Dena Epstein
American musicologist
Dena Julia Polacheck Epstein (30 November 1916 – 14 November 2013) was an American music librarian, author, and musicologist.
Early life
Epstein was born in Milwaukee to William Polacheck and Hilda Satt. She studied music at the University of Chicago and library science at the University of Illinois, graduating in 1943. She worked as a cataloguer at the latter institution while completing her degree, and upon graduation was appointed the Senior Music Librarian at Newark Public Library. In 1946 she began working as a cataloguer and reviser for the Library of Congress music section. After spending a period as a homemaker, she returned to the University of Chicago in 1964 as the Assistant Music Librarian, in which position she served for 22 years.
Scholarship
Beginning in 1955, Epstein began researching the historical origins of American slave music. Her 1977 book on the topic, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: black folk music to the Civil War, was awarded the Chicago Folklore Prize and the Simkins Prize of the Southern Historical Association. Among other findings, Epstein demonstrated that the banjo emerged from the African slave tradition rather than rural white culture, a revelation that "shattered myths and sparked a remarkable revival of black string band music". Epstein received two National Endowment for the Humanities grants for her research, which was included in several musicology journals.
The public source identifies “Dena Epstein” as american musicologist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dena, Epstein and American.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15992946. VIAF identifies the subject as 111056210. The Library of Congress control number is n88194204. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916, 2013, 1943 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dena Epstein” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.