Author Archives: Blake Ormond

Florence Price and the “Elevation” of Black Music

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Founded in 1905, The Chicago Defender is an African-American run newspaper. In a 1935 publication, an article was published on composer Florence B. Price and her recent successes in composition. Most notably, she won prizes in the Wanamaker competition contest for her Symphony in E Minor and Piano Sonata in E Minor. 

Price was a notable composer that brought black music to a wider, whiter, audience with her ability to incorporate Black musical idioms into symphonic works. Price’s Symphony in E Minor, which consists of three movements, was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Orchestra Hall as well as at the Century Progress Exposition.

“Composer Wins Noteworthy Prizes for Piano Sonata.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), May 04, 1935. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/composer-wins-noteworthy-prizes-piano-sonata/docview/492427674/se-2?accountid=351.

This news article in The Chicago Defender quotes Glenn Dillard Gunn’s of the Chicago Herald and Examiner thoughts on Price’s piano sonata,

“A nationalist in my attitude toward the art, it is pleasant for me to record the brilliant success of Florence Price’s piano concerto. It represents the most successful effort to date to lift the native folk song idiom of the Negro to artistic levels”1

Music critic of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph was also quoted,

“Florence Price’s contribution in the form of a piano concerto was by far the most important feature of the concert for here we see what the Negro has taken from his own idiom and with good technique is beginning to develop alone. There is real American music and Mrs. Price is speaking a language she knows…”1

These ideas are also repeated and analyzed in Rae Linda Brown’s, “William Grant Still, Florence Price, and William Dawson: Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance”. 2 This chapter from Black Music and the Harlem Renaissance discusses Price’s role in society as a black art music composer that embodies the “American Sound”. Black composers during the Harlem Renaissance, Florence Price included, hoped to elevate black folk idioms to the symphonic form. I’m still grappling with the idea of “elevating” certain music to a white standard and the racism Price and other composers of the time had internalized when thinking of their own music. 

Florence Price was a brilliant composer who did important work to include black artists and black music into the American music conversation. Yet, I think there’s work to be done on how we navigate these discussions on the hierarchy of music and specifically the interplay of race.

Aaron Copland and Jazz

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American composer, Aaron Copland, is one of the most well known composers of the 20th century and one of the largest influencers of “American Music” … whatever that means. I still don’t know.

The Piano Concerto is one of Copland’s compositions with heavy jazz influences. It was first performed in Boston on January 28, 1927. While it is regarded a success today, upon its premiere it did not receive that recognition. After reading letters from listeners following the premier of the Piano Concerto, Copland wrote to Russian composer, Nicolas Slonimsky, on his reaction to the general public’s distaste of the composition.

“How flattering it was to read that the ‘Listener’ can understand Strauss, Debussy, Stravinsky – but not poor me. How instructive to learn that there is ‘no rhythm in this so-called concerto.’” 1

Gertrude Norman and Miriam Lubell Shrifte, Letters of Composers, an Anthology (New York: The Universal Library Grosset & Dunlap, 1927), 401.

In this concerto,  “Copland himself explicitly states that he intended in this piece to explore the possible applications and extensions of jazz rhythm to modern art music”2. But why was the public so adamant against this piece? Perhaps it was the placement of jazz in the concert hall.

“The challenge was to do these complex vertical and horizontal experiments and still retain a transparent and lucid texture and a feeling of spontaneity and natural flow. If I felt I had gone to the extreme of where jazz could take me, the audiences and critics in Boston all thought I had gone too far.”3

Copland had many influences on his music, including Ravel, Rouseel, Satie, Milhaud, and Stravinsky. Copland’s main influence that I want to explore is jazz. Milhaud and Les Six are often credited with influencing Copland’s “jazzier” works. Something to explore in greater depth is the implications of limiting Copland’s influencers, especially when it comes to jazz, to white men and why the audience in Boston reacted the way they did when they heard jazz infiltrate their concert halls.

The Role Music Played in Assimilation at Carlisle Indian School

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United States Indian Industrial School. 1895-1900. United States Indian industrial school, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_E97_6_C2_C45 [Accessed November 02, 2021].

