There are often trends throughout history that seem to take on a timeless role. In this instance, I am talking about colonialism. Whether it is researching about the cultural intersect of “New Spain” from in the 16th-18th centuries to the seemingly harmless independence of Cuba from Spanish rule- music always seems to do a superb job in representing ideologies and themes of the times that they were written in.

It turns out- after a deeper dive into the primary source I found (to my knowledge, for the very first time), I realized that this was the same exact source I used for my first blog post! I was deceived by the different cover, formatting, and last but not least- the mYstEriOusLy changed title. Do I have an explanation for this? No. But was I completely flabbergasted? You bet! This title cover was the first one that I looked into. I, at the time, could not find the music to this piece.¹

Chas M. Hattersley, “Patriotic American Sheet Music.” The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience

To my surprise, this time around- I found not only the music to this piece but also a different printed version of it.²

Hattersley, Chas. M., Pond & Co., New York, 1873, monographic.- Library of Congress

Same composer and same lyrics- but different enough for a college music student to almost get stumped by two seemingly different songs. The difference in the title really caught my attention. In looking at the cover that says, “Free Cuba” in all caps, I, in my naive-ness, thought that this song seemed pretty harmless, looking through the words and realizing that this was America’s cry for Cuba’s freedom. A cry out of support and sympathy. But I found myself completely wrong when I looked more into the history of this song and what it pictured amidst the Spanish-American war. This was not a war to gain Cuba’s independence. This war was to transfer rule from one colonist country to the next. This song represents what the “Cuban independence” really meant to America, which can be summarized through the Platt Amendment³ that was enacted in 1901, essentially kept Cuba under the restrictive power of the United States.

W. McKINLEY CARTOON, c1900. American cartoon comment, c1900, on Uncle Sam’s seemingly insatiable imperialist appetite; waiting to take the order, at right, is President William McKinley.

Cartoon regarding the Platt Amendment: “The U.S. did not want the Spanish-American War to be seen as an imperialistic land grab for Cuba.” (https://apprend.io/apush/period-7/platt-amendment/)

This song pictures the triumph that would take place for America, being able to take over what was another territory.

The representation of various historical events seen through music, as seen through my trial and error, has to be carefully examined and researched. There is no glossing over history and the colonial underlying themes that seem to bleed through history.

In our class discussion on racial uplift during the Harlem renaissance, we talked about W.E.B Du Bois’ idea to uplift the African American race through highlighting the smartest and most educated Black people, who he called “talented tenth.” His idea relied on talented Black people to climb the social ladder and prove to white society that the race is just as capable of brilliance as white people. This applies to our class because the music of Du Bois’ time often reflected his ideas; European influences were a staple of music of the Harlem renaissance. Here is an example of French influence in Florence Price’s “Night,” sung here by countertenor Darryl Taylor.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3oyjHCxoBg

However, some of Du Bois’ contemporaries had different ideas for racial uplift. Even before Du Bois published his 1903 essay “The Talented Tenth,” Booker T. Washington had created a plan that emphasized racial solidarity and education through crafts and skills as well as academics. His plan was to highlight the necessity of regular African Americans in regular American society, rather than to highlight the talents of a few brilliant African Americans. (PBS)

When searching through African American periodicals, it is clear that scholars of the time had lots of different opinions when it comes to racial uplift. Here are a few examples (State Journal (1883), Freeman (1911), (Savannah Tribune 1913).

It is common for majority groups such as white Americans to see minority groups as a monolith, but the varying opinions of African Americans of Du Bois’ time remind us that like all groups of people, Black Americans did and continue to have a wide variety of ideas, perspectives, and backgrounds.

While the Theater Owners’ Booking Association (or T.O.B.A.) had many high powered stars working on its circuit, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey is one of the players that continues to resonate with popular culture today. August Wilson’s mid-1980s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and the 2020 movie adaptation of the same work are just a couple examples of Rainey’s massive influence in the current media whirlwind. 

Yet, Ma Rainey’s influence was powerful even among her contemporaries on the T.O.B.A. circuit and her adoring audiences. Below are a couple of performance advertisements and reviews of Rainey’s work, which include nothing but glowing remarks regarding her artistry.

“Everybody is still talking about the glad rags that Ma Rainey displayed. She made about ump-teen changes and looked keener each time. Ma sang until she was out of breath, the audience called her back each time and she really did her stuff. She climaxed the deal by doing a ‘Paramount Black Bottom.’ This company is good enough far anybody’s house.”

“IN OLD KAYSEE.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Jan 21, 1928.

“There are a number of performers singing the ‘blues,’ but when Ma Rainey sings them, nuff said. She has to take three or four bows every night.”

“Alexander Tolliver’s Big Show.” Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), January 29, 1916: 6. Readex: African American Newspapers.

Even a blurb from the Kansas Plaindealer speaks of her musical appeal transcending race: 

“‘Ma’ Rainey is widely known to both white and colored lovers of crooney melodies. She was selected after careful canvas to make phonographic records and also to sing on the radio. Her tones are distinctive and have that peculiar resonance characteristic of color singers.”

“‘MA’ Rainey.” Plaindealer (Topeka, Kansas) THIRTY FIRST YEAR, no. THIRTY SIX, September 6, 1929: [THREE]. Readex: African American Newspapers.

In an article published long after her death that details the horribly common instance of racism against African Americans across the United States, female journalist Yvonne Gregory writes about Ma Rainey’s extensive artistic reach on her musical contemporaries and her impact on blues music in general. 

Gregory, Yvonne. “Pearl Bailey Incident Recalls Life and Death of Bessie Smith.” Freedom [New York, New York], 11 November 1952, page 7.

“Today it’s [] Mahalis Jackson’s gospel music; or it is Pearl Bailey singing ‘Tired of the life I lead, tired of counting things I need’; yesterday it was Bessie singing, ‘Down in the Dumps’; day before yesterday Ma Rainey sang ‘Backwater Blues.’ but yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the blues are an unbreakable thread in the life of our people and in the life of all Americans.”

• • • • • • • Side note: I could not find a recording of Ma Rainey singing “Backwater Blues.” I could only find recordings of Bessie Smith singing the tune, because she is the composer. So, I’m not sure if Gregory made a mistake in attributing this tune to Rainey, or if the origin story is different from the commonly accepted one. 

At first, I thought the author’s mentioning of all women blues performers was accidental or merely common name associations. She connects performers that fall within this musical era through their similar sounds and stage personas, creating almost a mini-history of the genre.  However, she takes her brief blues music history a step further with a claim that “Negro women are among the greatest interpreters of this art form.”

Simply, this tidbit is exciting for a couple of reasons. First, Gregory’s analysis of this phenomenon in the world of blues music fits almost perfectly with our current mapping project of the T.O.B.A. circuit and the routes of its many powerhouse women performers. Second, even back in the 1950s, women saw the effect of not only Ma Rainey, but also the collective of African American women who contributed in pioneering the popularity of the blues music we know (and even love) today. Here, we see a unique instance of African American women being lifted up, even though the world around them wants to tear them down. Therefore, like Yvonne Gregory, I “look forward to the day that all the people will honor [these African American women],” and I hope that our mapping project will shine a light on some of these powerhouses that many today might not even know.

A sample program from Haverly’s guide.

Blackface minstrelsy was the pinnacle of American entertainment for decades. In the early 19th century, white audiences and performers commodified and consumed Blackness by creating stereotypical characters. However, after the Civil War, minstrelsy evolved to remain relevant to the American public. I wrote in a previous blog post about how radio was minstrelsy’s medium in the 20th century. At the turn of the century, though, white troupe owners sought to keep minstrelsy relevant by a different medium: print.

