The  "Black Europe"  Project

We are a team of specialists working on the first comprehensive documentation of the sounds and images of black people in Europe up to 1927/1928 (the era of acoustic recordings technology prior to the invention of the microphone).

Recordings on phonograph cylinders, gramophone discs and films, with both still and moving images, featured people

of African descent in Europe from the earliest years of the recording industry to immediately after the First WorldWar.

Present in Europe for two thousand years or more, the contribution of pioneering personalities on the modern mass

media has not been noticed. Recognition is overdue. Music, spoken word or dance, from all styles, categories, languages

and natal lands provide a lost but rich resource. Many artefacts may be lost forever, but this effort is to trace the

surviving evidence.

Please get in touch if you can provide disc records or phonograph cylinders still missing. Please click this link for our wants list.

And here are our special wants for recordings by the duettists, Layton & Johnstone, please have a look!

And here are some of the movie films that need to be located.

As well we are looking for prints, photographs, sheet music, programs, broad sheets, record catalags

Contact us by e-mail: rainer-lotz[-at-]gmx.de or any of the other addresses mentioned on this flyer