941372
Publication Date: 2005-10-31
Designed for an introductory course in African American music, this title focuses on musical genres & styles, moving chronologically from folk traditions to modern forms. A final section discusses the aesthetics of African American culture & music.
Indigenous Pop by Jeff Berglund (Editor); Jan Johnson (Editor); Kimberli Lee (Editor)
ISBN: 9780816509447
Publication Date: 2016-03-10
This book is an interdisciplinary discussion of popular music performed and created by American Indian musicians, providing an important window into history, politics, and tribal communities as it simultaneously complements literary, historiographic, anthropological, and sociological discussions of Native culture
The Latin American Art Song by Patricia Caicedo; Walter Aaron Clark (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9781498581622
Publication Date: 2018-12-17
Taking as a thread the concept of national identity, this book elucidates the sound transformations that have taken place in the world of the Latin American art song since its appearance in the late nineteenth century to the present day. The book focuses in the art songs of Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. The book addresses the subject of performance practice of the Latin American song and ends with a proposal for its interpretation. In songs, spaces of representation and cathartic tools thought, language and music have been at the service of some interests, fulfilling specific functions in the construction of the nation. In them, we observe that the construction of identity is a continuous, constant and changing process in which different stories are superimposed. Seen this way, songs are historical texts where social interactions are reflected, and the past, the present and the future are constantly negotiated.
A Latin American Music Reader by Javier F. Leon (Editor); Helena Simonett (Editor)
ISBN: 9780252040214
Publication Date: 2016-07-31
This project is a collection of scholarly articles on diverse aspects of Latin American music that have been translated into English from their original issue in Spanish or Portuguese. Each chapter was written by a Latin American author and published between 1986 and 2011. Each has been chosen as representative, outstanding, or influential in some way to the field of Latin American musicology. The intent is to make this significant scholarship available to English-speaking students.
Musical Landscapes in Color by Bill Banfield
ISBN: 0810837064
Publication Date: 2003-01-29
The arrived and the acknowledged, part 1 (1922-1936). H. Leslie Adams ; Thomas J. Anderson ; David Baker ; Noel DaCosta ; George Russell ; Hale Smith ; Frederick C. Tillis ; George Walker -- The arrived and the acknowledged, part 2 (1937-1945). Adolphus Hailstork ; Wendell Logan ; Dorothy Rudd Moore ; Olly Wilson -- Perspectives on spirituality, jazz, and contemporary popular languages. Dwight Andrews ; Ysaye Maria Barnwell ; Billy Childs ; George Duke ; Jester Hairston ; Herbie Hancock ; Stephen Newby ; Michael Powell ; Billy Taylor ; Tony Williams ; Michael Woods -- The composer as conductor and composer. Leslie Dunner ; Bobby McFerrin ; Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson ; Patrice Rushen ; Kevin Scott ; Julius Williams -- Generation X and beyond (1950-1965). Michael Abels ; Lettie Beckon Alston ; William C. Banfield ; Regina Harris Baiocchi ; Anthony Davis ; Donal Fox ; Jonathan Holland ; Anthony Kelley ; Jeffrey Mumford ; Gary Powell Nash ; Evelyn Simpson-Curenton ; James Kimo Williams
Musicians from a Different Shore by Mari Yoshihara
ISBN: 9781592133321
Publication Date: 2007-10-28
In the first book on the subject, Mari Yoshihara looks into the reasons for this phenomenon, starting with her own experience of learning to play piano in Japan at the age of three. Yoshihara shows how a confluence of culture, politics and commerce after the war made classical music a staple in middleclass households, established Yamaha as the world's largest producer of pianos, and gave the Suzuki method of music training an international clientele. Soon, talented musicians from Japan, China, and South Korea were flocking to the United States to study and establish careers, and Asian American families were enrolling toddlers in music classes." "Against this historical backdrop, Yoshihara interviews Asian and Asian American musicians, such as Cho-Liang Lin, Margaret Leng Tan, and Kent Nagano, who have taken various routes into classical music careers.
Music of the First Nations by Tara Browner (Editor)
ISBN: 9780252022210
Publication Date: 2009-03-13
Iglulik Inuit drum-dance songs / Paula Conlon -- Musical expressions of the Dene : dogrib love and land songs / Lucy Lafferty and Elaine Keillor -- The story of dirty face : power and song in western Washington Coast Salish myth narratives / Laurel Sercombe -- Drum, songs, vibrations : conversations with a Passamaquoddy traditional singer / Franziska von Rosen (introduction by Tara Browner) -- Identity, retention, and survival : contexts for the performance of native Choctaw music / David E. Draper -- "This is our dance" : the fire dance of the Fort Sill Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache / T. Christopher Aplin -- The creative power and style of ghost dance songs / Judith Vander -- An acoustic geography of intertribal pow-wow songs / Tara Browner -- Singing Indian country / David W. Samuels
Readings in Black American Music by Eileen Southern (Editor)
ISBN: 0393952800
Publication Date: 1983-08-17
The collection includes documents dating from early America through the twentieth century. Monumental figures such as Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northrup, W. E. B. DuBois, W. C. Handy, Ethel Waters, Dizzy Gillespie, Imamu Baraka, and Martha Jackson are represented, as are several complete musical works, by Francis Johnson and others.
Speak It Louder by Deborah Wong
ISBN: 9780203497272
Publication Date: 2004-07-19
*ebook*
Southeast Asian immigrants sounding off. Asian American performativities ; History, memory, re-membering ; Taking (to) the street : Cambodian immigrants in the Philadelphia Mummers Parade ; Karaoke as phantasm : mass mediation and agency in Vietnamese American popular music ; Vietnamese American technoculture in Orange County : Pham Duy at home -- Encounters. Taking (to) the streets again : theorizing the Asian American Festival ; Listening to local practices : Asian American performance and identity politics in Riverside, California -- New interventions. The Asian American body in performance ; Taiko in Asian America ; Just being there : making Asian American space in the recording industry ; Finding an Asian American audience : the problem of listening ; ImprovisAsians : free improvisation as Asian American resistance ; Ethnography, ethnomusicology and post-white theory ; My father's life in music.

