Center For Black Music Research

In 1971, when Samuel A. Floyd Jr. came across a book titled "Music of Black Americans," by Eileen Southern, he never expected it to change his life. He had no idea it would send him on a lifelong study or that it would lead him to found a world-renowned music research center as well as the Black Music Repertory Ensemble--the acclaimed chamber group that makes its Los Angeles debut today at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State L.A.

In 1971, when Samuel A. Floyd Jr. came across a book titled "Music of Black Americans," by Eileen Southern, he never expected it to change his life. He had no idea it would send him on a lifelong study or that it would lead him to found a world-renowned music research center as well as the Black Music Repertory Ensemble--the acclaimed chamber group that makes its Los Angeles debut today at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State L.A.

As the name suggests, the Black Music Repertory Ensemble is hardly a garden-variety chamber ensemble, but rather an organization with a mission--one very much worth undertaking. The accomplished performing limb of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago, this special-interest group focuses on the rarely heard music of African American composers.

They came from New York and Los Angeles and the South Side of Chicago, and though they may not have intended it, they were on the front lines of desegregating America -- years before anyone had heard of Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. Moreover, they helped pry open a predominantly white institution -- the United States Navy -- simply by playing their horns and drums and bass fiddles.