Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. (1937-2016)
7/14/2016
Dear CBMR friends and associates:
With great sadness, I write to inform
you of the passing of the CBMR’s Founder
and Director Emeritus, Dr. Samuel A.
Floyd, Jr., who died on Monday, July 11,
in Chicago, following an extended
illness.
Please see the attached obituary, which
was written by former colleagues
Suzanne Flandreau, Morris Phibbs, and
Rosita M. Sands. It will also be posted
on the CBMR web site, at
I know that all of us who knew Sam
personally or had the opportunity to
work with him professionally,
profoundly mourn his loss. Yet we are
grateful for the rich legacy of work he
leaves behind that has forever changed
the landscape of musicological research.
Sincerely,
Dr. Rosita M. Sands, Interim Director,
CBMR; Chair, Music Department,
Columbia College Chicago
Dr. Monica Hairston O’Connell, former
Executive Director, CBMR
Morris Phibbs, former Deputy Director,
CBMR
Suzanne Flandreau, former Archivist
and Head Librarian, CBMR
Dr. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.
2/1/1937 – 7/11/2016
Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., educator, musician,
scholar and champion of black music
research died in Chicago on Monday, July
11, after an extended illness. Dr. Floyd
was born in Tallahassee, Florida, on
February 1, 1937. He received his
bachelor’sdegree from Florida A & M
University and later earned a masters
(1965) and Ph.D. (1969) from Southern
Illinois University at Carbondale. He began
his music career as a high school band
director in Florida before returning to
Florida A & M to serve as Instructor and
Assistant Band Director under legendary
band director William “Pat” Foster. In
1964 he joined the faculty at Southern
Illinois University, Carbondale, and in
1978, he began a faculty position as
Professor of Music at Fisk University,
where he founded and served as Director
of the Institute for Research in Black
American Music. In 1983 he moved to
Columbia College Chicago to found the
Center for Black Music Research (CBMR),
which became an internationally
respected research center under his
leadership.
Critical to the creation of the CBMR was
the establishment of the CBMR Library
and Archives, which has grown to be
one of the most comprehensive collections
of music, recordings, and research
materials devoted to black music. At
Columbia College, Dr. Floyd also served
as Academic Dean from 1990 to 1993
and as Interim Vice President for
Academic Affairs and Provost during 1999-2001. He retired as Director Emeritus of
the CBMR in 2002.
At the CBMR Dr. Floyd devoted himself to
discovering and publishing the
information that would allow black music
to receive its rightful recognition from
audiences and scholars. His early
publications (with Marsha Heizer) were
bibliographies of research materials and
biographical resources. Later he edited a
collection of essays, Black Music in the
Harlem Renaissance (1990), which won the Irving Lowens Award for Distinguished
Scholarship in American Music from the
Society for American Music. He also edited
the International Dictionary of Black
Composers (1999) a reference book that
won several awards from the library
community, including an honorable mention
for the American Library Association’s
Dartmouth Medal in 2000.
While still at Fisk, Dr. Floyd founded Black
Music Research Journal, a juried scholarly
journal which moved with him to the CBMR
in 1983; it has been published continuously
since its founding in 1980. He also
founded and
edited a grant-funded journal, Lenox
Avenue: A Journal of Interartistic Inquiry,
dedicated to exploring the role of music
within the broader arts of the African Diaspora,
the Music of the African Diaspora book series,
which is published by the University of California
Press, a monographs series, and several
newsletters. Under his direction, the
CBMR held numerous national and
international conferences highlighting
scholarly research, sponsored a series
of postgraduate research fellowships
funded by the Rockefeller Foundation for
scholars studying the music of the
African Diaspora, and taught two
seminars for college teachers on African-
American music, under the auspices of
the National Endowment for the
Humanities. He also established the Alton
Augustus Adams Music Research
Institute in St. Thomas (2000-2006), U.S.
Virgin Islands, to study and document
black music throughout the Caribbean.
Performance was another important
aspect of the CBMR’s programming. Dr.
Floyd created four professional ensembles
at the CBMR: the Black Music Repertory
Ensemble, devoted to music by black
composers; Ensemble Kalinda Chicago,
which performed African-influenced
music of Latin America and the
Caribbean; Ensemble Stop-Time, which
concentrated on African-American
popular music and jazz; and the New
Black Music Repertory Ensemble, which
combined the performance capabilities
and repertoires of the previous three
ensembles. The ensembles, which
introduced audiences at every level
to black music, produced recordings,
performed nearly 200 concerts locally
and on national tour, recorded eight
nationally broadcast radio shows, and
presented lecture-demonstrations in
schools.
Dr. Floyd was a prodigious grant-writer
who won significant funding to help
support the CBMR’s public programming
and the development of the CBMR
Library and Archives. Among the most
supportive agencies were the National
Endowment for the Arts, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the
Illinois Arts Council, the Institute for
Museum and Library Services, the
Chicago Community Trust, and the
Sara Lee, Joyce, Ford, John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur, Rockefeller
and Fry foundations, among many
others.
Samuel Floyd was a true visionary.
Through the CBMR he was able to
realize his concept of black music
as a totality expressing African
Diasporic culture across genre and
time. His book, The Power of Black
Music, published by Oxford
University Press in 1995, epitomized
his ideas. It was one of the first
scholarly studies to transcend
historical reporting and synthesize
the information he had founded
the CBMR to discover and preserve.
In his retirement he was engaged
in further studies intended to carry
his synthesis even further. Two new
books are scheduled to be published
by Oxford University Press.
Among the awards received by Dr.
Floyd in recognition of his vision,
service, andcontributions are: the
National Association of Negro
Musician’s Award for Distinguished
Contributions to Music, the
Pacesetters Award in recognition of
Outstanding Achievement in Higher
Education from the American
Association of Higher Education
Black Caucus, and the Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Society
for American Music. Floyd was a Fellow
at the University of Michigan Institute
for the Humanities, and was twice a
Fellow at the National Humanities
Center, Research Triangle, North
Carolina, including a term as the John
Hope Franklin Senior Fellow. He was
also Scholar-in Residence at the Bellagio
Student and Conference Center (Italy),
a Robert M. Trotter Lecturer for The
College Music Society, and was named
an Honorary Member of the American
Musicological Society.
Dr. Floyd is survived by his wife of over
50 years, Barbara, and their three
children-Wanda, Samuel Floyd III, and
Cecilia. No formal memorial has been
planned by the family and services will
be private. Expressions of condolence
may be sent to Mrs. Barbara Floyd, 2960
North Lake Shore Drive #408,
Chicago, IL 60657. In lieu of flowers,
donations in his memory may be made
to benefit his alma mater at the FAMU
Foundation, 625 East Tennessee Street,
Suite 100, Tallahassee, FL 32308-4933.
FAMU&FoundationHome.
Comment by email:
Thanks Bill. He was a brilliant boss,
mentor and colleague. Suzanne
[Suzanne Flandreau]
Comment by email:
Thanks Bill. He was a brilliant boss,
mentor and colleague. Suzanne
[Suzanne Flandreau]
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