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Posts from the Schomburg Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division

African American Composers and Conductors: Ford T. Dabney

by Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, Curator of Exhibitions, Shelby Cullom Davis Museum, Library for the Performing Arts
May 18, 2012

The exhibition, The Great American Revue, focuses on Broadway revue series, 1907–1938. But they were not the only shows on Broadway. During those three decades, dozens of musical comedies by African American songwriters, featuring African American casts were presented successfully in Broadway theaters. They were musical comedies, not revues. They were written for (and, frequently by) the African American character comedians and had complicated plots setting them in comic situations.

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Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa

by Ann-Marie Nicholson, Editor, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
November 7, 2011

“The writer cannot be a mere storyteller; he cannot be a mere teacher; he cannot merely X-ray society’s weaknesses, its ills, its perils. He or she must be actively involved shaping its present and its future.”

Nigerian environmentalist, author, and television producer Ken Saro-Wiwa lived and died by the words above. Born on October 10, 1941, Kenule “Ken” Beeson Saro Wiwa was an Ogoni (an ethnic minority in Nigeria). Ogoniland, located in the Niger Delta, is rich in oil that has been looted by the petroleum industry — with the explicit consent of the Nigerian government — for decades. As a result, the Niger Delta is listed as one 

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