On December 26, 1893, the music critic and musicologist Henry Krehbiel corresponded with the famed Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904). Two weeks prior, he’d conducted “a lengthy interview with the composer” for a New York Tribune article on Dvorak’s “Symphony No. 9 in E minor, ‘From the New World,’ Op. 95, B. 178,” before its premiere.[1] Krehbiel wished to speak to Dvorak on behalf of several Black “folk songs from Kentucky” he was analyzing and was requesting Dvorak help “suggest a harmonization” of the melodies.[2] Krehbiel—having lauded Dvorak’s music and sought his guidance on folk song collection—points to their mutual willingness to embrace African American’s contributions to folk music and develop an American school of classical music. Yet, while the cosmopolitan Dvorak straddled the line between universalism and individualism in his composition, Krehbiel’s romanticized view of slavery informing his approach to African American folk music reveals how problematic musical context can become overlooked in popular works.

Beckerman, “Letters from Dvořák’s American Period,” p. 202.

Returning to the above-mentioned correspondence, it’s notable that on December 12, 1893, with four days to the “New World Symphony’s” premiere, Krehbiel had solicited Dvorak for a separate request. As Krehbiel was going to lecture on “Folk-Song in America” at a reception, he wanted Dvorak to “attend and hear the songs which I have for illustration.”[3] The reality that both men saw America’s musical “future…founded upon…negro melodies” positions them opposite universalist stalwarts in the debate of “What is American Music?”.[4] However, it also situates Dvorak adjacent to Krehbiel, who romanticized the notion of slave labor and experience as “inviting celebration in song—grave and gay.”[5] Krehbiel brutishly brushed over the idea of African American’s epigenetic trauma through stating, “sometimes the faculty [cultural ingenuousness] is galvanized into life by vast calamities or crises of social and national existence; and then we see its fruits in the compositions of popular musicians.”[6] Dvorak’s association with Krehbiel’s problematized musicological methods calls into question a key controversy surrounding American music—when traditional African American melodies injected deeply into our cultural consciousness are predicated in racist assumptions, should they still be performed? Without due consideration of the cultural context in which pieces are created or popularized, canonical works like Dvorak’s “Symphony No. 9” may remain mired in the overwhelmingly murky history of American Music.

[1] ed. Michael Beckerman, “Letters from Dvořák’s American Period: A Selection of Unpublished Correspondence Received by Dvořák in the United States.” In Dvorak and His World, 192–210. Princeton University Press, 1993. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7s5r0.11.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Douglas W. Shadle, Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, 246.

[5] Henry Edward Krehbiel. Afro-American Folksongs: A Study in Racial and National Music, 4th edition, New York: G. Schirmer, 1914, 23.

[6] Ibid, 22-23.

My first encounter with the composer Mary Lou Williams was upon stumbling across her choral composition “Black Christ of the Andes (St. Martin De Porres).” The dynamic range and gratifying dissonance in the harmonic texture of the piece gave me an almost ethereal and cathartic feeling, and I immediately fell in love. 

Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1910, Williams almost immediately entered the jazz scene; at age 15, she was already playing alongside Duke Ellington and catching the musical attention of Louis Armstrong¹. She promptly started playing the piano for different regional bands in Pittsburgh and embarking on tours with a chaperone, but she soon was navigating the music scene on her own as a young woman. Critics soon began complimenting her talents, giving her honorific nicknames such as “First Lady of the Piano” and the “lively Queen of the Ivories.”²

Mary Lou Williams with Tadd Dameron and Dizzy Gillespie in 1947

As a budding musician and composer, her specific positionality as a Black woman played a crucial part in her reception by critics and her audiences. Black composers, artists, writers, and performers of the time were already being pushed to be perceived in the leadership class of the “talented tenth,” wherein there was unjust pressure to “[elevate] the music of their race”.³ In regards to women, work within the entertainment industry was not seen as suitable for them, where “no self-respecting woman would pursue such interests, especially outside the realm of classical music.”⁴ Williams’ ability to infiltrate the male-dominated, instrumental jazz scene of the time was certainly unique in this respect. She dutifully worked to portray herself as a “serious” jazz musician by not interacting with the audience or smiling during performances—likely to set herself apart from the female musicians of her time and avoid demeaning stigmas from being placed on her as well.  The self-assuredness and resoluteness Williams demonstrated throughout her early and later career could be an additional factor, as she was often not afraid to protest injustices that she or her band members faced.