J.H. “Jack” Haverly, a white show manager, is remembered by historians as minstrelsy’s most successful promoter.¹ In 1902, Haverly published a guide to minstrelsy for aspiring performers. He offers advice on organizing a troupe, many suggestions for jokes and songs, and of course, advertising strategies. Continue reading →

When the indigenous song collection group began our research, we found that the Smithsonian funded much of Densmore’s work. As I so clearly and forcefully lined out in my last blog post, I personally believe that Densmore’s work, funded by the Smithsonian, was a form of cultural colonialism. Much of my research here was inspired by the article “Decolonizing Ethnographic Documentation: A Critical History of the Early Museum Catalogs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History” by Hannah Turner.

Continue reading →

Myths. They’re nasty. They slow research. Given that my group for the final project is researching T.O.B.A., the Theater Owners Booking Association, which booked the performances for many notable Black vaudeville performers, let’s dispel some myths surrounding T.O.B.A. so they do not get in the way of our research.

Myth No. 1: T.O.B.A. was founded by Sherman H. Dudley. 

T.O.B.A. was actually founded in 1909 by brothers Fred and Anselmo Barrasso, theater owners in Memphis who wanted to create a theater chain for Black performers¹. In this Freeman (a Black newspaper) article² you can see Fred’s name listed for the theater he managed, the Savoy Theatre, under the heading “Where You Find Colored Theaters: Real Play Houses That Are Owned And Managed By Negroes”.

But wait a second… Fred Barrasso wasn’t Black. He was an Italian immigrant. Stephen Huff, professor of Theatre and Dance at the University of Southern Florida, explains in the journal article, “The Impresarios of Beale Street: African American and Italian American Theatre Managers in Memphis, 1900–1915”,

“It may be that this is an example of the ambivalent racial status of Italian immigrants during this period. Accepted as “white” in some circles, perhaps they were, at the same time, accepted as nonwhite by the African Americans they worked with and served in the business of black entertainment.”³

Myth No. 2: The T.O.B.A. Circuit Was Also Known As The Dudley Circuit

Nope! Two separate things. Dudley’s Theatrical Circuit began in 1891, while Sherman H. Dudley was still performing. In 1912, 3 years after Fred and Anselmo Barrasso founded T.O.B.A., Sherman H. Dudley bought theaters, and stopped performing in 1913 to focus on the circuit. In 1916, the Dudley Circuit was absorbed into the Southern Consolidated Circuit, which got into many arguments with T.O.B.A.⁴

Here’s a mapping project for the Dudley Circuit (by Maeve Nagel-Frazel)!

Myth No. 3: So the T.O.B.A. Circuit Began in 1909….

In 1921, the Southern Consolidated Circuit (the rival circuit) was absorbed into T.O.B.A., allowing the circuits to combine about 100 theaters⁵. This new, larger T.O.B.A. is the T.O.B.A. that would be advertised in Black newspapers, become popular, and develop quite the circuit, booking major vaudeville stars. The success and fame of T.O.B.A. was due to Sherman H. Dudley, who was not only an effective businessman but a beloved figure, colloquially known as Uncle Dud and even starting a newspaper series in The Chicago Defender called “Dud’s Dope”. In one of the first articles, Dudley talks about wanting to bring big names to T.O.B.A. and his success in bringing Sarah Martin, Ida Cox, and Bessie Smith to T.O.B.A.⁶, dispelling another myth that T.O.B.A. is what helped give performers their starts. While sometimes true, T.O.B.A. also sought after performers that already had acclaim.

Conclusion

Determining the myths surrounding T.O.B.A. helped me answer previously unanswered questions about our group project. For example, for some of our data points, our group was unsure if the performances were through T.O.B.A. or not. Any unsure data points of performances before 1921, I would argue, are not through the T.O.B.A. Circuit. The bulk of advertising and booking announcements are found through Black newspapers, and that advertisement was the work of Sherman H. Dudley.

I also realized through this post that misinformation surrounding T.O.B.A. is rampant, even in works that I considered to be well-researched. This just goes to show how much more research needs to be done. What myths do you want dispelled?

Footnotes

When learning more about Indigenous music in the U.S., it is nearly impossible not to come across the work of Frances Densmore. An ethnographer from Red Wing, Minnesota, Densmore spent more than 50 years collecting Indigenous song for the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnography. Students hear a lot about Densmore’s work, but what other ethnographic work was out there around the same time, and how does it compare to Densmore’s? What does their work tell us about the field as a whole, and what did they do well, or what could have been done better?

To delve into these questions, I investigated the life and work of James Mooney, an ethnographer born in 1861 known as “The Indian Man”. Although he didn’t collect songs from Indigenous peoples, his work paralleled that of Densmore’s in that his writings were published by the Smithsonian Institution and he collected for the World’s Fair.

A newspaper clipping written by Lida Rose McCabe describes Mooney’s fieldwork:

In pursuing his work among the tribes Mr. Mooney wears Indian dress, and accommodates himself to the family life. In speaking of this he said to me: “Unless you live with a people you cannot know them. It is the only way to learn their ideas and study their character.

In comparison to Densmore, Mooney’s work was more more focused to a handful of groups, whereas Densmore collects from many groups across the country. Due to Mooney’s smaller group of study, he had the time to develop a deeper understanding of one’s culture and customs while forming relationships with members of the tribe.

However, this does not automatically make all of his work ethical. McCabe writes of his work:

Mr. Mooney’s special business during the last year has been to collect for the Smithsonian World’s Fair exhibit specimens of the domestic and industrial work of the Navajo and Moqui tribes. The esteem in which he is held by the Indians has enabled him to secure everything he desired.

Although Mooney likely cared for the Indigenous people he spent time with, and they likely cared for him, does this mean that he has permission to displace their cultural objects and display them for others? Additionally, we don’t know how comfortable tribes felt sharing objects with him, or to what extent sharing impacted their life:

He carries his own camera, but it has to be used cautiously. Only the stanchest friendship justifies him in asking an Indian to pose for his picture, for it is an article of the Indian’s faith that but such an act he loses part of his personality, and is therefore very likely to suffer sickness or even death.

Although someone outside of a particular tribe may see a particular object as interesting or worthy of study, the collection of an item may have caused very real consequences to those who shared that object. To combat this these injustices today, we can look towards repatriation initiatives, and be vigilant of the greater context surrounding ethnography.

Works Cited

Parker, Ely Samuel (1828-1895). 1828-1894. Ely Samuel Parker scrapbooks: Vol 11. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_Modern_MS_Parker_VL11 [Accessed November 23, 2021].

Rhodes, Willard. “Densmore, Frances.” Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 23 Nov. 2021. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000007571.

According to the article in the Chicago Defender, in December 2014, the artistic director Orbert Davis led the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic Orchestra to start collaborating with Cuban musicians. Davis believes that African American musical tradition has strong relationships and connections with their Caribbean counterparts such as in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Davis’s collaboration with Cuban musicians and student delegates has become the spotlight as US and Cuban announce the normalization of their diplomatic relations meanwhile.

I observed that the drum and percussive element of the first piece in the video shares the military/ marching-band themes and topics common in nationalistic “American” music. In the second jazz piece, we hear more Cuban traditional drum grooves mixing with spontaneous jazz chord progressions and spontaneous solo improvisations from different musicians.

This spiked my interest in exploring the similarities between jazz (an African American music tradition) and Cuban (Caribbean) music. Here I found a video of Afro-Cuban percussionist Pedrito Martinez performing in the Tiny Desk series on YouTube.

Comparing this video with the Scenes From Life: Cuba concert, both of them share the communal, spontaneous and improvisatory characteristics of music-making. Both allow the individuality of each musician the spotlight to shine while musicians (and audience) hypes up and applauds each other. Both share in their distinction from non-western-classical style and structure. The two similar yet different traditions collaborate and unites through their “otherness”, as BIPOC community.