Click on the following BIPOC composers to initiate a catalog search for that composer's scores.

Abels, Michael (1959 - )
Adams, Leslie (1932 - )
Akiho, Andy (1979 - )
Anderson, TJ (1928 - )
Baker, David (1931 - 2016)
Bonds, Margaret (1913 - 1972)
Braxton, Anthony (1945 - )
Brouwer, Leo (1939 - )
Burleigh, Henry T. (1866 - 1949)
Carreño, Teresa (1853 - 1917)
Chen Yi (1953 - )
Chin, Unsuk (1961 - )
Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel (1875 - 1912)
Cunningham, Arthur (1928 -1997)
Davis, Miles (1926 - 1991)
Eastman, Julius (1940 - 1990)
Ellington, Duke (1899- 1974)
Esmail, Reena (1983 - )
Frank, Gabriela Lena (1972 - )
Ginastera, Alberto (1916 - 1983)
Golijov, Osvaldo (1960 - )
Hailstork, Adolphus (1941 - )
Hancock, Herbie(1940 - )
Hemphill, Julius (1938 - 1995)
Hogan, Moses (1957 - 2003)
Joplin, Scott (1868 - 1917)
Kay, Ulysses (1917 - 1995)
Lee III, James (1975 - )
Leon, Tania (1943 - )
Marsalis, Wynton (1961 - )
Mason, Quinn (1996 - )
Montgomery, Jessie (1981 - )
Moore, Dorothy Rudd (1940 - )
Moore, Undine Smith (1904 - 1989)
Mumford, Jeffrey (1955 - )
Nabors, Brian Raphael (1991 - )
Piazzolla, Astor (1933 - 1990)
Newton, James (1953 - )
Parker, Charlie (1920 - 1955)
Perry, Zenobia Powell (1908 - 2004)
Price, Florence (1887 - 1953)
Revueltas, Silvestre (1899 - 1940)
Roumain, Daniel Bernard (1970 - )
Ruo, Huang (1976 - )
Saint-Georges, Chevalier (1745 - 1799)
Schifrin, Lalo (1932 - )
Smith, Wadada Leo (1941 - )
Still, William Grant (1895 - 1978)
Stokes, Harvey J. (1957 - )
Tanaka, Karen (1961 - )
Takemitsu, Toru (1930 - 1996)
Tan Dun (1967 - )
Ung, Chinary (1942 - )
Villa-Lobos, Heitor (1887 - 1959)
Walker, George (1922 - 2018)
Wallen, Errollyn (1958 - )
Williams, Evan (1988 - )
Zhou Long (1953 - )