Newspaper article from the Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas), August 1st, 1949

Williams’ existence as a woman within the jazz community put a further pressure to be perfect, enacting a sort of double-bind. Her demonstrated assertiveness may have helped with her acceptance early on, but unfortunately did not allow her to escape from misogynist rhetoric. In the late 1940s, there was a sudden change in her critical reception, where she was described as having an egregious attitude that hindered her success as a musician and composer.^5,6

This seems to stem from the idea that women must always be pleasant, agreeable, and easy to digest—especially when one is a public figure, and even more so as a Black woman. It did not help that Williams had been recently dealt with hardships—she went through a divorce in 1940, and in 1942, she remarried to a man who was later believed to be physically abusive.

Mary Lou Williams at the piano in 1946

Decades later, the public was once again praising her and further illustrating her significance in jazz and American music. Newspapers were dubbing her with even mightier nicknames of “the First Lady of Jazz” and “The Queen of Jazz.”⁷ Williams passed soon after in 1981, and critics continued to immortalize her prowess and influence on the genre. She was certainly well-recognized for her talents, even alongside the shift towards negative judgements on her character, but does that absolve and erase the obstacles she faced during that time? Throughout the entirety of her lifetime, Williams still managed to overcome countless disadvantages as a Black woman, as a woman in jazz, and as a Black woman in jazz.

Francis “Frank” Johnson was a distinctive figure in U.S. music history, not only because of his many achievements and musical innovations, but also in his unique sociocultural position in the antebellum world. His accomplishments were fascinating, including being the first U.S. musician to tour Europe and to lead an interracial musical performance, alongside a multitude of compositional innovations—some of which are believed to have inspired other composers of and since his time.¹ 

However, Johnson’s concurrent involvement in white, upper-class spaces and various Black churches—as well as records exhibiting pro-Black ideals—suggest a rather dichotomous placement and standing in society and politics. While Johnson mostly avoided minstrel songs/shows—with the exception of “Miss Lucy Long” and “Sam of Tennessee and Dandy Jim of Caroline”—he primarily composed and performed patriotic band music and within European classical genres.^2,3 Albeit, secondary source note that Johnson only performed “Miss Lucy Long” in England to appease the British upper-class, and “refused to cater to racism” by never performing the piece for Philadelphia.⁴ Even though Philadelphia was a rather progressive city with an Abolitionist society compared to the rest of the country at the time, incidents of hate, mockery, and racism were still present.⁵ It almost seemed as if he was living a double life, hidden between the pages of long-forgotten history periodicals—and I became deeply invested in trying to uncover whatever meager clues I could manage to find. 

Johnson, Francis. “Recognition March of the Independence of Hayti : For the Piano Forte & Flute.” Philadelphia: G. Willig, 1826. Colenda Digital Repository.

Kramer, Hayden James. “Six Works by Francis Johnson (1792–1844): A Snapshot of Early American Social Life.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2022. 143-148.

I was particularly drawn to his pieces “Recognition March of the Independence of Hayti” and “The Grave of a Slave” (pictured above), and what they could reveal about Johnson’s complicated relationship with white audiences and society. The lyrics of Johnson’s “The Grave of a Slave” were set to an abolitionist poem by Sarah Louisa Forten, openly admonished slavery and slave-owners in the text, and was formally published in Philadelphia. His “Recognition March of the Independence of Hayti” was arranged for piano and flute, but still carried similar abolitionist indications and was dedicated to one of the leader’s of the Haitian Revolution, President Jean-Pierre Boyer. Upon visiting his house, one of Johnson’s violin students also recorded that Johnson had President Boyer’s portrait hung over his mantle.⁶ Considering the many sociopolitical factors that could have negatively impacted the survival and coverage of such documents, these bits of Johnson’s worldview stand out to me as compelling possible evidence for his progressive beliefs.

Charon, Louis Francois. “Broadside : Jean Pierre Boyer, President de La Republique d’Haiti.” Between the Covers.

As our group has been researching Densmore’s work, we’ve certainly found a lot of her actual field work, but there’s significantly less available of her recounting her actual experiences. When we came across a copy of Frances Densmore and American Indian Music, which is essentially a collection of writings she didn’t place in her books, I was excited, because I knew we were going to find some juicy stuff in there. And sure enough, we did!

One aspect of Densmore’s work that we had been aiming to expand upon was her lack of respect for the boundaries of certain Indigenous groups she studied. We had found it mentioned in scholarly writings, but there were never any specific examples of it until I found this account within this book on her experiences with the Northern Utes. Essentially, she had been told in the past that the Northern Utes were “touchy by nature” (1), but she was determined to go and record songs. She set up shop in a cottage nearby a trader’s store, where she would advertise to the Utes that she would pay people to sing their traditional songs into her phonograph. The Utes instead just laughed at her, which she even put in italics in the book out of indignation! She tried to explain what she was doing with the songs to them, but none of them wanted to willingly record anything. Instead of listening to them, she decided to pull the “I have a Sioux name” card and went to a well-respected member of the tribe named Red Cap, who begrudgingly brought her singers to record with. In exchange, she had to record him speaking a message for her to bring to DC that they hated their reservation superintendent and wanted him replaced, which Densmore did follow through on (1).