Article about Afro-Cuban music as sharing a similar African root which goes back to my initial “hypothesis” regarding African roots. The uniting of the otherness, non-western, non-classical music. Community based and focus on individuality.

I looked further into this topic about the connection between Cuban and African American music and came across a dissertation about it by Aleysia Whitmore. In a featured interview, Latfi Benjeloune, guitarist and band member of the Senegalese band Orchestra Baobab commented that

“The music didn’t come home and influence African music. Cuban music is already African. These are African sensibilities that are being expressed… in some way we felt like parents with this music… it came from us”. It indeed sheds light to the intricacy of musical traditions, their roots and how they come together after growing apart in different social-political climates and geographical locations.”

Whitmore, Aleysia K. “‘CUBAN MUSIC IS AFRICAN MUSIC’: NEGOTIATING AFRICA AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA ON THE WORLD MUSIC STAGE.” African music 9.3 (2013): 111–121. Web.

Bibliography/ Source

Mdatcher. Orbert Davis: Bringing Cuba and the U.S. Together Through Jazz. https://chicagodefender.com/orbert-davis-bringing-cuba-and-the-u-s-together-through-jazz/ November 12, 2015. Online Article.

Orbert Davis y la Chicago Jazz Philarmonic presents SCENES FROM LIFE: CUBA. Video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61OdOA86_Z0

The Pedrito Martinez Group: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert. Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP3jS_gFs-g

Whitmore, Aleysia K. “‘CUBAN MUSIC IS AFRICAN MUSIC’: NEGOTIATING AFRICA AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA ON THE WORLD MUSIC STAGE.” African music 9.3 (2013): 111–121. Web.

Women supporting women can be a powerful thing. Whenever I see examples of this phenomenon, I usually smile to some degree. For this week’s blog post, I found a newspaper clipping from the Chicago Defender celebrating a historic occurrence of women supporting each other. “Margaret Bonds Soloist With Women’s Symphony” describes a program featuring Margaret Bonds and the music of many women composers, including Florence Price. Performing Price’s “Concerto,” we can see a warm welcoming of both of these women’s artistry to the Chicago area. Sometimes I forget how intertwined the careers of these prominent musicians truly were.

Margaret Bonds Soloist With Women’s Symphony

Even though this blurb is small, the journalist manages to pack a lot of information in a limited amount of space. The Woman’s Symphony Orchestra, directed by Ebba Sundstrom, will feature a long program featuring the music of these women: Eleanor Freer, Helen Sears, Grace Burlin, Mabel Daniels, Phyllis Fergus, Alice Brown Stout, Amy Beach, Florence Galaikian, Cecile Chaminade and Radie Britain.

(Before encountering this article, I had only heard of  three of these women, not including Bonds and Price. Therefore, I spiraled a bit in my accompanying research and found a variety of reference entries in case others would like to explore more prominent women musicians of the early 20th century.)

This program must have been a momentous occasion to experience a night where all of these intelligent women were celebrated. I include a program below of the concert and a recording of the piece featuring Margaret Bonds’ piano skills and Florence Prices’ compositional skills: 

Program from 11 October 1934.

However, while glancing through the article, I noticed the long list of accomplishments noted regarding the careers of Bond and Price. I find this trend frequently in the announcements of events including women musicians. Their value in artistry or ability to excel now is tangled with their past accomplishments. It seems that their only apparent value has been determined by those that granted them funding, judged their competitions, and awarded them degrees in music. As if these accolades now provide the reason to see them perform. Yet, when looking at clippings of contemporary white male musicians, a name drop is sufficient enough press. Notably, especially in Chicago Defender, the careers and achievements of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds are something to be proud of and celebrate, because of “[b]oth of these artists have made history for the Race.”

Specifically, Langston Hughes comments on Margaret Bond’s past achievements, but in a much different way. He applauds the versatility of her art: 

“Miss Bonds is one of the younger performers who, while paying the old masters their due, has the courage to seek out worthwhile compositions by composers of our own day and age, American as well as European, from the Dutch contemporary Bordewijk-Roepman to the sparkling piano pieces of the U.S.A.’s Dorothea Freitag.”

Additionally, like other African American composers from this time period, the incorporation of Black folk music became the norm or expectation of these artists. However, Hughes notes that Bond’s approach to this characteristic in African American music is slightly nuanced compared to her contemporary composers. According to the poet, Bonds “has written and performs some of the most moving arrangements of Negro spirituals [he has] ever heard — which makes me wonder why more frequent use for the piano has not been made of these folk motifs… the spirituals lend themselves to similar treatment in the serious field.” Below is a video of Bond’s “Troubled Waters” (a setting of the folk tune “Wade in the Water”):

To Hughes, people should see this African American composer and performer for her virtuosic playing and thoughtfully accessible music she continues to produce. I agree with Hughes approach to discussing the accomplishments of musicians. While a“program devoted exclusively to women composers” is outstanding, I do look forward to the day when women will consistently be recognized for the work they do, not purely for the work they’ve done. 

References and further reading

Dempf, Linda. “The Woman’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago.” Notes 62, no. 4 (2006): 857–903. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4487666.

Ege. “Chicago, the ‘City We Love to Call Home!’: Intersectionality, Narrativity, and Locale in the Music of Florence Beatrice Price and Theodora Sturkow Ryder.” American music (Champaign, Ill.) 39, no. 1 (2021): 1–41. https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/article/794467/pdf

Hughes, Langston. “An Exciting Young Negro Pianist Gives Meaning to our Musical Heritage.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Dec 03, 1949. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/exciting-young-negro-pianist-gives-meaning-our/docview/492859451/se-2?accountid=351.

Malcolm Merriwea. “Visions of a Master: Unveiling the Choral Orchestral Works of Margaret Bonds.” American music review L, no. 1 (2020).

“Margaret Bonds Soloist with Women’s Symphony.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Oct 13, 1934. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/margaret-bonds-soloist-with-womens-symphony/docview/492451168/se-2?accountid=351.

With the premiere of the 2021 film adaptation of West Side Story coming closer, I decided to look into the correspondence of Leonard Bernstein during the initial conversations with Arthur Laurents and others as they discussed the project. A well-loved and seemingly timeless production, West Side Story also puts the subjects of race and ethnicity on center stage, so to speak, and is well worth being discussed in context with the social issues at play during the time of its production.

In the first noted correspondence to Bernstein in 1955, Laurents nods to the recent “juvenile gang war news” and its impact on not only the papers, but also on a film in the works by Arther Miller. Intended to tell a sideways story of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story was originally supposed to feature the star-crossed love story of a Jewish boy and an Irish-Catholic girl. However, creators instead chose to capitalize on the uptick in gang violence in New York and change the identities of the lovers to be a white American boy and a Puerto Rican girl.

Continue reading →

What defines a true American singer? What “validates” their voice, style, or even their performing style? Is it the technique, vocal power, polish, etc.? Ella Fitzgerald, a.k.a. Lady Ella, was known as “one of the most loved and honored musical performers of the 20th Century.” ¹ In discussions and interviews with Ella herself, it is clear to see that there was a disconnect when it came to how her fame and skill was viewed.

Ella was not just renowned for her vocal talent, but she was highly respected and cherished by peers and the American public as a whole. But to some, this respect and cherished views were motivated by an external quality: her selfless and light-hearted nature. Even after her massive success, both nationally and eventually internationally, she remained “unchanged by her own tremendous significance.” ²

“She never refuses to talk to anyone, never refuses to see anyone. She will stay up until fantastic hours to help our in benefits which are legitimate.”²

It is clear that her personality shined through, despite her upbringing and situations thrown her way- whether it was being a successful woman in the music industry to insanely packed tour schedules. This was a largely emphasized reason often given when it came to defining her success in capturing the hearts of the American people.

