Marva Griffin Carter

She graduated from the Boston Conservatory (now Boston Conservatory at Berklee) with a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance, and received a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory of Music. She then earned a second master's degree in musicology from Boston University in 1975. In 1988 she received a doctorate (PhD) from the University of Illinois at Urbana.[3]

The subject of her master's thesis at Boston University was the composer Hall Johnson.[4] Her PhD dissertation was titled The life and music of Will Marion Cook.[5][6][lower-alpha 1]

She has spoken of a serendipitous meeting in 1970 with the musicologist Eileen Southern, who inspired her to pursue an academic career, saying of the encounter, "[she] basically recruited me," and "I would not have achieved what I have, or even pursued my areas of interest were it not for her."[7]

She began her academic career as coordinator of the African American Studies Program at Simmons University, Boston.[3] She then became the chair of the Music Department at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia.[3] Since 1993 she has worked as an academic administrator and professor at Georgia State University, where she served as Assistant Director, later Director of Graduate Studies, and currently, Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee in the School of Music.[3][8] She was the 1998 Barbara Jordan/W. E. B. DuBois Award for Outstanding Teaching recipient.[2]

She is a member of the American Musicological Society and the Society for American Music.[3][2]

Her book Swing along: the musical life of Will Marion Cook was published on 2008.[9]

Carter was the organist for Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. She is also writing a book about the sacred musical traditions and repertoire of the historic church.[3]

In 2020 her work was recognized with the Society for American Music's Lifetime Achievement Award.[3]

Dr. Griffin Carter was featured in Harvard Radcliffe Institute's 2022 webinar Black Music and the American University: Eileen Southern's Story.[10][11]

Griffin Carter is married to the historian and civil rights scholar Lawrence Carter. They have one son, Lawrence Edward Carter Jr.[12][13]

• Griffin Carter, Marva. Hall Johnson – Preserver of the Old Negro Spiritual (1880–1970). www.worldcat.org. Retrieved 2023-03-24. (Master's thesis, Boston University, 1975)[4]
• Griffin Carter, Marva. Roland Hayes–Expressor of the Soul in Song (1887–1977), The Black Perspective in Music, Autumn 1977, 188.
• Griffin Carter, Marva. The life and music of Will Marion Cook. Thesis, Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1988 – via WorldCat.[6]
• Carter, Marva Griffin. The "New Negro" Legacy of Will Marion Cook. Afro-Americans in New York Life and History (1999). Vol.23 (1), p.25-37[14]
• The "New Negro" Choral Legacy of Hall Johnson, Chorus and community, Ahlquist, Karen, ed. (2006). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-03037-0. OCLC 62281651[15]
• Weisenfeld, Judith (2011). "The Secret at the Root": Performing African American Religious Modernity in Hall Johnson's Run, Little Chillun. Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation. 21 (1): 39–80. doi:10.1525/rac.2011.21.1.39 ISSN 1052-1151[16]
• Carter, Marva Griffin (2008). Swing along: the musical life of Will Marion Cook. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-986579-6 OCLC 875519263[9][17]
• Colloquy: Shadow Culture Narratives: Race, Gender, and American Music Historiography, Journal of the American Musicological Society (2020) 73 (3): 711–784.[18]

• Marva Griffin Carter Biography, Georgia State University
• American Popular Song Series: Will Marion Cook (Marva Griffin Carter, et al. on NPR, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, 2001)
• American Popular Song: Will Marion Cook's Lyrics and Life (Marva Griffin Carter, et al. on NPR, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, 2000)