When thinking about the style of American music, one composer may come to mind more than any other. With such a distinctive voice and beloved presence, Aaron Copland was an influential figure in American music, helping define a new era of what American music means. Copland believed in popular American and traditional music and brought a contemporary feel, a comfortable feel.

One exciting thing about Copland, which I learned in class last year with Louis Epstein, is that Copland studied with French teacher Nadia Boulanger from 1921-1924. The challenging aspect of this relationship is that as a labeled American composer, he was taught by a French musician, a very influential genre of music in the 1920s. French music in the 1920s was largely influenced by Les Six, members such as Poulenc and Milhaud.¹

²

He was different in that he incorporated known forms of American music such as folk and jazz into his pieces while also having a slight French influence, unlike other composers of the time. Above is the first draft of Appalachian Spring which would later become one of his most well-known compositions.

Copland had countless correspondence with countless people, yet I would like to focus on the correspondence between him and Nadia Boulanger. Nadia and Aaron had many years’ worth of contact. This specific correspondence below is from April 19th, 1929, and is Copland writing to Boulanger. He writes of advertisement propositions and asks Boulanger to play for him.

³

Based on this relationship, I still think that his music can be classified as very American. Copland, however much he was influenced by the French, was also influenced by numerous cultures and countries. That is what American music is. Cultivation of different music and ideas in one. Aaron Copland brought great artistry to American music and changed the way American music was defined.

1 Hitchcock, H. Wiley. “Aaron Copland and American Music.” Perspectives of New Music 19, no. 1/2 (1980): 31–33. https://doi.org/10.2307/832568.

2 Copland, Aaron. Appalachian Spring First Rough Sketches. Notated Music. https://www.loc.gov/item/copland.sket0024/.

3 Copland, Aaron. Letter from Aaron Copland to Nadia Boulanger, April 19.  Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/copland.corr0121/

As one of the most recognized and respected American classical composers of the twentieth century, Aaron Copland’s music reached deeply into the heart and soul of many aspiring, young American composers. Uniquely, Copland incorporated folk songs and jazz into his compositions, showcasing these popular American musical forms and creating inspiring and innovative music. Though still firmly entrenched in the rich history that accompanies jazz and folk songs (from America as well as other countries), Copland pushed the boundaries of modern day music of the late 1920s. Boundaries were also tested through his quest to repopularize European classical music and simultaneously showcase young American talent. It was this effort that led Copland to team up with another significant twentieth century American composer, Roger Sessions. 

Though both men were born in Brooklyn, New York, their first meeting was in Paris in 1924 at the apartment of famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. This initial encounter sparked a long correspondence of letters between the two men where they wrote about many topics  including their mutual admiration for one another and their opposing views on what constitutes American music. I find this amusing, given this echoes the overarching goal of this course, reexamining and redefining American music. This was the area of concentration in their letters during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was during this period of correspondence that Copland and Sessions began their work on an extremely important concert series, the Copland-Sessions Concerts. The concert was put together in an effort to share the works of younger generation American composers, filled with differential musical personalities, to showcase American excellence and experimentation. This is affirmed in the first concert program which concluded with the statement  “Our only wish is to stimulate composers to more prolific activity and to develop a stronger sense of solidarity among the creators of a growing American music” (Oja, 212). 

An examination of these letters demonstrates that this concert series was made possible through their correspondence, revealing not only what was said in the letters but by the style the two composers used when writing to one another. One such letter from Copland to Sessions  dated March 18th, 1927, indicates the very warm and friendly relationship the two men enjoyed. Here Copland freely expresses his thoughts and feelings on certain subject matters, while also acknowledging the lapse of time in responding to his counterpart, “And how delightfully silly of you to have imagined that there was any shadow of a misunderstanding between us when my not writing to you is quite simply explained by the Concerto, that is finishing it and playing it.” Copland’s words to Sessions indicate a level of care and promise on his part, addressing the idea that Sessions may have thought things were up in the air between the two. Copland reassures Sessions that he was not ignoring him, and their relationship remains strong. This is an important correspondence because it speaks to the heartfelt relationship they had formed and Copland’s explicitly stated interest in Sessions’ Symphony telling him, “As far as I know Koussie expects to do it in April — he even told me he might do an All-American program, though he didn’t say whether or not he thought of doing the symphony then.” This letter was a catalyst for Sessions launching his first critical performance and subsequently a career which highlighted his specific ideas about American music. From then on through an exchange of letters, Copland carefully outlines the idea of a concert where young American and European composers present their original works in New York. The actual series went on for 4 years, ending in 1932.