The Chicago Defender; Chicago, Ill. 31 July 1954

In other opinions, Ella’s success seems to be defined in a different light. Opera News discusses Ella’s (and Frank Sinatra’s skill and technique as “bel canto” like, even claiming that they “had it easier than opera singers performing live.”³ They compared them to “Wagnerians”- having the same skills and techniques as them. ³
This raised the question, “Why are they taking two singers in a completely different genre, style, and audience appeal and still comparing it with Western classical music? I would assume that Ella was not actively trying to have a “bel canto” style in her voice. There is a dichotomy that I find in this article: Ella and Frank here are seen being recognized for their “virtuosic” technique, but it did not seem like many people of their time and beyond would consider them in a Western classical light. Though this magazine is clearly one that discusses opera, it seems like there is a major disconnect and quite a few liberties taken in terms of how Ella and Frank are viewed even to this day- jazz singers who simply embodied the same Western classical techniques as some of the great opera singers from the past and present. Though the writers of this article most likely had good intentions, it is still something that seemed like a bit of a stretch.

It was clearly seen by not only her die-hard fans, but also her peers and colleagues as well that Ella’s sheer presence and personality could light up a room. This should not be overlooked, and this reason alone is what I think made Ella Fitzgerald even more of an American legend. Sure, her voice could maybe be compared to some of the best opera singers that ever lived- from their technique to the color and style of her voice. But this really made me question how we are still viewing these singers and composers even to this day. The Opera News article was written in 1996, looking in hindsight of Ella’s career. The Chicago Defender was written in 1954, when Ella’s career was alive and booming. The way we look back at singers and performers in America, the more we need to dive into actual primary sources, telling about the lives and journeys of them, not just simply analyzing their voices and what made them “great” or “true American virtuosos” of their time. Ella Fitzgerald was so much more than an impeccable voice and presence in the music industry that still deeply inspires our current generation.

Bibliography

The Chicago Defender is a black-owned newspaper editorial founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott. Among articles, obituaries, comics, general supposed happenings of editorials at that time, the newspaper has . It was the first newspaper of its kind to include a health section, a full page of comics and have a circulation of over 100,000. It still runs today, though now it refers to itself as an exclusively online publication. Researching this publication’s monumental works, I found an article that very much applies to the ongoing discussion regarding “American Music’s” definition. In writing an editorial for this particular day, this unnamed author addresses an article written in the World-Herald, stationed in Omaha, Nebraska, and sets the record straight, more or less, centered from a black perspective. 

The article in question makes large scale claims about African American contribution to the canon of America music at the time, asserting the popular adage that slave spirituals were no more than reworked tunes from white slave owners. While the author of the Defender’s article was cordial in their approach to responding to this notion(the author maintains that the Herald’s author “did the best he could”), this article centers black voices as being the instrumental factor in the creation of this music. Not only is it fundamentally pro-black in sentiment, the article is mostly full of name-dropped pieces and composers who are due credit. 

He goes on to say the “slave spirituals” in question are the “only native American music”, which gave this amateur researcher a shock in his reading, as I am currently researching the works of Frances Densmore and her quest to document the music of the “American Indian”. Granted, this article uses the term “Native American” to describe the origins of music post colonization, but to my modern ear that segment struck me. 

“The soul of any race is its music” 

Articles like this, in long running publications of this nature, point me toward the problem of underrepresented voices in the world of music research. If we can’t reach out to people whom we make blanket statements about, or productively delve into the history and circumstances surrounding their music, what good is the research we are doing? I hope to do some further digging to find the specific author of this article, as the lack of such information is troubling when its contents seem so personal upon reading.

AMERICAN MUSIC BORN OF THE NEGRO RACE: “Slave Spirituals” of the … The Chicago Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (1905-1966); Jan 1, 1916; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender

Duke Ellington, or Edward Ellington, was born in 1899 in Washington D.C. and began playing the piano at the age of six. He then began his career as a professional musician at the age of seventeen. He played piano, led his jazz orchestra, and composed the music they performed. In his time and ours, Ellington has been regarded as one of the greatest composers in the U.S. and also a vital figure in the success of Jazz as a genre¹

.

Ellington was wildly successful and won twelve Grammy Awards, nine of which were when he was alive. He also performed globally in places like Carnegie Hall and was even awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon^1,2,3. All of this is made more difficult and therefore more impressive because of his disadvantage as a black man in the United States, especially before the civil rights movement.

What I also think is interesting, is that not only do we see Duke Ellington now as crucial to the development of modern music, but he was also recognized as such during his own time. The Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, published an article entitled “Duke Ellington to Lead Billikens”. This article was about a parade Ellington lead that attracted over half a million people. At the end of the article is a page listing Ellington’s successes and in it, the author states, “He is regarded as a creator of a new, rich, and distinctly American musical idiom”. They go on to say, Ellington “has contributed more to modern music in originality, melodic material, and arrangement technique than any other contemporary”. Historically, I would argue the rarity of an artist being appreciated for their contributions to the art form in their own time. Therefore, to have this level of accreditation attached to his name speaks volumes for his talent.⁴

However, of course, this newspaper was published by black writers and written for a black audience, however, the Grammys he won as well as the crowds he attracted are definitely noteworthy and point towards the recognition of Ellington’s talents and contributions to music during his time. While the majority of his success was probably due to his talent and musical upbringing, I can’ help but wonder how he managed to make music and succeed with the racial climate of the fifties in the United States. I think part of it could be due to the fact he was part of the larger movement of the Harlem Renaissance, and partly due to his geographical position in New York. While I do not have these answers yet, I would be interested to read more about his experience as a composer and performer during this time period. Perhaps this is a future blog post?

I included below a performance of Duke Ellington.

¹Butler, Gerry. Edward “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974) •, May 19, 2021. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/ellington-edward-duke-1899-1974/.

⁴“Duke Ellington to Lead Billikens: Composer to Greet 500,000.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Aug 01, 1959. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/duke-ellington-lead-billikens/docview/492925063/se-2?accountid=351.

For this week’s blog post, I found an article in The Chicago Defender that I think is interesting and representative of the people of that time. I did not know what I wanted to talk about, so I drew a blank and searched up “classical music”. The source I am showing today is about an African American composer and teacher who was talented, successful and hardworking. However, his story, and a lot of other musicians from marginalized communities, are forgotten by the white supremacist history. 

The article introduces the reader to William Wilkins, a young Afro-American pianist and composer. The title of this article is William Wilkins Musical Genius and His Pupils, and it was published on November 14, 1914 on The Chicago Defender (obviously). What I find really eye-catching is the picture of the musician on top of the page. It is a photo of Wilkins playing the piano and it was delicately cut out. There are also decorative lines drawn on the sides, further embellishing his picture. In this article, Wilkins is described as a successful teacher, whose “pupil’s talent surprises musicians”, and some of them have only received training from him for a few months. The article also reported some of his life stories. Wilkins did not have the best upbringing, and the first time he has played a piano in front of an audience is because of his gardener job. Even when he was older, he still needed money to publish his compositions. However, he was still hard working and would practice “from three to seven hours daily.” This article shows Wilkins’ life in a positive and uplifting way, which is rarely seen in that era. 

I wanted to hear some of his compositions, so I did a quick google search. However, the person who came up was a white American politician. I tried searching for the keyword “william wilkins composer,” but it still did not work. I felt a sense of helplessness at that moment because his legacies should be celebrated more and it shouldn’t have taken any deep dive to know about him and his stories. However, I also felt power and pride, because his experiences were published in this African American newspaper, where his people supported him and were proud of him. Maybe there will be a new day, where stories won’t be forgotten.

