The Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University in Philadelphia has recently launched a new archive documenting the history of the city’s Black musicians.
The Philadelphia Black Music Archive was created by the university in partnership with Frank Johnson, a Temple alumnus and scholar of Black music. The archive includes a wide-range of materials such as artifacts, documents, interviews, photographs, recordings, and sheet music that showcases the cultural contributions of Black musicians throughout the city.
“Once I started doing research on Black music, it became clear that this was a difficult thing to do because a lot of the information is piecemeal, said Johnson at an event celebrating the archive’s launch. “It’s not centralized anywhere and a lot of it is floating around in folks’ heads.”
He continued, “We’re living in a time when there are forces that are seeking to remove African American history and documentation from the public record. The time to commemorate the legacy of Black Philly music is right now.”
