Thanks to the donation of Kirk Silsbee, the archive have now acquired the handwritten autobiographies of jazz musician, Sadik Hakim, which were written on Saint Peter's College blue books in 1980. His autobiographies, which he titled "A Chronicle of My Life in Music, Almost 5 Decades, Less Short 3 Yrs," consist of eleven St. Peter's College final exam booklets.
He begins with his birth on July 15, 1919 in Minnesota, and describes his childhood and growing up with his maternal grandparents who taught him to love music and play piano. In later booklets, he recounts his experience as an asiring jazz musician and the traveling he did with his bands. He also references the many projects he worked on. For example, in booklet 5, he describes working on the 1945 "Ko-Ko" record with Dizzy Gillespie. Throughout his autobiography, he also details the discrimination and racist encounters he experienced from the time when he was a small child in a boys school bathroom to when he was a grown adult man traveling around the US and Canada. His autobiography is incomplete and ends in November 1969.
Sadik Hakim was born on July 15, 1919 in Duluth, Minnesota. Hakim was jazz pianist, who played all over the USA and Canada with his jazz trio from the 40's to the early 80's. He also did a tour in Europe and in Japan. Hakim played with jazz musicians such as Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, Lester "Prez" Young, Slam Stewart, James Moody, Sonny Stitt, and Buddy Tate.
His first record, "East Meets West," came out in 1961, which he co-created with fellow jazz pianist, Duke Jordan. He went to produced several more records with Progressive, Steeplechase, and CBS labels. He composed over 80 pieces of music and was lead on several records, including "London Suite" (1973), "Witches, Goblins, Etc." (1977), "Sonny Stitt Meets Sadik Hakim" (c.1978), and "Memories" (c.1978). Another one of his songs, "Eronel," was falsely attributed to Thelonious Monk.
Sadik Hakim came from a family of musicians. His maternal grandfather was a violinist, composer, conductor, and music instructor, who taught Hakim piano. His mother, aunt, and maternal grandmother were musicians too, and the family played together as a chamber music group. Originally, he was named Argonne Thorton, after his father, but in the 1940s, he converted to Islam and changed his name to Sadik Hakim. He chose Hakim after learning his father had been adopted from Algeria by an American Black Christian family and his former surname was Hakim.
He died in New York City on June 20, 1983.
As can be seen in this issue of the Campus Newsletter, Hakim visited Saint Peters' College in 1981 and performed on October 20th in Dineen Auditorium.
For more information about the Sadik Hakim Autobiographical Writings, check out the finding aid now published on ArchivesSpace!
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