Works Cited

“WILLIAM WILKINS MUSICAL GENIUS AND HIS PUPILS: AFRO-AMERICAN PIANIST AND COMPOSER OF LOS ANGELES ASTONISHES MUSICAL WORLD BY HIS COMPOSITIONS AND MARVELOUS PLAYING–APPEARS BEFORE NOTED PEOPLE SUCCESSFUL AS TEACHER PUPILS’ TALENT SURPRISES MUSICIANS AT RECENT RECITAL–REMARKABLE STORY OF POOR YOUNG MAN WHO HAS NO MONEY TO PUBLISH HIS WORKS WM. T. WILKINS LOS ANGELES MUSICAL GENIUS.” 1914.The Chicago Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (1905-1966), Nov 14, 4. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/william-wilkins-musical-genius-his-pupils/docview/493270038/se-2?accountid=351.

When people think of jazz, places like New Orleans, Chicago, and New York City come to mind — not a small city of 25,000 in Rhode Island. 

The Newport Jazz Festival, with its inception in 1954 has been credited as a crucial component in the development of jazz culture in the Chicago Defender, by none other than Langston Hughes.

Langston Hughes

A participant of a sort of jazz himself, being the creator of “jazz poetry” (for an example, see this link!), Hughes’ take on the Newport Jazz Festival impact on jazz is compelling. In his June 1963 article, “Jazz and Newport Festival”, Hughes comments on the festival’s role and ability in cultivating a culture of large group fun while listening to jazz.

Continue reading →

While browsing through the Chicago Defender for this week’s blog post, I came across an announcement for the premier of William Dawson’s “Symphony No. 1”, and the article describes it as a HUGE deal¹. But wait a minute… what’s “Symphony No. 1”? After further research, I realized that the piece in question is now called “Negro Folk Symphony”.

The newspaper article says that Dawson himself called the symphony “Symphony No. 1”. So why is it now called “Negro Folk Symphony”?  Professor Gwynne Kuhner Brown sheds some light on this in her article “Whatever Happened to William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony?”²

Definitely read the article if you get the chance, but basically, Brown explains that Leopold Stokowski, the world-famous conductor who would be conducting the piece, sent a telegram to Dawson asking that he title his piece and the movements differently, and recommending that he call it “African American Symphony” or “Negro Symphony”. Dawson replied with the updated title “Negro Folk Symphony” as well as updated names of the movements: “The Bond of Africa”, “Hope in the Night”, and “O Lem-me Shine!”. As Brown asks in her article, would Dawson have assigned race to his symphony if not for the prodding of Stokowski?

We can’t know for sure, but we can know from the Chicago Defender article that Dawson wanted his race to be known by his audience based on this quote:

Here’s another question about the title. Dawson was advised to title the symphony “Negro Symphony”, but it is now “Negro Folk Symphony”. Why? Again, Dawson gives us an answer. In a 1979 interview, Dawson says of the themes within his symphony,

“I don’t call them spirituals. . . . Many years ago I decided that I wanted to know, what do they mean by “spiritual”? And I got an unabridged dictionary and looked it up. There were ten or fifteen definitions of the word “spiritual.” For an example, in Paris, France, they had concerts on Sunday; they called them spirituals. But these are folk songs and we have got to know and treat them as folk songs because they contain the best that’s in us. And anywhere in the civilized world, when you say, “This is a folk song,” all the nations prize their folk songs. All the great composers utilize their folk songs, their source of material for development.”³

Interestingly, the Chicago Defender does not call the sources of Dawson’s themes spirituals OR folk songs, but hymns.

So what’s the difference between a folk song, a hymn, and a spiritual, and does this question matter to our discussion of Race, Identity, and Representation in American Music? I’m not sure I have the answer, but Dawson certainly believed the answer matters, so let’s do what musicologists ought to do and ask more questions.

P.S. Here are the movements to Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony. Give them a listen.

⁴

⁵

⁶

Footnotes

When I think about modern music Charles Ives’ name rings synonymous. Ives was born in 1874 and died in 1954. He composed many works that pushed the boundaries of music. While the ideas of romanticism were included in his work, his compositions were largely experimental. He enjoyed merging European art music with the vernacular of the United States.¹

Furthermore, Ives was also a believer in transcendentalism and admired greatly the works of transcendentalist creators. Transcendentalism, in a nutshell, is the school of belief that states the universe goes beyond reason and that there is a higher ‘spiritual’ power in nature, but not really a god. In addition, this school believes humans are not born evil but corrupted by society and materialism².

One piece of Ives’s work in particular hones in on this movement. His composition Concord Mass has four movements each capturing the essence of a Transcendentalist author. The four authors are Emerson, Hawthorne, “The Alcotts”, and Thoreau in that order. While Ive’s composition is of great value, I find his musical connection to the transcendentalist movement in his Essays Before a Sonata to be even more interesting³.

Ive’s essays are a collection of essays written about each author or in the case of the Alcotts authors, of the piece with a prologue and epilogue. His prologue is what I want to dive deeper into today. Ives essentially argues in his prologue that music can not be representative of life, rather it is part of life. He questions,

“How far is anyone justified, be he an authority or layman, in expressing or trying to express in terms of music (in sounds if you like) the value of anything, material, moral, intellectual, or spiritual, which is normally expressed in terms other than music?”.³

Ives was trying to counter the idea of the romanticism movement that portrayed music as a way of conveying life experiences or emotions. This kind of rational or logical thought is typical of a believer in Transcendentalism.

He also quotes Thoureagh when he says it is “not that ‘life is art,’ but that ‘life is an art'”. I think what he was trying to convey here is that we can not use any art form to convey life as if it is easily communicated through paint or song. Lastly, Ives also argues that if everyone gets a different meaning from art, how can it portray life?

He explains, “Suppose a composer writes a piece of music, conscious that he is inspired, say, by witnessing an act of great self-sacrifice- another piece by the contemplation of a certain trait of nobility he perceives in a friend’s character- and another by the sight of a mountain lake under moonlight… suppose the same composer at another time writes a piece of equal merit to the other three, but holds that he is not conscious of what inspired it… what will you substitute for the mountain lake, for his friend’s character, etc?”.³

Certainly, I can not go into every detail of Ives’ essay in the span of a blog post, as much as I wish I could. However, I encourage you to read it. It offers so much valuable insight into Ives as a person, the man behind the music, and his inspiration.

¹Swafford, Jan. “Ives the Man: His Life.” Ives the man: His life. Peermusic Classical. Accessed September 27, 2021. https://charlesives.org/ives-man-his-life

²Goodman, Russell. “Transcendentalism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, August 30, 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/.

³Ives, Charles, and Howard Boatwright. Essays before a Sonata: The Majority, and Other Writings. New York: Norton, 1999.

The Chicago Defender’s “William Grant Still Tells Of Screenland’s Many Tricks: Famous Song Writer Quits ‘Degrading’ Pix” by WM Grant Still details Still’s experience working on an all-Black film “Stormy Weather,” produced by 20th Century Fox. Still describes how he quit his work on the film because 

“…my conscience would not let me accept money to help carry on a tradition directly opposed to the welfare of thirteen million people.” 

Grant Still then goes on to explain how he asked for his name to be removed from the film’s credits and how the potential of the initial storyline was promising. Later on in the process, however, Still found that his preconceptions about the film were incorrect. Producers and other studio executives had come to him with ideas about Black culture and its music rooted in ideas of exoticism and crudeness. By contrast, Grant Still’s understanding of the music that he would produce for the film

“…went against the same Hollywood ‘stereotype’ as regards colored people.”

