[The
Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist: America's Lost Musical Genius;
Deirdre O’Connell; Overlook Press (2009)]
Thomas“Blind Tom” Wiggins (1849-1908) was an African American pianist and
composer. He was a blind and autistic slave who nevertheless was a
musical genius. He is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features
a complete Works List by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma,
http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com
For
the past three years, interest in the life and music of Thomas
Wiggins has been greatly increased due to the work of Deirdre
O'Connell, an Australian writer whose highly readable biography is
The Ballad of
Blind Tom, Slave Pianist: America's Lost Musical Genius. The book's website is: http://www.blindtom.org/ Performances of piano works composed by Wiggins have become steadily
more numerous in recent years.
In
another recent development related to the story of Thomas Wiggins,
musicologist Arthur R. LaBrew was honored earlier this year by the
National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc. (NANM) for his
scholarly research on Wiggins.
LaBrew has also been honored by the Azalia Hackley Collection of the
Detroit Public Library. He is the author of Free
at last: legal aspects concerning the career of Blind Tom Bethune,
1849-1908;
Arthur R. La Brew (1976) (68 pages).
His
profile at AfriClassical.com is based primarily on the book Blind
Tom, The Black Pianist-Composer: Continually Enslaved, by the
late Professor Geneva Handy Southall, who devoted her academic career
to Wiggins. She points out that he never really gained his freedom or
the control of his own earnings, even after the Civil War.
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