Music and Dance

See also: Theater, Broadcasting, Cinema

African Children's Choir

This choir of children aged five to 12 years was founded in 1984 by Raymond R. Barnett, himself an Irish-Canadian orphan and ordained minister, who first went to Uganda in 1982. It was begu... [more]

Ahbez, Eden

Ahbez is known as the First Hippy. His life story is unclear but one version has him born in 1908 (another after World War I) to a large and poverty-stricken family in Brooklyn. He and his ... [more]

Alda, Frances Jeanne

Alda (her stage name) was born Fanny Jane Davis in New Zealand. Her parents divorced when she was 15 months old, and her mother, a professional singer, died in 1884, after which young Fanny... [more]

Andrews, Ben

Andrews was born in Yugoslavia and adopted by an American diplomatic family there. He became interested in the guitar as a child but did not become entirely focused on the instrument until ... [more]

Angelou, Maya

Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in California. Her parents divorced when she was a young child and she and her brother were sent by their father to live with his mother i... [more]

Antoine, Josephine Louise

Antoine was born in Denver, Colorado and adopted after being orphaned while still a baby. She began to study voice in 1921 at college. She won a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute... [more]

Armstrong, Louis Daniel

Armstrong's parents separated about the time he was born and he was raised in great poverty, first by his grandmother and then by his mother, with his sister. His education ended in the fif... [more]

Bach, Johann Sebastian

Bach was born in Eisenach, the eighth and last child of Johann Ambrosius and Maria Elisabeth Bach. His mother died in 1694 and his father in 1695. The nine-year-old orphan and his brother J... [more]

Baker, Josephine

Baker (the surname of her second husband) was born Josephine Carson to an unmarried couple in the slums of St. Louis, Missouri. Her father abandoned the family before she was a year old, an... [more]

Barber, Dee Seton

Barber was adopted in 1938 by Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) and his second wife, Julia Moses Buttree. Seton had founded the Woodcraft movement in 1902 in Connecticut, which developed in... [more]