The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted into a prize: "For a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the year."
John Owen was the 24th Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina and the state's first Democratic governor from 1828 to 1830.
Anthony Davis is an American pianist and composer. He incorporates several styles including jazz, rhythm 'n' blues, gospel, non-Western, African, European classical, Indonesian gamelan, and experimental music. He has played with several groups and is also a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego.
Aḥmad Bābā al-Timbuktī, full name Abū al-Abbās Aḥmad ibn Aḥmad ibn Aḥmad ibn Umar ibn Muhammad Aqit al-Takrūrī Al-Massufi al-Timbuktī, was a Sanhaja Berber writer, scholar, and political provocateur in the area then known as the Western Sudan. He was a prolific author and wrote more than 40 books.
Michael Abels is an American composer best known for the opera Omar, co-written with Rhiannon Giddens, and his genre-defying scores for the Jordan Peele films Get OutUs and Nope. The hip-hop influenced score for Us was short-listed for the Oscars and was even named “Score of the Decade” by TheWrap. Other recent media projects include the films Bad Education, Nightbooks, Fake Famous, and the docu-series Allen v. Farrow. Current releases include Beauty which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now streaming on Netflix, Breaking which premiered at Sundance, and his third collaboration with Jordan Peele, Nope.
Abu al-Qasim Mahmud ibn Umar al-Zamakhshari was a medieval Muslim scholar of Iranian descent. He travelled to Makkah and settled there for five years and has been known since then as 'Jar Allah'. He was a Mu'tazilite theologian, linguist, poet and interpreter of the Quran. He is best known for his book Al-Kashshaf, which interprets and linguistically analyzes Quranic expressions and the use of figurative speech for conveying meaning. This work is a primary source for all major linguists; however, some of its Mu’tazila philosophical ideas were rejected by Ibn Kathir.
Hadji Oumarûl Foutiyou Tall, born in Futa Tooro, present day Senegal, was a West African Tijani sufi Toucouleur Islamic scholar and military commander who founded the short-lived Toucouleur Empire, which encompassed much of what is now Senegal, Guinea, Mauritania and Mali.
Omar ibn Said was a Fula Muslim scholar from Futa Toro in West Africa, who was enslaved and transported to the United States in 1807. There, while enslaved for the remainder of his life, he wrote a series of Arabic-language works on history and theology, including a short autobiography.
The Message is a 1976 Islamic epic drama film directed and produced by Moustapha Akkad, chronicling the life and times of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Mark Cousins in his The Story of Film: An Odyssey said The Message was "perhaps seen by as many people as have seen any film in cinema history."
Islamic views on slavery represent a complex and multifaceted body of Islamic thought, with various Islamic groups or thinkers espousing views on the matter which have been radically different throughout history. Slavery was a mainstay of life in pre-Islamic Arabia and surrounding lands. The Quran and the hadith address slavery extensively, assuming its existence as part of society but viewing it as an exceptional condition and restricting its scope. Early Islamic dogma forbade enslavement of dhimmis, the free members of Islamic society, including non-Muslims and set out to regulate and improve the conditions of human bondage. Islamic law regarded as legal slaves only those non-Muslims who were imprisoned or bought beyond the borders of Islamic rule, or the sons and daughters of slaves already in captivity. In later classical Islamic law, the topic of slavery is covered at great length.
The Bilali Muhammad Document is a handwritten, Arabic manuscript on West African Islamic law. It was written in the 19th century by Bilali Mohammet, an enslaved West African held on Sapelo Island of Georgia. The document is held at the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia as part of the Francis Goulding papers. It is referred to as the "Ben Ali (Bilali) Manuscript".
The Consul is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, his first full-length opera.
Sylviane Anna Diouf is a historian and curator of the African diaspora. She is a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University and a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Her contribution as a social historian, she stressed, "May be the uncovering of essential stories and topics that were overlooked or negated, but which actually offer new insights into the experience of the African Diaspora. A scholar said my work re-shapes and re-directs our understanding of this history; it shifts our attention, corrects the historical record, and reveals hidden and forgotten voices."
John Kennedy is an American conductor and composer.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops were an old-time string band from Durham, North Carolina. Their 2010 album, Genuine Negro Jig, won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, and was number 9 in fRoots magazine's top 10 albums of 2010.
Rhiannon Giddens is an American musician known for her eclectic folk music. She is a founding member of the country, blues, and old-time music band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, where she was the lead singer, fiddle player, and banjo player.
The history of slavery in the Muslim world began with institutions inherited from pre-Islamic Arabia. The practices of keeping slaves in the Muslim world nevertheless developed in radically different ways in different Muslim states based on a range of social-political factors, as well as the more immediate economic and logistical considerations of the Arab slave trade. As a general principle, Islam encouraged the manumission of Muslim slaves as a way of expiating sins, and many early converts to Islam, such as Bilal, were former slaves. However, Islam never banned the practice, and it persisted as an important institution in the Muslim world through to the modern era.
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian composer, librettist, director, and playwright who is primarily known for his output of 25 operas. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. One of the most frequently performed opera composers of the 20th century, his most successful works were written in the 1940s and 1950s. Highly influenced by Giacomo Puccini and Modest Mussorgsky, Menotti further developed the verismo tradition of opera in the post-World War II era. Rejecting atonality and the aesthetic of the Second Viennese School, Menotti's music is characterized by expressive lyricism which carefully sets language to natural rhythms in ways that highlight textual meaning and underscore dramatic intent.
Yarrow Mamout was a formerly enslaved African entrepreneur and property owner in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. An educated Fulani Muslim, he gained his freedom in 1796 after 44 years as an enslaved person. James Alexander Simpson and Charles Willson Peale painted his portrait, Peale's being held in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Jamez McCorkle is an American opera singer. A tenor, he is known for originating the title role in the 2022 opera Omar.
