Today, so far as anyone knows, there are just two surviving issues of The Musical Messenger. It was and is a groundbreaking publication that ran from 1886 to 1891—and by all accounts the very first Black music magazine. All that stands between remembering and forgetting are just those two issues in the Library of Congress, one four pages, the other three. Whole movements, plans, and ideas rest on those seven pages from 1889. History isn’t a straight line, but it isn’t a stretch to link The Musical Messenger to any…
