Editor's introduction.

[The] difference between white and black Appalachians ... lies in visibility vs. invisibility.

--Allen 1974, 42

[Black Appalachian music has] as yet hardly been touched by serious documentation and analysis.

--Whisnant 1977, 108

There is no such thing as "Appalachian music." There are instead a wide variety of instrumental and vocal styles made by Appalachian musicians ... all of which have exhibited the eclectic and steadily evolving nature of life in the mountains. The music is diverse because the culture in which it evolved is diverse. It exhibits the influence of many ethnic and racial groups ... the interaction of city and rural forms and the changing economic patterns of the Southern mountains."

--Malone 2004, 115

The nine articles focusing on "African-American Music of Appalachia" in Black Music Research Journal, vol. 23, no. 1/2, demonstrate the large and significant history of black Appalachian music. Various genres (blues, jazz, rhythm and blues) are examined, and two exceptional black musicians (Ida Cox and James Brown) are given more in-depth treatment.

The evolution of the African banjer into the American banjo and those black Appalachians who played the banjo are described, as is the interaction of white and black musicians with respect to the banjo, fiddle, guitar, and the blues genre. These articles ably demonstrate that "Affrilachian" music is an essential part of what historian Sterling Stuckey referred to as "the oneness of black culture in the twentieth century" (Stuckey 1987, 83).

The current BMRJ provides tools for further research and more sophisticated historical and sociocultural analysis. Bob Eagle, compiler of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Blues and Gospel Music, provides a preview of the Appalachian portion of that work. The directory, using the most inclusive definition of the Appalachian region, documents every known black musician, living or dead, who was from, lived in, or was musically active in the region. Eagle also includes demographic data as well as the location of African-American churches, information on recording compaEagle conceived and developed the Mance Index, named for Texas songster Emancipation "Mance" Lipscomb. Based on the 1850 federal census, the 1850 Mance Index quantifies the relationship between the number of enslaved and free blacks in a county and then ranks the counties on their potential for the development of distinct black culture. Eagle describes the Mance Index's rationale: "We would expect that a county with comparatively many free colored people would be more tolerant and less exclusionary than one with comparatively few. In simplistic terms, the community with comparatively many free colored people would have less incentive to develop a culture apart from that of the white populace." The Appalachian subset of the Mance Index is included in Eagle's article "Predicting Black Musical Innovation and Integration: The 1850 Mance Index for Appalachia."

Mark Freed's article "Preliminary Bibliography of African-American Music in Appalachia" had its genesis in a class project for "Appalachian Bibliography and Research," a required course in Appalachian State University's graduate program in Appalachian Studies. Using a more traditional and more restricted definition of Appalachia than Eagle's, Freed relied on John C. Campbell's 1921 map of the region, which excludes many of the Appalachian Regional Commission's Piedmont counties as well as counties in Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York (Campbell 1921). Nevertheless, Freed has amassed a substantial bibliography documenting the vitality of Affrilachian music. Freed's bibliography is "preliminary," as is any bibliography addressing a living tradition--several relevant publications have appeared after the bibliography went to press and many more will undoubtedly appear over the next few years.

Indeed, Eagle's directory and Freed's bibliography go a long way in making Affrilachian music visible and in establishing its rightful place in the diverse music of the region, the country, and the world.

REFERENCES

Allen, Fayetta A. 1974. Blacks in Appalachia. The Black Scholar 5, no. 9: 42-51.

Campbell, John C. 1921. The southern highlander and his homeland. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Malone, Bill C. 2004. Music. In High mountains rising: Appalachia in time and place, edited by Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen, 114-134. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Stuckey, Sterling. 1987. Slave culture: Nationalist history and the foundations of black America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Whisnant, David. 1977. Thicker than fiddlers in hell: Issues and resources in Appalachian music. Appalachian Journal 5, no. 1: 103-115.

FRED J. HAY, Professor of Appalachian Studies and Librarian of the W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State University, has published articles and books on African-American and Caribbean culture, Appalachian Studies, and librarianship. His most recent book is "Goin' Back to Sweet Memphis": Conversations with the Blues (University of Georgia Press, 2001).