She recorded several songs with these singers, but she still did not have enough, so she overstayed her agreed-upon study time with the Northern Utes by over three weeks and even went on a horseback trip that passed over that time. To them, that was the last straw, and she was quite literally booted from her cottage – they did not even let her pack her own things, saying that someone from the agency would express ship her stuff back to DC (1).

While she did manage to get recordings from the Northern Utes, even she noticed how unwilling they were to make them, yet she still went through with it and continued to push their limits of what they were comfortable with her doing. The Utes were suspicious and rightfully so. White people had done nothing but take and take from Indigenous groups like them, be it land, resources, religion and sacred spaces, culture, or hospitality, in order to manipulate them into getting what they want. The way Densmore approached this group likely looked like any other White manipulator, and, by the tone of her writings, she could probably tell that was what they were feeling and did not care. Stories like these that she so calmly recounted without remorse further problematizes her work and exposes her biases, that it was completely okay to entirely overstep cultural boundaries if it meant she could personally get what she wanted.

Sources:

(1) Densmore, Frances, and Charles Hofmann. “Incidents in the Study of Ute Music.” Essay. In Frances Densmore and American Indian Music, 39–42. New York, NY: Museum of the American Indian, 1968.

We always hear this phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The phrase refers to how certain people will think something is beautiful or not and that opinion can differ from person to person. I find this idea is particularly interesting when looking at paintings of people and other forms of portraiture.

As I’ve been researching Lillian Evanti and her life, I have come across some beautiful photographs of her like this:

She has many photographs of her in costume for the roles she has performed and there are a few presumably candid ones like this:

As someone who has a small amount of background in photography, one thing we are constantly asked about is staging of photographs and what we think the photographer had in mind when they took said picture. Every portrait of this amazingly talented woman is beautiful, but I personally don’t feel like her artistry truly comes across as much as it could. As I was scrolling through the internet to try and find more sources about this woman, I came across this painting:

This is a painting of Lillian Evanti in the main female lead, Rosina, in Barber of Seville. This was the role she had before she took on Violetta in La Triviata. When I first came across this painting, I couldn’t believe it was her. This work of art looks like it could be of a renaissance woman or someone from decades before Evanti was alive. When I learned who was the subject, I was instantly intrigued who painted it and the answer surprised me.

This is one of the most well known portraits from the Lois Mailou Jones, a Black female painter (1905-1998) who was very active during the Harlem Renaissance. This is what some of her other work looks like:

Lois led a very interesting career. She was active in both America and France and held her first solo exhibition when she was 18. She was a very accomplished painter, focusing mostly on portraying other people of color, specifically Black people in the Harlem renaissance.

I can’t find any confirmation of when the painting of Evanti was done (there is no date for the painting that I could find), but it was likely when both the women were in Europe in the 1930s. I find her depiction of Evanti to be ethereal – she doesn’t look like a real person and yet she was. Here is where we get into beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

At the time this work was done, America in particular was not very friendly (putting it mildly) to anyone that was not white. I think if a white painter had tried to paint the same scene, the painting wouldn’t look as much like a work of art as it does here. Here is what Lois had to say about the painting:

“A very unusual thing happened while I was doing the finishing touches. The Barber of Seville, the opera, came on over the radio. Of course, when the music came on, Lillian began to sing. There was the sparkle in her eyes and the gestures and everything. It was just what I needed to finish the portrait. I caught the spirit of her, which was just marvelous.”

I feel like the simple existence of Evanti in this painting would be overshadowed by her Blackness if anyone besides a Black painter made this work of art. Because of Lois, Evanti was allowed to exist both as a person and a character in this painting and nothing feels forced. Her nature as a singer, the sparkle in her eye as Lois said, is easy to see in the painting.

So often in art we feel like we have to pick something to focus on about an artist – their race, their gender, what they do, how they do it, when they do it, etc. Highlighting what makes certain artists stand out from their colleagues is important, but can we let their artistry be outside that categorization as a way to highlight what an amazing creator that artist is? Lillian Evanti’s poise and power are also easy to see in the painting, and depending on the lens of who is looking at her, they might’ve chosen her Blackness to focus on over the beauty, grace, and talent she brought to the world of opera.

Works Cited:

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/lillian-evanti

Lois Mailou Jones