Grant Still’s article illuminates an interesting dichotomy between reality and Hollywood’s perceptions of the reality of race relations in the United States. In the process of creating an all-Black film, directors and producers for the film had hired Grant Still to replicate what they saw to be a universalized version of Black music. When Grant Still’s ideas for music for the film didn’t accurately portray what was expected of him, and what was expected to represent Black individuals at the time, he chose to reject his position and remove his name from any influence on the film. Despite the intentions of the film creators and the Blackness of the film they were producing, Grant Still saw himself as contributing to the social forces of popular culture that reinforced traditional stereotypes of people of color and perpetuated harm in the movie industry.

The video is the titular song and scene “Stormy Weather,” after it was re-arranged in the final version after Still left: 

http://%20https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXJ8-E-jvuw

Citation:

Grant Still, WM. “William Grant Still Tells of Screenland’s Many Tricks: Famous Song Writer Quits ‘Degrading’ Pix.” The Chicago Defender, February 13, 1943. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/william-grant-still-tells-screenlands-many-tricks/docview/492717129/se-2?accountid=351 (accessed November 15, 2021).

A picture of Mary Lou Williams from Richard Brody’s New Yorker article “A Hidden Hero of Jazz.”

I’ve been looking for an appropriate time to talk about Mary Lou Williams in a blog post all semester. Admittedly, this blog post does not have much connection to class, but I find her music so quintessentially American; in listening to her catalogue chronologically, one can distinctly hear the progression of jazz itself. Along with Duke Ellington, she is one of very few stride pianists to make the transition into swing. More importantly, throughout her career, she maintained a strong commitment to care and activism within the jazz community. 

Continue reading →

Portrait of Florence Price. Obtained from: Jesse Bobick, “Florence Beatrice Price: A Closer Look with Musicologist Douglas Shadle,” Naxos of America, accessed November 14, 2021, https://naxosusa.com/florence-beatrice-price-a-closer-look-with-musicologist-douglas-shadle/.

Florence Price is one of many early 20th century Black American composers who had to navigate creating “American” music. Price had added difficulty making a career out of composing in a white male-dominated field as a Black woman. Still, Price rose to prominence after winning the 1932 Rodman Wanamaker Music Contest with her Symphony No. 1 in E minor and her piano Sonata in E Minor. This Chicago Defender article was published in 1935, three years after the awards it describes. The Wanamaker Contest was a competition sponsored by northern philanthropic donors to uplift Black composers.¹

Like the Wanamaker Contest itself, Price sought to introduce Black music to white audiences through classical idioms. Price was more subtle with how she incorporated Black music into her compositions than some of her colleagues. This more hidden approach led to criticism from some Black music critics. Many Harlem Renaissance thinkers believed using Black music in classical settings was a form of racial progress.² However, Price found a delicate balance between predominantly-white concert spaces and Black folk music to create nationalist music. Continue reading →

Florence Price ((1887–1953) was an accomplished American composer, writing four symphonies and concertos, organ, chamber, and voice music. Her music and life tell a story of success but also hardship. One letter she wrote in particular speaks to the difficulties Price faced as a Black woman composing and publishing classical music. Price wrote to the conductor of the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky, to ask him to look over one of her symphonies and consider it for performance. This letter begins as follows,

“My Dear Dr. Koussevitzky, To begin with I have two handicaps— those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins. Knowing the worst, then, would you be good enough to hold in check the possible inclination to regard a woman’s composition as long on emotionalism but short on virility and thought content;—until you shall have examined some of my work? As to the handicap of race, may I relieve you by saying that I neither expect nor ask any concession on that score. I should like to be judged on merit alone.”

What can we learn about Price and her music from this letter that we cannot get from other sources? This letter clearly delineates, in her own words, how racism and sexism affected Price. In an article on Price, which begins by analyzing this very letter, Samantha Ege states that “Price’s letter exemplifies the ways in which her desire to elevate her work on a prestigious platform, access this traditionally white male territory, and invest greater time in cultivating her craft was also controlled by what these ideas meant for a woman composer of African descent in early mid-twentieth-century America.” 

To fully understand the influence and life of Price, this blog post would have to be a lot longer (probably book length). However, this short excerpt from one of her letters gives us a glimpse into the past, and enables us to better understand the present. I had never heard of Price until I got to college. In fact, as Ege also comments, there seems to be an assumption that women didn’t really compose before the 21st century, an assumption that is now slowly shifting due to cultural movements to diversify our understanding of musical history. In our discussions of what is “American music” it is always necessary to analyze the fact that our histories have purposefully written out those deemed to be “other”. This “othering” must continue to be challenged. As Ege writes,

“A commitment towards more diversified narratives can ensure that our present era affords women composers of the past—albeit posthumously—a much-deserved platform for their musical output and access, mobility, and agency in spheres that once excluded them from opportunity. Steps in this direction cannot change the circumstances experienced by such women, but recognize, at the very least, that for those who lived unapologetically and composed passionately, now is surely their time.”

To end this blog post I would like to suggest you go read Ege’s short article on Florence Price. She elegantly and much more comprehensively analyzes how Price’s music fits within the American musical canon, interwoven with a short biographical description of her life and works. The article will be linked below!

Citation

Ege, S. (2018). Florence Price and the Politics of Her Existence. The Kapralova Society Journal. http://www.kapralova.org/journal30.pdf

Peebles, S. L. (2008). The use of the spiritual in the piano works of two african american women composers—Florence B. price and margaret bonds (Order No. 3361197). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (304528797). Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/use-spiritual-piano-works-two-african-american/docview/304528797/se-2?accountid=351

Trigger Warning: Offensive Language

Defining “American Music” has become a topic harder and harder to grasp for me. It’s like trying to summarize terms like “classical music”, “pop music”, any music… Where do you start?!? How do you end!? Who?! What?! When?!! etc. Though this topic seems quite hard to pinpoint, George Gershwin took a seemingly confident swing at it.

George Gershwin

“And what is the voice of the American soul? It is jazz developed out of rag-time…”

This initial claim caught my attention. Surely he had an explanation- “a method behind his madness.” And sure enough he did. He goes on by clarifying…

“Does the American spirit voice itself in “coon songs”? I note the sneer. Oh, I hear the highbrow derision. I answer that it includes them. But it is more. I do not assert that the American soul is negroid. But it is a combination that includes the wail, the whine and the exultant note of the old mammy songs of the South. It is black and white. It is all colors and all souls unified in the great melting-pot of the world. Its dominant note is vibrant syncopation.”

There it is! From “coon songs” (i.e. minstrel songs) to being “all the colors” a part of the “great melting-pot”, the generalizations are not seldom in this handful of sentences. Gershwin was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, and I would think that some of these immensely generalized statements came from his experience being raised by them. This fact could be seen in his next statement saying that if he was a first-generation American, his view of American life would be

” nervous, hurried, syncopated, ever accelerando, and slightly vulgar.”

Though I have no extravagant, bold claims or conclusions about Gershwin’s perspective and statements pertaining to American music and the responsibility he put on himself as an “interpreter of American life in music”, questions still fill my mind. Why did Gershwin feel the need to make these claims? What was pushing him to do so? How did his experience growing up with immigrant parents possibly affect this viewpoint? Despite his generalizations, is Gershwin on to something or is that not even something we should try to consider?

The questions don’t seem to end on this one, but nonetheless, there are many things to consider and contemplate about the big question: “What is American music?”.

Sources:

Tick, Judith., and Paul E. Beaudoin. Music in the USA a Documentary Companion Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2008.

(original primary source was nowhere to be found- but direct quotes are in Tick’s book!)

