I cannot express enough gratitude to our sister Bisa Williams for her wise comments and good counsel, with a superb eye and an ear to match. She pitched in for any task from proofreading to translation, and had unwavering faith and encouragement. Appreciation also to our brother, Paul T. Williams, Jr., for his wry, steadfast support and for recommending such great counsel in the form of Craig D. Jeffrey and J. P. Benitez at Bryan Cave.
I owe specific thanks to a few folks for their informed conversation: Lyndia Johnson on the operatic path, Johnny Lee Davenport on coon can and man stuff, Yolisa Madulo of South African Translators’ Institute on isiXhosa naming practices, Mrs. Margaret Allen on her Hunter College memories, Sadie Woods and Adam Green for deejay reminiscences, Shawn Wallace for musical terminology, Mickey Davidson for dance history, and Alma Baeza for her amateur-night stories. Jeni Dahmus at The Juilliard School Archives was extremely helpful with back catalogues and class schedules.
A special note to Mrs. Gwendolyn Elmore and the Arna Bontemps African American Museum in Alexandria, Louisiana, for fellowship assistance in 2003 and my first public audience for the work. Thanks also to Jane Saks and the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media at Columbia College in Chicago as well as the SonEdna Foundation of Mississippi for their ongoing support of this work and of my writing in general, and to Gracia Hillman for offering me that lovely summer house by the beach as I reached the final stages of the book’s preparation; also to Arnold Newman, my wonderful landlord, a true and patient patron of the arts. A special note of appreciation to Howard Rosenman and Lauren Shuler for their early enthusiasm.
We have many ancestors to thank far and near. We’ve borrowed snips and snapshots from both sides of our family to make this musical quilt: maternal grandparents Viola B. and Frank Eugene Owens, who braved the Great Migration; Vi’s father, Benjamen, who worked the railroad, and her Sea Island–born mother, Victoria Mack; great-aunts Carrie and Marie with their stories and secrets; Grandma’s sister Lizzie with her fire and iconoclasm; and Aunt Emma with all that hair, a beautiful spirit, and tickets to the theater every time we came to New York; on Dad’s side, Grandma Ida Williams, the community seer, and Charles, who fixed violins; and with their beautiful voices and musical prowess, all of my father’s sisters, my paternal aunts Thelma, Barbara, Ora, Blanche, Dottie, and Britomarte, the world traveler. To my great-great maternal grandmother, Filis, I thank you for leaving us a trace of you; and to my niece Savannah, I am always grateful for your insight from the future.
To our parents, Paul T. Williams and Eloise O. Williams, a debt of thanks always. Magician and conjurer, visionary and raconteur, they were extraordinary parents, rooting us in spirit, imagination, intellect, and commitment. Zake and I both chose the artist’s path. Our parents gave us everything we needed for the journey. Such drama! Such wonder. . . .
Last, but surely not least, I would like to thank my sister Ntozake for her remarkable brilliance and for inviting me on yet another adventure, hand-dancing along the way.
In the course of writing a narrative covering roughly two hundred years, we consulted myriad primary and secondary sources. We are indebted to the many, many scholars and historians who labor so valiantly to bring our illustrious journey to light. For those intrigued by the history detailed in Some Sing, Some Cry, we are preparing a detailed bibliography that will be available online.
Surrounded on all sides by music, while writing this book we discovered again and again how vast and varied the music of African-American people, how vital. There are so many antecedents, it’s impossible to name them, so rich is the panoply. With our collage of characters we can only suggest the singers, players, composers, writers, dancers, and producers; the theaters, churches, living rooms, and sidewalks, the cabarets, juke joints and dance halls; the solo artists, big bands, and combos—the heavenly choir of legendary and anonymous voices that have filled our nation and world with song.
—IFA BAYEZA
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