The Music of Black Americans

Eileen Southern Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for American Music

Musicologist Eileen Southern recently received the Society for American Music's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual conference in Charleston, SC for her work about African-American music. Southern's The Music of Black Americans, was called by the American Record Guide "the first serious, scholarly effort to document the entire history of black music in the United States...a milestone...of great importance."

Southern received a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Chicago (1940, 1941) and studied with Gustave Reese at New York University, where she completed her Ph.D. in 1961. She taught at Harvard University from 1976 and is currently retired and living in St. Albans, New York.

Formerly the Sonneck Society and founded in honor of Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, the Society for American Music (SAM) is a non-profit scholarly and educational organization which seeks to stimulate the appreciation, performance, creation, and study of American music in all its historical and contemporary styles and contexts.

Dr. Southern was not able to be in Charleston to receive the award, but she was presented in New York with a plaque and an "In Appreciation" book, which was passed around at the conference and signed by SAM members.