The St. Olaf Halvorson library, which I didn’t realize was called Halvorson until creating this writeup, has an incredible amount of scholarly articles, primary sources and of course, musical scores. Among these primary sources available in the library, this week I found a memorial study compilation of the work of Frances Densmore. Conversations regarding the ethics of Indegenous song collection have been very prevalent in my experience this year, and I hoped that this book would shed some more light on that song collection. Admittedly I had used this source as a means of data point collection, but the experience of reading this particular collection was very fascinating and speaks to the troubling nature of her data collection.

This book was a compilation of case studies by Frances Densmore, who had died before this was published in 1968. Seeing her words in retrospect present glaring issues regarding her placement of herself in her articles. The very beginning of this book includes a full page spread of Densmore, the clear protagonist of her story. There are plenty of instances where there are personal, almost humorous, asides included in her notation. Not only does this disrupt the reading, they are instances in a trend of Densmore centering herself and her white perspective in place of ethical research. 

In describing the death of a Chippewa Chief, she places herself in the situation. After describing his death and the ritual following, she says “I never felt so alone”, giving herself the spotlight in this “academic” research. She goes on to say in another chapter, “Not for any money would I have parted with the sensation of having been the only white woman in a village of the most ferocious savages in the world”. There is problematic language to boot, selfish centering of this author in the research, among many sections of notating Native music using classical methods, which is to be expected. To our modern sensibilities, this language is very problematic and the exotisicm of Native people made the experience of my reading very jarring. 

Seeing collections like Denmore’s is what makes Indigenous song collection troubling, and what focuses my group’s personal song collection. Too often the culture and music of Native Americans is minimized, trivialized and disrespected. It is a bittersweet fact that Densmore is one of the premiere researchers of Native American music in our history. While her work is quite valuable in retrospect, her methods could be improved greatly and it is our responsibility as music researchers to rise to that challenge.

Hofmann, Charles. Frances Densmore and American Indian Music. XXIII, Museum of the American Indian Heye Foundation, 1968.

In previous blogposts, classmate Abigail Davis explored the relationship between ideas of harp playing and race in her posts “The Harp: Do You See it as a White Instrument” part I and II. As I was searching for primary source materials for this blogpost, I came across an article written by William Grant Still called “On Composing for the Harp”, which expands on Abigail’s research of non-Western harp instruments.

William Grant Still, an American composer and the first black American to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra, turned to his roots for musical inspiration. He rejected spirituals as a source for music because of the caucasian influence that was present in the genre, and instead took blues as his inspiration, as heard in Afro-American Symphony.

Listen for the 12 bar blues in the first movement:

When writing one of his compositions for harp, an instrument that he was not very familiar with, he turned to his African roots for inspiration, in particular one of the Nilotic African tribes. For the name of the composition, he used the title “Ennanga”, which is a bow harp that resembles an Egyptian harp. It is played on the performers lap, can be carried around, and found over many parts of Africa. Grant Still did not wish to imitate the sound of the ennanga, but he did intend to identify the harp instrument as an influential source for his composition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPJUgQNJ-PA&ab_channel=GeorgeN.Gianopoulos

In Grant Still’s article, he describes the importance that the title had to an audience member from Uganda:

A young man from Uganda came backstage to say that he recognized the word “ennanga” as belonging to his people, that he felt a kinship with the music, and that it reminded him of home. For him, at least, the music had accomplished its purpose.

In accounts like this one, we can see the importance of bringing into conversation a more encompassing history of the harp. Abigail started an important discussion in her blog posts, one that led to me challenge my initial association with the harp. Along with other primary sources like Grant Still’s writing, we can continue to explore the rich history and repertoire that is often left out of the canon.

Works Cited

Davis, A. (2021, September 27). The harp: Do you see it as a white instrument? Music 345: Race, Identity, and Representation in American Music. https://pages.stolaf.edu/americanmusic/2021/09/26/the-harp-do-you-see-it-as-a-white-instrument/

Davis, A. (2021, October 18). The harp: Do you see it as a white instrument? Part ii. Music 345: Race, Identity, and Representation in American Music. https://pages.stolaf.edu/americanmusic/2021/10/18/the-harp-do-you-see-it-as-a-white-instrument-part-ii/

Ennanga: Fig.1: Ennanga [arched harp or bow harp], West Nile, Uganda, c1970. Edinburgh University. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 9 Nov. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-8000923729.

Grant, W. (2021). On composing for the harp. The American Harp Journal, , 36-37. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/on-composing-harp/docview/2505727605/se-2?accountid=351

There’s a saying circulating around the internets that probably originated with a Lindsay Ellis YouTube video that goes something like “we all have the stink on us.”¹ In her video essay, the “stink” refers to the stink of racism and, more broadly, bigotry, and how no one can escape the odiousness of racism regardless of how “woke” they are, to use Cool Teen Slangᵀᴹ. Her point was that she had slipped up and made several mistakes but did not deserve the barrage of hate and vitriol she received in the blood eagle ritual that was her Twitter cancellation because the very people crucifying her were just as odorous as she.

We can sniff out the stink in musicology too: if you turn up that nose, it’s not hard to run into a Pig-Pen or several, especially in the history of American music (should we retire the metaphor?). Amy Beach was extraordinarily progressive for her day, once writing in 1893 in response to Dvorak’s use of African American melodies in his 9th symphony:

“It seems to me that, in order to make the best use of folk-songs of any nation as material for musical composition, the writer should be one of the people whose music he chooses, or at least brought up among them.”²

Ironically, a decade or so later Beach would compose works using Native American themes and melodies, the first being a set titled “Esk*mos – 4 Characteristic Pieces for Piano”³ published in 1907. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to smell something funky.

Alas, Beach was not a lone durian fruit in a field of roses; her compositions using Native American melodies, whether authentic or not, was part of a wider trend of white composers attempting to define an “indigenously American” music. Some of the usual suspects were Edward MacDowell, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Arthur Farwell, the proprietor of Wa-Wan Press, which published his and other’s Western classical arrangements of Native American melodies.⁴ Needless to say, it’s like a corpse flower is in full bloom.

Beach’s stink is therefore somewhat understandable; she was following trends to stay relevant and didn’t have a framework to check herself against, nor the support from fellow composers to take a proverbial bath. So what do we do? I say we could at least stop performing her “Indian” pieces, and those of her white contemporaries. There is plenty of folk-inspired music by her and others to make up for whatever we feel we might have lost, and give them the bubble bath that they’ve long been needing.

1 Lindsay Ellis, “Mask Off,” 15 April 2021, video essay, 1:40:31, https://youtu.be/C7aWz8q_IM4

St. Olaf’s Halvorson Music Library is home to an exciting and surprising collection of primary sources that we can and will use as we develop our final mapping projects throughout the remainder of the semester. Recently, in both our projects and class discussions, we have been asked to consider the ways that members of the St. Olaf community should study music made and disseminated by Indigenous people. 

Accompanying the question of how Indigenous music should be studied, one of the more serious questions that we’ve considered in our class, is how much of the kind of language that we associate with Western art music should we use in our discussions of other musical traditions. Alongside this question, we have emphasized the significance of incorporating the voices of Indigenous practitioners and scholars into our study of Indigenous music. Scholars like Trevor Reed or Tara Browner are voices that we’ve engaged with as we try to discern the existing scholarly conversation surrounding the study if Indigenous music. Continue reading →

In this week’s discussion, we talked about Frances Densmore and her work on native American music. Like a lot of the scholars we talked about in class, she is an interesting and conflicting character. For today’s post, I want to talk about something I found that is sort of similar to Densmore’s work. At the same time, we can have a conversation about authenticity and who defines it, how to define it (if that is even possible), as well as if it actually exists.

