AN AMERICAN MUSICIAN
The entire population in 1750 of the thirteen colonies which became the US was less than 1.2 million people. About 240,000 of them were black; with almost 90% of those in the seven Southern colonies (South Carolina was well on its way to a majority-black population). In the six Northern colonies, more than 8,000 of the 25,000 black residents were free; the South had fewer than 5,000 free blacks. While free, black men were generally not allowed in militias during the frontier wars, nor during the Revolution until General Washington approved enlistment of black soldiers so Rhode Island might make its quotas. Black men who did enlist were generally assigned as "musicians" (fife and drum provided signals, kept time on the march, and bolstered morale) and rarely bore armaments.
In the Massachusetts town of Groton (a farm community of roughly 1,100 people thirty miles northwest of Boston) there was a free black family headed by former servants Primus and Margret Lew. Primus had served as both a militia soldier and musician in the Hoosac River campaigns after the disastrous siege of Fort Massachusetts in King George's War (Primus had likely been manumitted as a result). The oldest of their four children was Barzillai (b.1743), who grew up to be "big and strong with an extraordinary talent as a musician.”
At seventeen, Barzillai spent a year with the Farrington Company of Groton militia as a fifer, and saw fighting in the Montreal campaign of the French & Indian War After he returned, he moved to Chelmsford at the juncture of the Merrimack and Concord rivers - a town with growing timber and lime-kiln industries - opening a business as a cooper. In 1766 he purchased the mulatto slave Dinah Bowman for $400 from Major Abraham Blood; he gave her freedom, and then married her. She was a fine pianist, and has been mentioned as possibly the earliest African-American to play the instrument.
The Lew family grew by 1793 to seven boys and six girls, all of whom seem to have inherited their parents' abilities for music. They formed a family orchestra which frequently performed for occasions throughout Massachusetts (then including Maine) and New Hampshire.
The cooperage was also successful, contracting to build tubs and casks for the Middlesex Canal Company. Wealth enabled Barzillai to own a large farm in what is now Lowell, build a big home, and keep a coach and fine horses that brought them each Sunday to the Pawtucket Society Church.
In 1775, Lew enlisted in the Capt. Ford's Chelmsford Militia Company and fought at Bunker Hill as a soldier, fifer, and drummer, one of three dozen African-Americans to participate in the battle. His fife-playing during the battle was noted as a spark for American morale. Two years later, Barzillai rejoined the militia to fight at Fort Ticonderoga; after the battle he was selected to play both fife and fiddle during the ceremony in which British General Burgoyne surrendered.   
Lew died in 1822, his wife Dinah received a pension from Massachusets for her husband's service in the Revolutionary War. Their family continued to flourish, one grandson building a house in Derry NH (which still stands) used by the Underground Railroad. Another grandson served as music advisor for the Cambridge school district, and led a popular dance-band in that city. Descendent Harry 'Bucky' Lew was recruited to join the Pawtucketville Athletic Club of the New England Professional Basketball League League - the first African-American to play professional baketball.
Barzillai was remembered by Duke Ellington in a 1932 piano piece.
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https://youtu.be/Z3p-uo03CtE?si=oxVZrV42kRxkuhwc