Search

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors

Rosetta Reitz Archive Collective

visit the site
Rosetta Reitz Archive Collective graphic

Rosetta Reitz was a 20th century feminist writer, business owner, and record and concert producer. She produced nearly 20 albums of the music of the early women of jazz and the blues. She also wrote a mushroom cookbook and a book about menopause, and produced multiple live multi-artist productions and presented multimedia lectures about the history of women performing the blues.

We are a multidisciplinary, intergenerational research collective comprising archivists, a professional singer/songwriter, academic research staff with sociocultural anthropology and digital humanities expertise, and graduate and undergraduate students from across a variety of schools and disciplines at Duke University.

Our project is supported by Bass Connections, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI), and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library in addition to the Forum @ FHI.

From the margins to the center

Rosetta Reitz insisted on making women's work and lives more visible

 

The archive of multi-faceted music activist Rosetta Reitz (1924-2008) speaks to contemporary interests in archival ethics, feminist advocacy, research as creative process, and patterns of erasure in the music industry. The papers, photos, recordings and ephemera of this 20th century feminist writer, business owner, and record and concert producer provide insight into historic injustices against not just musicians, but also those who would seek to write about and promote them.

Reitz started Rosetta Records in 1979, the first and only record label specializing in women’s jazz and blues music, dedicated to re-releasing forgotten and underappreciated recordings. Active into the 1990s, Rosetta Records released 19 albums. Reitz selected the music for the albums, wrote deeply-researched liner notes, and designed album covers. Then, much like the musical foremothers she sought to bring back from obscurity, Rosetta Records also disappeared, left out of streaming platforms and the male-dominated narratives of the music industry, and Reitz's name is rarely mentioned among key figures in blues and jazz history.

Analysis of Reitz’s personal and business pursuits from the margins of the 1970s and ‘80s music business serves as a case study for understanding both the past and the present.

 

A page from Godrich and Dixon, Blues and Gospel Records 1902-1942, with Reitz's notations, in the Rosetta Reitz papers at Duke. https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/reitzrosetta_aspace_ref1303_bx9

 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF OUR PROJECT

Our work began with a query from singer/songwriter and FHI practitioner-in-residence, Tift Merritt. Working on another archival project, she was introduced to the album "Sweet Petunias" by Allison Russell. (Allison's own story of how Rhiannon Giddens helped her track down the album is recounted here.) Captivated by the music and surprised that she had never encountered the album before, Tift dug in to learn more and discovered that the papers of Rosetta Reitz, the woman who had founded the label that produced the album, were held at Duke. As Tift does, she soon began weaving a web of people with an interest in the project.

Tift began her exploration of the archive first with a group of extraordinary singers who formed the “Rosetta Circle” and shared their own musical appreciation of the women whose music appears on Rosetta Records.

Parallel to that project, she sought partnerships elsewhere at Duke to research more deeply into the story of Rosetta Reitz and the work she was doing, not only as a record producer, but also as a mother, friend, writer, event producer, historian, and businesswoman. Those partners included Laura Micham and Craig Breaden of the Rubenstein Library, and Lou Brown of the Forum. Our project was born.

We frame our work in the language of care, a stance which raises as many questions as it provides answers. How do we attend to the desires and dreams and material realities embodied in the performances, letters, and texts of the women in this archive? How do we responsibly acknowledge the power we have over them, as they are no longer here to refuse the terms of care and of interpretation of their works and lives that we are offering? What is the appropriate balance of storytelling about Rosetta and about the other people who appear in her papers, particularly the Black women performers whose work and lives she sought to reimagine for her late 20th century audience? 

Black and white image of a woman sitting at a desk with record album covers displayed flat on the desk in front of her

Rosetta Reitz, New York, NY, 1996 photo by Robert Giard, Rosetta Reitz Papers, Duke University

 

“I wish to scrutinize them from another angle of vision than the one that has most been applied; from ignoring them to minimizing their importance to totally misjudging them, to reducing them to a single dimension when in fact their lives were full of complexities. If we do not remember them, because so many have been excluded from the history books, then we are doing damage to a significant part of our American past. The women’s songs document that past and our collective memory is enriched from that knowledge. Their contribution to American culture […] is not controversial.”

Rosetta Reitz, unpublished manuscript, "Mean Mothers Shout the Blues"

 

OUR TEAM

Since beginning our project in late 2022, we have benefited from contributions of an intergenerational team of researchers. Some have worked with the project from its outset, while others were able to join for only a few weeks. All have left their mark. Team members past and present include:

Tift Merritt - singer/songwriter, Practitioner-in-Residence, Duke University

Craig Breaden - Rubenstein Library

Lou Brown - Forum @ FHI

Laura Micham - Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Rubenstein Library

Annie Koppes - doctoral student

Ethan Foote - doctoral student

Hannah Jacobs - Rubenstein Library

Trisha Santanam - undergraduate

Isabelle Zhang - undergraduate

Mandira Bhat - undergraduate

Gabrielle Douglas - undergraduate

Thea Ballard - doctoral student

Lindsay Frankfort - undergraduate

Nick Nie - undergraduate

Joyce Thomas - undergraduate

J’adore Harris-Tavita - undergraduate

 

explore our work

Since late 2022, we have hosted public events, participated in Duke's Bass Connections Showcase, and presented a set of interpretive interventions at an international conference.

READ MORE

In the news:

“Rosetta Reitz: The Life Behind the Music” | Duke Research Blog, by Gabrielle Douglas

“The Archive is an Invitation” | Franklin Humanities Institute

 

Visit the Project Website