This source is an interesting transcription of some indigenous songs sung by people from various tribes from northwest Canada. This source dated back to 1862 to 1882, which is when Father Emile Petitot spent time in Mackenzie, British Columbia as a missionary priest to the indigenous people on the land. He collected, notated and transcribed their dances, games and ceremonies and put them together, which is the source I am introducing now. He also notated this in French. It is hard to determine who benefits from this source, but it is definitely safe to say that the indigenous people did not get enough credit for this. Emile Petitot is a guy with a ton of middle names (his full name is Emile-Fortune-Stanislas-Joseph Petitot) AND an Inuk name that translates to “Mr. Petitot, son of the sun.” He was a linguist and ethnologist, but I am not sure how credible he is at music notations. Given the fact that he was a priest, it would be reasonable to assume that he has at least some basic knowledge of music to support this transcription. However, it is always good to be a bit skeptical.

The source itself is like a lens that looks into the issue of transcribing music from a different culture, because it just seemed quite lacking. There was not really any background information about the music that was notated, other than titles, and on top of that his handwriting is very hard to read sometimes… The music notation seems to be very straight and there were only quarter notes and eighth notes, which could be how the music was, but once again, I am skeptical because of how much was neglected. Some of the pieces have key signatures and most of the pieces have time signatures, which to me is quite odd as well. I think this way of notation is basically putting a musical practice that does not stem from the Western Classical environment: it obviously would not go well. 

This leads me back to Frances Densmore, who I personally think is doing at least something right. I am not saying that she is the end-all-be-all scholar for native American music; I would never put that title on someone who isn’t from the culture. However, I definitely would argue that recording the songs works so much better than notations, since you can physically hear the indigenous people singing the songs. People might also argue that it might not be as authentic if the musicians were being recorded; my thought is that yes, that might not be ideal, but there’s so many factors, some we can’t even control. Maybe there is no real authenticity.

Works Cited

Petitot, Father, Emile. 1862-1889. Chants indiens du Canada Nord-Ouest [manuscript]: recueillis, classés et notés par Émile Petitot, prêtre missionnaire au Mackenzie, de 1862-1882, 1889. [Manuscript]. At: Place: The Newberry Library. VAULT box Ayer MS 715. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_MS_715 [Accessed November 03, 2021].

Savoie, Donat. “Emile Petitot (1838-1916).” Arctic, vol. 35, no. 3, Arctic Institute of North America, 1982, pp. 446–47, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40509367.

Currently, there have been over 1000 children’s graves recovered at the sites of Indian Residential Schools in Canada. These schools were an assimilation tactic used by both the United States and Canada from the 1880s-1980s and were the site of horrific abuse and tragedy.

The curriculum for these schools in the US was ascribed by the book Tentative Course of Study for United States Indian Schools, published in 1915 by the US government’s office of Indian Affairs. In every grade, the children were made to study music. There’s a section about the study of music, and the way in which the curriculum is written helps to highlight the ambivalence of the US government to the native communities. 

This is an excerpt from page 111. It explains the topics of instruction.

The beginning of the second paragraph reads, “The first requirement for musical training in the schoolroom is to permit the pupils to only hear good music.” I found this particularly interesting, because, as we know, it’s almost impossible to label music as “good music.” This may be implying that native music is bad, but the text never says that outright. But what it does go on to mention is that singing should always be done with a “good, smooth, sweet, light, and pure tone.” This is important to note because a pure tone (in the western sense) is not something that is highly valued in Native American music. In many native songs, the vocal quality is more raw and focused, as can be heard in this recording of “War Dance Song,” music of the Plains Indians.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yec542aOIzM

There’s also a strong focus on drilling intervals and sight singing. We know from countless charts and attempts to measure native intervals that our scales are not the same, so intervals and sight singing must have been extremely challenging for these children. There’s also a mention of music “stories,” where the teacher would be expected to give information about the history of Mozart and Beethoven. This is especially disheartening, given how we know that many native tribes used song and dance to tell their own stories. 

In all of this writing, there’s no mention of native culture or references to these children being from native tribes. It really seems as if the US government was trying to create a blank slate for these children, not talking about them as “less than” or being outright racist. But by erasing their history, the authors of this book are contributing to the violence enacted against them. These children entered these schools against their will, bringing with them the extreme trauma of being stolen from their homes and forced into a new environment. Erasing all aspects of their history is cultural genocide, and definitely made it easier to ignore the atrocities enacted by the authorities in these schools.

Citiations

Office of Indian Affairs. “Tentative Course of Study for United States Indian Schools.” Accessed November 1, 2021. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_386_U5_1915/61.

Young, Robin, and Camila Beiner. “Indigenous Kids’ Bodies Recovered – Not Discovered, Says Canada’s Assembly of First Nations Chief.” WBUR, July 20, 2021. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/07/20/canada-indigenous-schools.

Let’s talk about the Ghost Dance.

The Ghost Dance began as the result of a series of visions by a Paiute elder around 1869 that the Earth would experience healing and the Paiute people would receive help. Twenty years later, another Paiute leader had visions of land being restored to all native people, and Europeans leaving native people alone. He believed that this dance would help his visions become reality. Representatives from different tribes came to hear from this Paiute leader, causing the Ghost Dance to spread, evolve, and be performed as a means of peaceful protest in different native languages¹.

(I tried embedding recordings of the Ghost Dance, but was unsuccessful, so you can listen here.²)

But naturally, when white people learned about the spread of this dance across different native groups and the meaning behind the dance, they felt threatened.

An article published on Oct. 28, 1890 in the Chicago Tribune, found through the American Indian Histories and Cultures database, illustrates the fear that white people were trying to stir up about the Ghost Dance. The article begins by discussing the visions that led to the dance, saying of the visions, “they promise… that the white man will be annihilated and the Indian restored to his former power and prestige”. The article then goes on to describe the “Evil Influences of Sitting Bull”, a Lakota chief in South Dakota. The article quotes Agent James McLaughlin, a US Indian Service Agent, who says of Sitting Bull, “He is a man of low cunning, devoid of a single manly principle in his nature, or an honorable trait of character”. The article also informs readers that McLaughlin sent a Lieutenant to tell Sitting Bull “that his insolence and bad behavior would not be tolerated longer and that the ‘ghost dance’ must not be continued.” Sitting Bull told the Lieutenant “that he was determined to continue the ghost dance”, since the Great Spirit said they must do so. McLaughlin seemed determined that he could change Sitting Bull’s mind³.

On Dec. 15th, 1890, less than two months later, when police came to put an end to the Ghost Dance ceremony, Sitting Bull disagreed and was killed. Between 150 and 300 Lakota men, women, and children who tried to escape to safety were killed in what is known now as the Wounded Knee Massacre, but referenced in many outdated history books as “The Battle of Wounded Knee”. The U.S. soldiers who killed Lakota men, women, and children received the Congressional Medal of Honor⁴.

All of this violence occurred over what? A dance. A dance that seems to have been effectively smothered over time, as I could not find any sources of it still being performed today.

What can we learn from this? We can learn to be wary of news sources which describe people or cultural practices in heightened, emotional language. We can learn to ask ourselves when we feel threatened, and why. We can learn to ask what musical practices we have suppressed in the past because they made us uncomfortable, and what musical practices we suppress today.

Footnotes

After our last class, I have been thinking about how early scholars of Indigenous music (like Frances Densmore) often come from outside of the Indigenous community. Densmore and others often receive praise for recording Indigenous music in a white savior sort of way. I found Emile Petitot’s transcription of Indigenous chants in what is now called Mackenzie, British Columbia, Canada. I was curious about who Petitot was, his relationship with the Indigenous tribes he studied, and what he sought to accomplish.

Petitot was a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate, part of the Catholic Church, who left France for a 12-year mission.¹ He was primarily interested in geography and ethnography of the regions he studied and wrote several books on translations of tribal languages to French, his visit to the Tchiglit Inuit, and cultural traditions of a half dozen other tribes.² Continue reading →