Songs

An anthology of African and African diaspora songs / Louise Toppin, editor ; Scott Piper, associate editor.
Anthology of art songs by Black American composers / compiled by Willis C. Patterson ; preface by George Shirley ; introduction by Wendell P. Whalum For you there is no song / Leslie Adams -- Early in the mornin' ; A good assassination should be quiet ; Status symbol / David Baker -- Three dream portraits. Minstrel man ; Dream variations ; I, too / Margaret Bonds -- The barrier ; Song without words / Charles Brown -- Death of an old seaman / Cecil Cohen -- Two songs for Julie Ju / Noel Da Costa -- Cassandra's lullaby ; Love / Mark Fax -- A charm at parting ; I loved you / Adolphus C. Hailstork -- Absalom ; Nunc dimittis / Eugene W. Hancock -- Riding to town / Thomas H. Kerr, Jr. -- Compensation / Charles Lloyd, Jr. -- If there be sorrow ; Marrow of my bone / Wendell Logan -- Chanson triste ; Sweet sorrow / Maurice McCall -- Weary blues / Dorothy Rudd Moore -- Love let the wind cry -- How I adore thee / Undine Moore -- Faithful one ; Genius child / Robert Owens -- A child's grace ; Melancholy / Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson -- Night ; Song to the dark virgin / Florence B. Price -- Velvet shoes / Hale Smith -- Grief / William Grant Still -- A death song ; I will lie down in autumn ; The Negro speaks of rivers / Howard Swanson -- Lament ; A red, red rose / George Walker -- Wry fragments / Olly Wilson -- Dancing in the sun ; Soliloquy / John W. Work, Jr
The art song in Latin America : selected works by twentieth-century composers / [edited] by Kathleen L. Wilson ; with IPA and diction sections by Arden Hopkin.
The Latin American art song : a critical anthology and interpretative guide for singers / edited by Patricia Caicedo.
A new anthology of art songs by African American composers / selected by Margaret R. Simmons and Jeanine Wagner. Amazing grace / Leslie Adams -- Nightsongs. Creole girl / Leslie Adams -- The Wider view. Love come and gone ; My man / Leslie Adams -- Child's world. Seven days ; Birthday song ; Seasons / Mable Bailey -- Black sheep, black sheep ; Leisure cruise ; Pied beauty / Charles S. Brown -- The Giovanni Songs. Three/Quarters time / Wallace McClain Cheatham -- Songs of love and justice (On texts of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.). Difficulties / Adolphus Hailstork -- Five Dunbar Lyrics. The awakening ; Good night / Adolphus Hailstork -- Create in me / Adolphus Hailstork. -- On consciousness streams. On consciousness streams ; Thou alone canst inspire ; The season of remembrance / Jacqueline B. Hairston. -- Five songs for soprano and piano. Valentine's day ; How should I your true love know / William H. Henderson. -- Five art songs for voice and piano. I'll not forget ; We met by chance / Jeraldine Saunders Herbison. -- Theology ; Compensation / Betty Jackson King. -- Four love songs. Gramercy Park ; Union square / William Foster McDaniel. -- Lyric for Truelove / Undine Smith Moore. -- The moods of my people. Daedalus, fly away home ; Mae's rent party ; Club woman / Byron Motley and Barbara Sherrill. -- Heart ; Girl ; Havana dreams / Robert Owens. -- Clear water / Nadine Shanti. -- Singing for the sake of my soul / Frederick Tillis. -- Velvet shoes ; Nails ; That black reef / Dolores White. -- A song / Julius P. Williams.

Choral music

La voz latina : Volume 1, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil choral music from Latin America / edited by Werner Pfaff, Javier Zentner

Piano music

Black women composers : a century of piano music (1893-1990) / Amanda Aldridge [and others] ; Helen Walker-Hill, editor. Rippling spring waltz : 1893 / Estelle D. Ricketts -- Cuba libre : 1897 / Anna Gardner Goodwin -- Mother's sacrifice : 1908 / L. Viola Kinney -- Prayer before battle : from Four Moorish pictures (1927) / Amanda Aldridge (Montague Ring) -- Fantasie negre : 1929 / Florence B. Price -- Nitelife : 1930 / Mary Lou Williams -- Prelude for piano (1946, rev. 1962) / Julia Perry -- Before I'd be a slave : 1953 / Undine Smith Moore -- Spring intermezzo : from Four seasonal sketches (1955) / Betty Jackson King -- Fortune favored the bold player : from White Nile suite (1964) / Philippa Duke Schuyler -- Preludes no. 1 and 2 (ca. 1966) / Tania León -- Troubled water : 1967 / Margaret Bonds -- A summer day : ca. 1970 / Lena Johnson McLin -- Billie's song ; A taste of bass ; Blues for the Duke : from Portraits in Jazz (1976) / Valerie Capers -- Etude no. 2 from 2 piano etudes (1978-79) / Regina A. Harris Baiocchi -- A little whimsy : 1982 / Dorothy Rudd Moore -- Allegro moderato : from A summer afternoon in South Carolina (1983) / Joyce Solomon -- Prankster : 1986 / Mable Bailey -- Homage : 1990 / Zenobia Powell Perry.
Black women composers : twentieth century music for piano and strings / by Rachel Eubanks ... [et al.] ; compiled and edited by Helen Walker-Hill and Gregory Walker. Kiép nào có yeu nhau : for violin and piano (1994) / Rachel Eubanks -- Bus stop : for cello and piano (2000) / Mary Watkins -- Las tarantulas : for cello and piano (1992) / Dolores White -- Saltarello for cello and piano (1998) / Jeraldine Saunders Herbison -- Excursion : for violin, cello, and piano (1989) / Zenobia Powell Perry -- Energico : for violin, cello, and piano (1981) : last movement of trio Memories / Lettie Beckon Alston.
Latin-American art music for the piano, by twelve contemporary composers. : Selected, and provided with a preface and biographical data / by Francisco Curt Lange

Music: BIPOC Musicians

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BIPOC Music in UCI Libraries