Why We Must Move From Simple Support Towards Deep Collaboration

Monica Hairston O’Connell, Executive Director

Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago

mhairston@colum.edu

monicaoconnell.com

@whistling_girl

Artists Make Archives Make Artists:

Diversity in the Performing Arts…

Founded at Columbia College Chicago in 1983, The Center for Black Music Research is the only organization of its kind. It exists to illuminate the significant role that black music plays in world culture by serving as a nexus for all who value black music, by promoting scholarly thought and knowledge about black music, and by providing a safe haven for the materials and information that document the black music experience across Africa and the diaspora.

http:www.colum.edu/CBMR

The Center for Black Music Research

Diversity in the Performing Arts…

Understand

Activate

Build

Engage

Cross-sector, cross-

arts, cross-venue

Multifaceted: activates

multiple parts of

ecosystem

Leverage serendipitous

resonance/improvisato

ry

Long-tail or spiraling

effect

Deep Collaboration

“Records that have been naturally and necessarily generated as a product of regular legal, commercial, administrative social [research or artistic] activities. They have been defined as "the secretions of an organism"—rather than those that have been consciously written or created to communicate a particular message to posterity.”

--Wikipedia

ARCHIVES

Ecosystem

Melba Liston Research Initiative

Ongoing initiative that generates interest in and multifaceted usage of Melba Liston collection housed in the CBMR Library and Archives.

Collaborations with Chicago Jazz Ensemble, Jazz Institute of Chicago, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and scholars from San Francisco State, Kansas, McGill, and Ohio State universities and others resulted in:• Exhibition on Black Women in Music

• Creation of the Melba Liston Research Collective

• Jazz Camp Workshops

• Special Publications

• New Work inspired by archival research

• Large-scale Performances

• Newly accessible arrangements of archival manuscripts

Highlighted repertoire of Florence Price, an important Chicago-based composer.

Re-creation of the score/parts for a major Price work, for which the originals have been lost since the late 1930s.

Utilized original and extremely rare manuscripts in the CBMR archives.

Major funding from the federal, state, and private foundations.

Florence B. Price Orchestral Music: third release on CBMR’s Recorded Music of the African Diaspora series

The CBMR’s performance

ensembles take the results of

scholarly endeavors to the

general public.

Florence Price Project

Deep Collaboration

Thank You

Research, Reference, Activate, Build, Imagine…

http://www.colum.edu/cbmr

Twitter: @cbmrccc

Facebook.com/centerforblackmusicresearch

Facebook.com/geniuswithoutborders

The Center for Black Music Research