Boarding schools were a tactic used by the American Government to assimilate Native American children from the 17th through the 20th century. Boarding schools isolated indigenous children from their families and communities and stripped them of their cultures by cutting their hair, requiring uniforms, ignoring students given names and forbidding use of their native languages. One large influence on the assimilation of native children that is often not discussed is the music taught and performed at these schools.

In 1879, Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the first government run boarding school for Native Americans to open. Carlisle was known nationally for their extracurriculars such as their band and football team. Like the academic classroom settings, these extracurriculars were centered around promoting American ideals1. For example, students put on a performance of, “The Captain of Plymouth,” an opera that celebrates the white settlers’ arrival to America.

Program for performance of “Captain of the Plymouth” at Carlisle Indian School in 1909

Students played and celebrated their white colonizers in this play and had to perform songs such as, “Hail Captain of Plymouth” and “Indian Lullaby”. 

Students at Carlisle were required to take music classes and were taught exclusively Western Classical music. Music was used to enhance the Christian teachings forced on the students as the orchestra and band played for evening Sunday services. Even in the course description of their music offerings, Carlisle makes it clear that there is only one way to make music. The white way.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School. 1915. Catalogue and synopsis of courses, United States Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Carlisle: Carlisle Indian Press. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_389_C2_C2_1915 [Accessed October 31, 2021].

“There is, too, a vocal department, which includes the class work and singing exercises, where all are taught the rudiments of music”

The phrasing, “the rudiments of music” implies that there is only one way to make music, and the way students made music at home was incorrect. Furthering the assimilation practices, the course catalogue encourages western music to be made at “student social gatherings.”

Indigenous people are still impacted from the trauma these boarding schools and white colonizers inflicted upon them. Better understanding the harmful effects western classical music had on Native Americans can steer us in the right direction towards healing.

Minstrelsy: This is (Still) America

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Content warning: offensive language and images

Childish Gambino’s, “This is America” and its accompanying video dominated conversations and social media feeds for days following its release in 2018 as well as receiving critical acclaim at the 2019 Grammy Awards.

The music video provides a commentary on gun violence and the lasting impacts of systemic racism and discrimination in America. Of these lasting impacts, one that stands out to me is the presence of minstrelsy in Gambino’s video. 

Minstrelsy is one of the earliest forms of appropriation of black culture in the United States. Eric Lott’s, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, explores the roots of minstrelsy and its lasting effects today. He argues that minstrelsy is not only an act of violence against black people, but also an act of love and fascination. When describing minstrelsy, Lott goes beyond appropriation, describing the act as “expropriation.”

“Cultural expropriation is the minstrel show’s central fact, and we must not lose sight of it… it establishes little about the cultural commerce suggested by one performer’s enthusiasm as he gathered material for his blackface act: ‘I shall be rich in black fun.’”1

White performers are exploiting black culture for (white) public entertainment and subsequently profiting off of it. 

40 seconds into the “This is America” music video as Gambino is dancing, he makes an over exaggerated smirk on his face and winks his eye, similar to the cartoonish way black people were represented in minstrel shows and drawings. Much like the “Turkey in the Straw” sheet music cover art and the Coon-Chicken Inn restaurant logo.

Childish Gambino, “Childish Gambino – This Is America (Official Video),” YouTube (YouTube, May 5, 2018), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY.

Otto Bonnell, “Turkey in the Straw.” Mississippi State University, Mississippi State University Libraries (electronic version), 1921, accessed October 23 2021, https://cdm16631.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/SheetMusic/id/24823.

“Burgers in Blackface: Coon Chicken Inn,” “Coon Chicken Inn” in “Burgers in Blackface” on Manifold @uminnpress, accessed October 24, 2021, https://manifold.umn.edu/read/untitled-6b2e0c15-9dd8-4cec-a2b3-81298b9e74ec/section/f907c8e0-69d3-4a83-b630-57fcda04c072.

This subtle act is the first reference to minstrelsy in the video. 

The second reference to minstrelsy is a bit less subtle than Gambino’s facial expressions. At 51 seconds, Gambino pulls out a gun and takes a specific stance before pulling the trigger. This stance references Jim Crow sketches and is incredibly similar to the 1834 cover art for the sheet music of the minstrel song “Zip Coon.”

