'I want to thank you for posting the piece on the Jimenez and Berroa families in your fascinating Africlassical blog.'

[Jose Manuel (Lico) Jiménez-Berroa (1855-1917) (Photo from The Black Perspective in Music, from www.JSTOR.org]

On June 20, 2012 AfriClassical posted: "'The Jiménez family of black classical musicians from Cuba.'"  George Friedman-Jimenez, MD writes on July 21, 2012:

"Dear Mr. Zick and Professor de Lerma,

I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. I want to thank you for posting the piece on the Jimenez and Berroa families in your fascinating Africlassical blog. These days we take for granted so many things from the right to vote to the huge role of people (and music) of African descent in today’s popular music industry, and we so rarely recognize publicly the important contributions some of our ancestors have made to these successes. Your website and scholarly work is so important in making people (especially our younger generation) aware of just whose shoulders they are standing on. Of course racism is still omnipresent in current society, but no longer would a music critic dare to say that black fingers on a piano keyboard look “grotesque”, as the German music critic Joseph Engel said in 1873 (Wright article, p. 167). That kind of thinking has been soundly eradicated, in large part by some of the people you feature in your website. The struggle continues, as we work to eradicate similar attitudes that are still prevalent in medicine, the sciences, law and other fields as well. Keep on doing what you are doing, and know how important the ongoing inspiration continues to be to so many of us working in many different fields.

Thank you.

George Friedman-Jiménez


Comment by email:

What a pleasure to read these words!   Many thanks!

Dominique-René de Lerma

http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com