What's New?
In March 2024, we were thrilled and delighted to receive an email from
Laura Micham
Director, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture
Curator, Gender and Sexuality History Collections
Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Duke University
Laura Micham
Director, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture
Curator, Gender and Sexuality History Collections
Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Duke University
Dear Rebecca,
I write to share some updates from our project related to your mother’s collection. Though we’ve been at work for about a year, we’re really still in the early stages of our project. After all my years at Duke I’m still amazed that the university generously supports a fairly extended period of experimentation and exploration. Our group consists of two archivists - myself and our audiovisual materials archivist who has expanded and enhanced the description of the recordings in your mother’s collection enormously. Relatedly he has created “name authority records” for all of the artists represented in the Rosetta Records recordings for whom the Library of Congress did not already offer a name authority record. The Library of Congress creates, manages, and accepts entries into a “name authority file” database of short biographies of every person-author, singer, printer, illustrator etc.-who has published a work. A number of the artists in the Rosetta Records recordings weren’t in the Library of Congress name authority file until our project spearheaded this work. Now catalogers and researchers will find these artists officially codified in this internationally important database. I think your mother would be pleased with this! Other members of the group include a cultural anthropologist, a digital humanities expert, a singer songwriter (whom you know - Tift Merritt), and two wonderful graduate students - a musicologist and an art historian. They have all contributed their expertise and passions to studying your mother’s collection as well as the many artists she worked with and championed. Based on this research we have create various spreadsheets and other datasets, invited guest speakers to add to our knowledge and work with us, and conducted outside research to expand our understanding of the significance of your mother’s work and begin to give shape to the work we hope to do that that will extend her impact. |
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In 1982 Rosetta was the feature in a radio program called
"Bill Cullen's People Who Are Different".
We recently received an email from a swell fellow,
Matt Ottinger, who runs a tribute site for the old
game show host, Bill Cullen. He thought we would
get a kick out of this segment and sent it along.
Cullen's radio series profiled interesting people.
Although Rosetta's voice is not heard on this program, her mission is very clearly and wonderfully expressed.
Click here and scroll to 2:05. It's just a minute and a half.
Thanks, Matt!
"Bill Cullen's People Who Are Different".
We recently received an email from a swell fellow,
Matt Ottinger, who runs a tribute site for the old
game show host, Bill Cullen. He thought we would
get a kick out of this segment and sent it along.
Cullen's radio series profiled interesting people.
Although Rosetta's voice is not heard on this program, her mission is very clearly and wonderfully expressed.
Click here and scroll to 2:05. It's just a minute and a half.
Thanks, Matt!
Rosetta Reitz's Musical Archive of Care (2023-2024)
In February 2023, we learned about an exciting project happening at Duke University.
From their website:
Project Description
This project (Rosetta Reitz's Musical Archive of Care) will use Reitz’s papers housed in Duke’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library to inform and construct a new model of creative and scholarly practice for the 21st century.
Rosetta Reitz was a 20th century feminist writer, business owner, and record and concert producer. She produced 18 albums of the music of the early women of jazz and the blues. Join our collective of researchers, producers, archivists, artists, and performers to help bring the spirit of Rosetta Reitz into contemporary artistic and scholarly practice.
Anticipated Outputs
Digital or physical exhibit featuring Reitz’s work; advocacy campaign around a person or issue consistent with Reitz’s approach updated for the 21st century; series of contextualized public musical performances; compilation recording (or playlist) with album art and liner notes; podcast interweaving historical research with contemporary implications
Click here for more information.
In February 2023, we learned about an exciting project happening at Duke University.
From their website:
Project Description
This project (Rosetta Reitz's Musical Archive of Care) will use Reitz’s papers housed in Duke’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library to inform and construct a new model of creative and scholarly practice for the 21st century.
Rosetta Reitz was a 20th century feminist writer, business owner, and record and concert producer. She produced 18 albums of the music of the early women of jazz and the blues. Join our collective of researchers, producers, archivists, artists, and performers to help bring the spirit of Rosetta Reitz into contemporary artistic and scholarly practice.
Anticipated Outputs
Digital or physical exhibit featuring Reitz’s work; advocacy campaign around a person or issue consistent with Reitz’s approach updated for the 21st century; series of contextualized public musical performances; compilation recording (or playlist) with album art and liner notes; podcast interweaving historical research with contemporary implications
Click here for more information.
New book and video about Rosetta by Yale Professor, Daphne Brooks
March 2021
New Book
Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound by Daphne Brooks features a laudatory chapter about Rosetta's work.
The author reached out to me with questions about Rosetta and requests for permission to replicate some photos and liner notes. She spent considerable time studying the files about Rosetta Records at Duke University that documented Rosetta's process and of course listening to the music.
Thank you, Daphne Brooks, for your efforts to celebrate and give credit to the important contribution made by my mother.
An excerpt:
"...Reitz’s greatest and heretofore unheralded legacy was in the realm of music criticism. As this chapter reveals, Reitz is one of our most formidable blues and jazz music critics, as well as a focused second-wave feminist critic, perhaps one of the only feminists of her generation to consistently and extensively champion the aesthetic work of Black women musicians as a vital and central component - the bedrock - of modern American culture. Her voluminous body of work, which includes dozens of meticulously crafted and heavily researched liner notes essays on women’s blues and jazz, not only make her worthy of recognition but also illuminate the myriad ways that Rosetta Reitz fundamentally revolutionized intellectual discourse on Black women’s musicality.
"No study of Black women and music should, in my opinion, overlook the groundbreaking critical methodologies and style of analysis that Reitz brought to her writing, since her work sought to change the playing field on which Black women musicians emerged as topics of interest and value among critics as well as fans. She cultivated a new critical language and new lens through which we might engage these artists and apprehend their often stunning, moving, and exhilarating artistic choices."