Childish Gambino, “Childish Gambino – This Is America (Official Video),” YouTube (YouTube, May 5, 2018), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY.

Zip Coon. Thos. Birch, New York, monographic, 1834. Notated Music. https://www.loc.gov/item/sm1834.360780/.

Gambino’s placement of these references to minstrelsy in the middle of viral dances like the Nae Nae is especially compelling. Today, a major form of cultural appropriation is white people performing and profiting off of dances made and popularized by black artists. So, Gambino using his body to refer back to minstrel shows while performing the Nae Nae, which took America by storm in 2015, is no coincidence. 

Minstrelsy still permeates American culture today- When one looks up “Turkey in the Straw” on google, it’s described as a “folk tune” and suggests performances of the song by Bill Monroe and the Hi-Lo’s. This brings me back to my first blog post and specifically the idea of discovering the whole truth when it comes to American music. Minstrelsy is still alive and well, so what do we do with that information?

1Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 19.

The Impact of the Black Church in Civil Rights

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In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois’s describes the religion of the slave with the “preacher, the music, and the Frenzy”

“The Preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil”

 

“The Music of Negro Religion… still remains the most orginal and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born American soil.”

 

“The frenzy or ‘Shouting’… was the last essential of Negro Religion and the one more devoutly believed in than all the rest.”1

Black Americans’ Christianity has a long and complicated history in this country. While it is a direct result of the colonization of Africans brought to the United States against their will 200 years ago, Christianity provided enslaved Africans a sense of hope and security. When asked about their seemingly joyful mood one slave responded,  “We endeavor to keep ourselves up as well as we can. What can we do unless we keep a good heart? If we were to let it weaken, we should die”2. Christianity and music allowed for this in a time it might seem impossible.

While some argue that the enslaved shouldn’t have converted to Christianity because it is the religion of their colonizer, I think there’s something to be said about the power of Black Americans using the religion of their colonizer to gain back some of their freedom.

A Milwaukee newspaper article documenting the role of the black church in civil rights

A Milwaukee newspaper article documenting the role of the black church in civil rights “Black Churches’ Role in Civil Rights Told.” Milwaukee Star (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) XI, no. 27, November 20, 1971: Page 7. Readex: African American Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12A7AE31A7B3CA6B%40EANAAA-12CCE815B2DC3F98%402441276-12CCE815F11A1950%4014-12CCE816F3418178. 

Christianity gave more than just hope to blacks in early America, it also played an important role in the advancement of their civil rights. The church influenced early rebellions, helped Frederick Douglass “find his voice”, as well as giving Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King an early platform. The Black Church even had a role in getting the Civil rigths Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 singed as John Lewis, an ordained baptist minister, was present at both signings.3 

Mirroring the sentiment from the seemingly joyful slave, Rep. John Lewis remarks on the everlasting need for hope in dark times, “The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith.”

Folk Music, “Born not Made”

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The spiritual, “Oh, Freedom”, popularized during the civil war, is American folk music at its core. In his book, Afro-American Folksongs, Musicologist Henry Krehbiel cites W. E. B. Du Bois when mentioning this song and its influences. 

“The song ‘Oh, Freedom over Me,’ which Dr. Burghardt du Bois quotes in his ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ as an expression of longing for deliverance from slavery encouraged by fugitive slaves and the agitation of free [black] leaders before the War of the Rebellion, challenges no interest for its musical contents, since it is a compound of two white men’s tunes- ‘Lily Dale,’ a sentimental ditty, and ‘The Battle-Cry of Freedom,’ a patriotic song…” 1

Here are recordings of the two “white men’s tunes” Du Bois mentions, “Lily Dale” and “The Battle-Cry of Freedom” as well as “Oh Freedom”-

Lily Dale (1910)

The Battle-Cry of Freedom (1907)

Oh, Freedom (1957)

Oh, Freedom (1965)

A casual listener can hear the melodic similarities, especially between the choruses of “Lily Dale” and “Oh, Freedom”. Lyrical ideas are also shared between “Battle-Cry of Freedom” and “Oh, Freedom”.

