December 2013

Amistad's Reading Room prior to the booksale

A tremendous selection of duplicate copies and out-of-scope titles were offered at Amistad's book sale, which was held at the beginning of November. Due to the overwhelming public interest and the large stock of books and magazines, the sale was held over for an extra week as the Center turned its Reading Room into a temporary used book store. Over 150 visitors browsed books, talked with staff, and enjoyed some Amistad hospitality. The sale exceeded Amistad's expectations and all proceeds went toward the Center's book acquisition fund and preservation efforts. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us in support of the Amistad Research Center. And happy reading! 

The Amistad Research Center is a wonderful resource for researchers interested in African American musicians and vocal artists. The Center holds the personal papers of concert and operatic stars such as William Warfield, Carol Brice, Anne Wiggins Brown, Camilla Williams, Annabelle Bernard, Mattiwilda Dobbs, and Thomas Carey. Jazz music is well-documented in the papers of Ellis Marsalis Jr. and Harold Battiste, while the papers of composers include those of Hale Smith and Howard Swanson. The topic of music education is found within the papers of Lucile Hutton and Mildred Katharine Ellis. And there is so much more.

Amistad is currently expanding its music-related collections into new genres -- hiphop and bounce music. Recent donations, described below, have placed the Center at the forefront of efforts to document and preserve materials that chronicle the development of these genres in New Orleans.

Complementing the Hiphop Archive is a portion of audio interviews recorded as part of the Where They At bounce project. The Where They At project was begun in 2008 by photographer Aubrey Edwards and journalist Alison Fensterstock, with the assistance of a grant from the Greater New Orleans Foundation. It collected over 50 photographic portraits and audio interviews with New Orleans rappers, DJs, producers, photographers, label owners, promoters, record store personnel, journalists, and other parties involved in the New Orleans hip-hop and bounce scene from the late 1980s through Hurricane Katrina, as well as ephemera including original fliers, posters, vintage photographs and an extensive collection of record, CD and cassette tape scans. In a multimedia exhibition form, Where They At was presented at the Smithsonian-affiliated Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Austin's Birdhouse Gallery and SXSW festival, Minneapolis' Soap Factory, New York City's Abrons Art Center, and the Direktorenhaus in Berlin, Germany. It currently lives in online form at wheretheyatnola.com. Amistad currently houses 19 audio interviews and 37 interview transcripts as part of the Where They At collection. 

Preliminary descriptions of the collections at Amistad can be found in Amistad's online finding aid database: NOLA Hiphop Archive Project Collection and Where They At Collection. In Spring 2014, Amistad will work with our donors and Tulane University's Digital Library to launch the community-accessible NOLA Hiphop and Bounce Archive, which will provide online access to the NOLA Hiphop Archive video interviews and portions of the Where They At audio interviews.

foundation of our progress,

and in that spirit we say simply, but sincerely,

thank you and best wishes for a

joyous holiday season and a New Year

of peace and goodwill.

From the Staff of the Amistad Research Center