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African American Music Festivals, 1938-1943 - Ragtime, Speeches and Ballads Audio CD Audio CDs: Songs

The Fort Valley State College musical festivals were an explosion of accomplished guitar, banjo, harmony and choral arrangements that were recorded on twelve-inch acetate discs. The songs had been compiled by various people, including Lewis Jones of Fisk University, Willis Lawrence of Spelman College and John Wesley Work III. The performers were some of the most accomplished African American musicians of that era and included groups like the New York and Georgia Singers and the Golden Jubilee Quartet, spiritual singers like Deacon Sam Jackson and the legendary Buster Brown and the secular wartime singer Buster Ezell.

This event was, amongst other things, probably the first folk festival organized entirely by and for African Americans. An editorial of that period in American music history commented that these festivals presented African American musicians with "an unusual opportunity to forward the war-time program of recording soldiers' songs and other folkloristic and documentary material growing out of the war." Certainly, some very fine talents were represented and the Fort Valley State College musical festivals have become a footnote in American musical history.

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