Black Cowboys played by the AACM's Great Black Music Ensemble in The AfroDuster Suite

The AACM is excited to present Art Turk Burton’s AfroDuster Suite featuring the Great Black Music Ensemble on Sunday, February 25, 4:30 p.m. at the David and Reva Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th Street, on the campus of the University of Chicago. Admission is $15. 

The AfroDuster Suite is an original presentation by the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble. The suite is a multimedia presentation featuring compositions by AACM members Mwata Bowden, Ernest Dawkins, Maia, and Fred Jackson, Jr. The AfroDuster Suite commemorates the movement of African Americans to the western frontier after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction era. Thousands of black people made this exodus to start a new life, be independent and escape the suffocating racism of the South. Some of the individuals became famous, such as Mary Fields aka "Stagecoach Mary," lawman Bass Reeves, cowboy Bill Pickett, and Buffalo Soldier Lt. Henry O. Flipper. Many of the people who made the exodus became soldiers, farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, journalists, and cowboys. Black towns sprang up in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and California. The musical presentation will move from the earliest periods of migration up to the tragic Tulsa, Oklahoma, Massacre in 1921. Many of the AACM members are descendants of people who made the exodus to the western frontier during that era of American history.

The AfroDuster Suite is curated by noted African American author/historian and AACM percussionist Art "Turk" Burton. Burton is the author of several books on African Americans in the West and has taught and lectured widely on the subject. Most recently, he was featured on CBS Sunday Morning, as they explored the growing interest in Black cowboys.

The Great Black Music Ensemble is the largest performing group of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a non-profit organization and collective of composers and. Headquartered in Woodlawn, the AACM will be celebrating its 60th anniversary next year.