“Oh, Freedom”

O Freedom, O Freedom,

O Freedom over me!

Before I’ll be a slave.

I’ll be buried in my grave,

And go home to my Lord,

And be free!

 

“Battle-Cry of Freedom”

We will welcome to our numbers

The loyal, true and brave,

Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;

And although they may be poor,

Not a man shall be a slave,

Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.2

 

So, is “Oh, Freedom” an appropriated song? Sure, but at the end of the day, isn’t everything?

Enslaved black people took the white man’s songs and reappropriated them. “Battle-Cry of Freedom” was a song that swept over the north and united the union after Lincoln’s call for 300,000 volunteers for the union army. The enslaved took this power the song created and used it for their own gain in this emancipation song. 

The many influences of “Oh, Freedom” from existing songs, as well as the lived experiences of the enslaved, highlights that at its core, it is a folk song. 

1Henry Krehbiel, Afro-American Folksongs (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1962), 17.

2 “Civil War Music: The Battle Cry of Freedom.” American Battlefield Trust. The History Channel. Accessed October 4, 2021, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/civil-war-music-battle-cry-freedom.

The Persisting Whiteness of Bluegrass Music in the Media

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By, R. S. (1959, Aug 30). BLUEGRASS STYLE: MOUNTAIN MUSIC GETS SERIOUS CONSIDERATION. New York Times (1923-) Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/bluegrass-style/docview/114687317/se-2?accountid=351

NPR. (n.d.). Carolina Chocolate Drops. NPR. Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/artists/99046725/carolina-chocolate-drops.

When someone has a question they want answered quickly, their first instinct is to take out their phone and Google it. Usually, a quick Wikipedia blurb will pop up at the top of the page and that’s settled, your question is answered. But what if it wasn’t? Not to the fullest truth anyways. 

If anyone is curious about the bluegrass genre and looks up the term “bluegrass music” on Google, they would find that “the genre derives its name from the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys.” A little further down they would find that the originator of bluegrass music is in fact Bill Monroe. Our hypothetical casual researcher would likely be satisfied with their answer and put their phone away after this. 

They shouldn’t be. 

Bluegrass musician, Rhiannon Giddens explains in her 2017 Keynote Address at the IBMA Business Conference that bluegrass is the result of cultural exchange. “[it] is actually a complex creole of music that comes from multiple cultures, African and European and Native” not from “a Scots-Irish tradition with ‘influences’ from Africa”.1

Going back to our hypothetical casual researcher Googling terms on their phone, if they wanted to learn a bit more about bluegrass music, they would find that the fourth search result when you Google “bluegrass music” is a link to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame website. A quick skim through the list of inductees would show them that every person ever inducted to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame is white. 2 

Similarly, a Rolling Stones Article titled “The New Bluegrass: Five Acts to Watch” names five bands where almost all musicians are white. 3 

So, where does the media’s fascination with equating whiteness and bluegrass come from? A New York Times article on bluegrass from 1959 gives us some insight. 4

“…a form of ‘hillbilly’ music known as ‘bluegrass’ (for Kentucky, the Blue Grass State, where it was born)”.4

Shelton also continues to list many bluegrass artists such as Mike Seeger, Don Stover, Chubby Anthony, and Eric Weissberg, who, like from the Rolling Stones Article, are almost entirely white. 

Shelton, R. (1959, August 30). BLUEGRASS STYLE; Mountain Music Gets Serious Consideration. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1959/08/30/archives/bluegrass-style-mountain-music-gets-serious-consideration.html

This issue extends beyond black music. Latino artists also contribute to and create bluegrass music. Jerry Garcia is widely known as the lead singer of the Grateful Dead, but his work with his bluegrass band, Old and in the Way, is not discussed nearly as much. 5 

When we look at early reports on bluegrass along with the complicated history of American Music, it is not entirely shocking that credit is not given where it’s due. A good step in the right direction is to acquaint ourselves with some bluegrass artists who aren’t just white, because they exist and have for a long time. 

Some Artists to listen to and know: