• Been Here And Gone by Frederick Ramsey Jr., 1960.

• DeFord Bailey: A Black Star in Early Country Music by Charles Wolfe and David C. Morton, 1991.
  

• African Banjo Echoes In Appalachia by Cecelia Conway, 1995.
  

• The Kingdom of Zydeco by Michael Tisserand, 1998.

• Cajun and Creole Music Makers: Musiciens Cadiens et Créoles by Barry Ancelet, 1999.
  

• Zydeco by Ben Sandmel, Rick Olivier, 1999.
  

• My Country, Too: The Other Black Music by Pamela E. Foster, 2000.

• Texas Zydeco by Roger Wood, James Fraher, 2006.
  

• The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy by Bob Carlin, 2007.

• One Generation at a Time: Biography of a Cajun and Creole Music Festival by Barry Ancelet, 2007.

• Cajun and Zydeco Dance Music in Northern California: Modern Pleasures in a Postmodern World by Mark F. DeWitt, 2008.
  

• Sacred Steel: Inside an African American Steel Guitar Tradition by Robert L. Stone, 2010.

• Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music by Diane Pecknold, 2013.

• African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story by Bruce M. Conforth, 2013.

• The Gandy Dancers: And Work Songs from the American Railroad by Vanita Oelschlager, 2015 (Children’s Book).

• Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South by Charles L. Hughes, 2015.

• The Banjo: America's African Instrument by Laurent Dubois, 2016. ︎

• Ghosts of Good Times: Louisiana Dance Halls, Past and Present by Herman Fuselier, Philip Gould, 2016.

• Libba: The Magnificent Musical Life of Elizabeth Cotten by Laura Veirs & Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, 2018 (Children’s Book).
  

• The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America's Urban Heartland by Walter Thompson-Hernandez, April 2020. ︎

FILMS & SERIES

• The Banjo Project: A Digital Museum for America’s Instrument, prod. Marc Fields.  

• Gandy Dancers, dir. Barry Dornfeld and Maggie Holtzberg-Call, 1994. 30 mins. Free stream via Folkstreams. 

• Give Me The Banjo, dir. Marc Fields, 2011. 1h 30m. Available to stream on Vudu for free.

• The Librarian and The Banjo, dir. Jim Carrier, 2013. 56m. Available to stream with Prime video.

• “The Long Ride To 'Old Town Road': Black Artists And Their Contributions To Country Music” by NPR Illinois, August 2019. 

• “Yeehaw” in NYTime’s Still Processing with Jenna Wortham & Wesley Morris, September 2019. 40 mins.

• “The Black History Of The Banjo” by Afropop Worldwide, February 2021. 1h.

• View accompanying playlist and photographs here.

• “Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music” hosted by  Dr. William Turner and Dr. Ted Olsen for Great Smoky Mountains Association, April 2021 - Present.

• “Episode 1: Bagpipes, Banos, Ngonis, and Gourds,” April 2021. 51 mins.

• Library of Congress’ Entry on R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943).

• “Zydeco Zarico: Beans, Blues and Beyond,” by Barry Ancelet, Black Music Research Journal Vol. 8, No. 1, 1988.

• "Square Dance Calling: The African-American Connection" by Philip A. Jamison, Journal of Appalachian Studies. Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall 2003.

• “Why does country music sound ‘white’? Race and the voice of nostalgia” by Geoff Mann, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Volume 31, 2008.

• “Louisiana’s Zydeco Trail,” by Shaila Dewan, NY Times, April 2011.
  

• “Country Music Opens Its Ears” by Jon Caramanica, NYTimes, May 2014.

• “On the Trail of a Creole Music Pioneer, Still Alive in Song,” by Campbell Robertson, NYTimes, May 2015.

• “‘On a Mission’: Preserving Creole Culture One Tweet At a Time. Keith Frank, Zydeco, and the Use of Social Media,” by Marie Demars, Transatlantica, 2015.
  

• “6 Reasons Country Music is Blacker Than You Think” by Devon Leger in Paste Magazine, November 2016.

• “Lil Hardin: That’s How I Got to Memphis,” by Alice Randall (in Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives, ed. by Holly Gleason), 2017.

• Rhiannon Giddens’ Keynote Address at the 2017 IBMA Business Conference, September 2017.

• “The Roots of Cowboy Music: The Search For A Black Self In The American West” by Carvell Wallace, MTV, May 2017. ︎

• “Darius Rucker and the Perplexing Whiteness of Country Music” by Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker, October 2017.

• “Why Kane Brown Is Country Music’s New Outcast King” by Joe Levy, Rolling Stone, November 2018.

• “A Brief History of the Yeehaw Agenda” by Taylor Crumpton, Afropunk, March 2019. ︎

• “How Solange and Mitski Reconsider Who Can Be the Cowboy” by Michelle Kim, Pitchfork, March 2019.

• “How Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” Became a Lightning Rod for Race, the Charts, and Country Music” by Sheldon Pearce, Pitchfork, April 2019. 

• “Lil Nas X Inspires a New Reckoning in Country Music” by Taylor Crumpton, PAPER, May 2019.

• “Rhiannon Giddens and What Folk Music Means” by John Jeremiah Sullivan, The New Yorker, May 2019.

• “Why Is Country Music Considered So White?” by Isaac Himmelman in Huffington Post, July 2019.

• “Black Artists Built Country Music—And Then It Left Them Behind” by Andrew R. Chow in TIME, September 2019.

• “Country Music Is More Diverse Than You Think” by Ken Burns & Dayton Duncan in NYTimes, September 2019.

• “A Guide to African Country Music” by Jesse Jarnow, Bandcamp Daily, September 2019.
  

• “This black female musician you may not know has written songs you probably do” (on Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten) by Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Good Morning America, February 2020.

• “Country Music Is Nothing Without Black Artists” by Andrea Williams, ZORA, April 2020.

• "She's A Country Girl All Right: Rhiannon Giddens's Powerful Reclamation of Country Culture" by Kimberly Mack, Journal of Popular Music Studies, June 2020.

• “Rewriting Country Music’s Racist History,” by Elamin Abdelmahmoud in Rolling Stone, June 2020.

• “Contributions of Black Creators Shaped Classic Country Music” by Edward Morris in CMT, June 2020. 

• “Mickey Guyton Asks Country Music Industry and Fans to Imagine Being ‘Black Like Me’” by Chris Willman, Variety, June 2020.

• “Anita ‘Lady A’ White Will Not Be Erased” by Andrea Williams, Vulture, July 2020.

• “Why Haven’t We Had a Black Woman Country Star?” by Andrea Williams, Nashville Scene, August 2020.

• “A Brief History of Black Country Music, From Tee Tot to Breland“ by Marcus K. Dowling, The Boot, February 2021.

• “Black Songwriters Share Their Experiences In Country Music: 'It Feels Both Hopeful and Unpredictable'” by Marcus K. Dowling, Billboard, May 2021.

• “Independent Black Artists Are Changing the Landscape of Country Music” by Marcus K. Dowling, Bandcamp Daily, July 2021.

• “Reflecting on Country Music From Bristol on Juneteenth 2021” by Marcus K. Dowling, The Boot, August 2021.

• “12 Black artists shaping country music's future” by Matthew Leimkuehler and Dave Paulson, Nashville Tennessean, September 2021.

• “What Actually is “Country Music”?” by Kelefa Sanneh, Lithub, October 2021.

• “The Insidiousness of "Afro-Americana" - Paste” by Jake Blount, Paste Magazine, October 2021.