Background
Eileen Southern was born on February 19, 1920, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She grew up around musicians. Southern's father, Walter Wade Jackson, was a violinist, her uncle was a trumpeter, and her mother, Lilla Jackson, a choir singer.
6130 S Wolcott Ave, Chicago, IL 60636, United States
Eileen Southern studied at Robert Lindblom Math & Science Academy High School.
430 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605, United States
Eileen Southern studied at Chicago Musical College.
5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
Eileen Southern studied at the University of Chicago. She got a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts.
New York, NY 10003, United States
Eileen Southern studied at New York University. She got a Doctor of Philosophy.
(A new edition of the classic text on African American mus...)
A new edition of the classic text on African American music. Beginning with the arrival of the first Africans in the English colonies, Eileen Southern weaves a fascinating narrative of intense musical activity. As singers, players, and composers, black American musicians are fully chronicled in this landmark book. Now in the third edition, the author has brought the entire text up to date and has added a wealth of new material covering the latest developments in the gospel, blues, jazz, classical, crossover, Broadway, and rap as they relate to African American music.
https://www.amazon.com/Music-Black-Americans-History-Third/dp/0393971414
1997
(This lavishly illustrated book brings together for the fi...)
This lavishly illustrated book brings together for the first time a significant body of imagery devoted to the traditional culture of the African-American slave.
https://www.amazon.com/Images-Iconography-African-American-1770s-1920s-Humanities/dp/0815328753
2000
editor educator musician musicologist writer
Eileen Southern was born on February 19, 1920, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She grew up around musicians. Southern's father, Walter Wade Jackson, was a violinist, her uncle was a trumpeter, and her mother, Lilla Jackson, a choir singer.
Eileen Southern graduated from Robert Lindblom Math & Science Academy High School and studied piano at Chicago Musical College. She earned both bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Chicago in 1940 and 1941, writing a thesis on The Use of Negro Folksong in Symphonic Form. Also, Southern received a Doctor of Philosophy from New York University in 1961.
After education, Eileen Southern was an instructor at Prairie View University from 1941 to 1942 and an assistant professor at Southern University in 1943-1945 and 1949-1951. Moving to New York, she taught at New York City Public School district in 1954-1960. From 1960 to 1968, Southern was a professor at Brooklyn College, and from 1968 to 1975 as an associate professor at York College. Her final years in academia Southern spent at Harvard University, where she was a lecturer in 1974 and then became a professor of music and Afro-American studies from 1976 to 1987. She also headed the department of Afro-American studies from 1975 to 1979.
Although very interested in Renaissance music, about which Eileen Southern wrote in her doctoral thesis and The Buxheim Organ Book, the main focus of Southern's research, teaching, and writing were on the contributions African Americans made to the music world. Toward this end, she published numerous works, including The Music of Black Americans: A History and, with Josephine Wright, Images: Iconography of Music in African-American Culture (the 1770s-1920s), and compiled the Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians. Southern made a number of breakthroughs in her career. She managed to become the first African-American woman to receive tenure at Harvard University, and she founded and edited, along with her husband, the first journal devoted to black music, Black Perspectives in Music, which was published from 1973 to 1990. She also edited the journal Nineteenth-Century African-American Musical Theater. But Southern not only wrote about music, but she was also a talented musician herself and made several appearances as a concert pianist.
(This lavishly illustrated book brings together for the fi...)
2000(A new edition of the classic text on African American mus...)
1997
Eileen Southern married Joseph Southern on August 22, 1942. They had a daughter, April, and a son, Edward.