Click here for more excerpts. Click here for more info about this book.
March 2021
New Book
Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound by Daphne Brooks features a laudatory chapter about Rosetta's work.
The author reached out to me with questions about Rosetta and requests for permission to replicate some photos and liner notes. She spent considerable time studying the files about Rosetta Records at Duke University that documented Rosetta's process and of course listening to the music.
Thank you, Daphne Brooks, for your efforts to celebrate and give credit to the important contribution made by my mother.
An excerpt:
"...Reitz’s greatest and heretofore unheralded legacy was in the realm of music criticism. As this chapter reveals, Reitz is one of our most formidable blues and jazz music critics, as well as a focused second-wave feminist critic, perhaps one of the only feminists of her generation to consistently and extensively champion the aesthetic work of Black women musicians as a vital and central component - the bedrock - of modern American culture. Her voluminous body of work, which includes dozens of meticulously crafted and heavily researched liner notes essays on women’s blues and jazz, not only make her worthy of recognition but also illuminate the myriad ways that Rosetta Reitz fundamentally revolutionized intellectual discourse on Black women’s musicality.
"No study of Black women and music should, in my opinion, overlook the groundbreaking critical methodologies and style of analysis that Reitz brought to her writing, since her work sought to change the playing field on which Black women musicians emerged as topics of interest and value among critics as well as fans. She cultivated a new critical language and new lens through which we might engage these artists and apprehend their often stunning, moving, and exhilarating artistic choices."
Click here for more excerpts. Click here for more info about this book.
New Video
‘Sort of Like an Archaeologist’: Exploring the Archive of a Blues Music Feminist.
This video lecture by author Daphne Brooks discusses Rosetta's work in a thorough and loving way. Daphne delves deep into the Duke archives and brings forth Rosetta's thought process and manner in which she taught herself the language for best exploring and writing about the Blues Women.
Click here. Starts at 11:00.
‘Sort of Like an Archaeologist’: Exploring the Archive of a Blues Music Feminist.
This video lecture by author Daphne Brooks discusses Rosetta's work in a thorough and loving way. Daphne delves deep into the Duke archives and brings forth Rosetta's thought process and manner in which she taught herself the language for best exploring and writing about the Blues Women.
Click here. Starts at 11:00.
Dutch street re-dedicated to Rosetta!
May 2020
May 2020
In May 2020, we received a wonderful email from some thoughtful activists in Leiden, Netherlands.
They live in or near a street called ReitzStraat (Reitz Street) that was named for a leader in the Boer War, Francis W. Reitz.
They decided to change the dedication of the street for two reasons:
1) To rethink the role the Boers played as colonists and their link to the rise of apartheid.
2) There are not enough streets named after women.
So they searched for a woman named Reitz. Discovering Rosetta, they were impressed with her accomplishments (that they read about on this site) and just went ahead and made a new sign. They will go through the official Council channels also. We just love that they took immediate grassroots action themselves.
Rosetta would have LOVED it!
Here is the original email:
May 18, 2020
Dear Miss Reitz,
I’m writing you to let you know that a few day ago ‘we’ changed the dedication of the Reitzstraat in our Dutch neighborhood from ‘Francis W. Reitz’ to your mother. ‘We’ are a small group of people (mostly woman) who live in the Reitzstraat or nearby. There are basically two reasons why we did this.
The first reason is that we take issue with the official dedication. Francis W. Reitz (1844-1934) is a leader of the ‘Boers’, a group of colonists of Dutch ancestry who lived (and still live) in South Africa. Up until the nineteen fifties they were considered to be ‘our brothers’ who should be supported, for instance in there wars against the English (Boer wars). This status led to there being a neighborhood in most towns in the Netherlands with the streets named after Boer leaders. From the fifties on more information spread about the role the Boers played as colonists and the way they are linked to rise of apartheid. Subsequently no new streets were name after them but also none were renamed. It is our opinion that the least we should do is educate people better about the background of the people our streets are named after; better then just a sign that says: ‘Francis W. Reitz 1844-1934, Boer-leader, president of Orange Free State’. To achieve that goal we are aiming to start a project together with the history department of the university in our town. The problem is off course is that this will take a considerable amount of time, maybe years, for instance because the council will have to sign off on it (they probably will, but such things take time). The second reason why we wanted the change the dedication is that there are just not enough streets named after women.
We decided that it would be a good idea to start with just changing the dedication of the street name by putting a new description-sticker over the current one. So ‘all’ we had to do is find a suitable woman named Reitz. And that turned out to be not too difficult, because google quickly came with your mothers name. We are very impressed with the things you mother did. For me personally the book she wrote about menopause is very relevant because my girlfriend is in that life phase right now. One of the sings is on a house were four musicians live, they find the story about the record label especially interesting.
After we agreed on re-dedicating to you mother, we quickly decided on a text, ordered good quality stickers an put them on last Friday. So now we have a street name in our neighborhood name after Rosetta Reitz, we are very proud of that. Quite an improvement!
You can see the ‘before’ and ‘after’ on the photo’s I added to this message. The text reads: “Rosetta Reitz 1924-2008 author, historian, owner of Rosetta Records”. We hope you appreciate what we did. If you have any remarks or questions, we are glad tot answer them.
I hope you and your loved ones are well in these strange times.
We wish you all the best!
With kind regards,
Luuk Jacobs
In August 2020, an article from the magazine, JazzIz, covered Rosetta's legacy and this wonderful story. Check it out by clicking on our 'Articles' page of this website.
The main Italian newspaper also picked up this amazing story:
"A beautiful transition from male to female, from war to peace, from violence to culture."
"A beautiful transition from male to female, from war to peace, from violence to culture."