I’m going out on a limb here and give my un-researched, un-fact-checked version of African Americans in old time music. Blues was such a strong marketing label that every Black artist was marketed as blues (or jazz or spiritual) even if their actual repertoire was much wider and eclectic. Elijah Wald has written a good book that deals with this.
Here are some of the artists whose repertoires very much overlapped with what we think of as old time.
…. and later …
More locally, I think we should see these two wonderful women in the old time tradition:
This is all complicated by the historical phenomenon called the minstrel show. So much of our old time repertoire has roots in that troublesome tradition.
As we move through Black History Month, may we look squarely at our imperfect history, keep what is good, and move forward.
Just like our forebears, we’re sure to get some things wrong.
For a deeper dive into this topic, check out the essay on the Teodar Jackson page at Field Recorders’ Collective.