Copland and Sessions were each prominent figures in this new generation of American composers, so despite some differences, it was not considered unusual for them to orchestrate and lead this concert series, “Yet they represented different orientations, possessing viewpoints that significantly colored their attitudes toward the focus of such endeavors. Sessions, although sympathetic to the plight of the young composer, spurned all chauvinistic tendencies, was not apt to support a composer on the basis of his national origin, and espoused more international philosophy; while Copland, as was already evident in his work, was conscious of the development of a national identity and proudly championed the cause of composers in his native country” (Oja, 214). It is the qualities and beliefs of the two men outlined by Oja above that  really make me curious about their relationship, their collaborative efforts and their unique ideas about American music. Specifically, how did they truly work together on such a massive project while they were at odds about American music ideals pertaining to identity? It is hard for me to imagine something more fundamental to an artist or a composer than their identity. A deeper dive into the letters between Copland and Sessions may provide the answers I am seeking, but for right now, the two men rose above their differences and accomplished their goal to introduce avant-garde pieces in the best way imaginable, The Copland-Sessions Concerts of Contemporary Music in New York.

Citations:

“Aaron Copland, 1900-1990.” The Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200182578. 

Copland, Aaron. Letter from Aaron Copland to Roger Sessions. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/copland.corr0088/>.

Oja, Carol. “The Copland-Sessions Concerts and Their Reception in the Contemporary Press.” The Musical Quarterly, LXV, no. 2, 1979, pp. 212–229., https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/lxv.2.212. 

Olmstead, Andrea. “The Copland–Sessions Letters.” Tempo, no. 175, 1990, pp. 2–5., https://doi.org/10.1017/s0040298200012547. 

Antonín Dvorak https://www.classicfm.com/composers/dvorak/

Antonín Dvorak is one of the most famous musical composers of all time. His New World Symphony pushed the boundaries of what was considered classical music both during and after his lifetime (1841-1904). Dvorak’s borrowing and incorporation of traditional Native American and African American tunes into his Ninth Symphony sparked quite the controversy across the United States around the time that he moved to Spillville, Iowa in 1893. A large and public debate sparked across the country of the validity of incorporating African American spirituals and traditional Native American songs and influences into Western classical music.

Henry Krehbiel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Edward_Krehbiel

With this controversy came an equal distribution of critics and fans of Dvorak’s music. Notably, famous music critic and reviewer Henry Krehbiel sent Dvorak a number of written correspondences which are very important because “they prove that Krehbiel’s article on the [ninth] symphony, which appeared on 15 December 1893 in the New York Tribune, was based on a lengthy interview with the composer,” (Beckerman).

The letters read as follows:

Interestingly, although we have not read the Krehbiel interview on Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony from the New York Tribune for class, we have read another one of his writings for class on October 6, 2022: an excerpt from his book “Afro-American Folksongs; A Study in Racial and National Music”. In this chapter, Krehbiel used racist and problematic language such as “savage” and “primitive” to refer to African Americans and their music on pages 11 and 13 (Krehbiel).

This is quite interesting in contrast to Krehbiel’s letters to Dvorak which praise Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony and call it “beautiful”, which is based on the very music that Krehbiel marked as “primitive” and “savage” twenty-one years later in 1914. I wonder if Krehbiel was hiding his true feelings about Black American music to Dvorak because Krehbiel was a fan of his Ninth Symphony and wanted to appeal to him as a friend and colleague? Or did Krehbiel like Dvorak’s quotations of Black American music despite the fact that he thought Black American music was “primitive” and “savage”?

The above correspondence from Krehbiel insinuates that Krehbiel has a passion for collecting scores and parts of African American songs, and furthermore studying them. The fact that Krehbiel relays to Dvorak that this music is even worthy of such deep study and collection raises some further questions in relation to the language Krehbiel uses in his book and his true intentions to network with Dvorak.

Krehbiel seems to have an interesting relationship to the music of Black Americans. He collects and studies it, but through a lens of white supremacy and racial othering. It also seems as though Krehbiel may have flexed his opinions on African American music to appeal more to Dvorak since Dvorak was so popular. Krehbiel likely found a useful connection in Dvorak, especially for the opportunity for Dvorak appear at his seminars (such as the one at the Women’s University Club) to make him seem established and well-connected. All of this being said, Krehbiel was an early advocate and promoter of Black American music, which cannot be said for everyone at the time.

Sources:

Dvorák and His World, edited by Michael Beckerman, Princeton University Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/stolaf-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3030296.

Krehbiel, Henry Edward. “Chapter 1: Folksongs in General.” Afro-American Folk Songs: A Study in Racial and National Music, Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, MT, 2010, pp. v-28.

Blackface and minstrelsy feel as outdated as just about anything from the early 20th century but while the overwhelming idea of blackface is a strictly negative one, some black and brown artists are reclaiming the painting of their bodies for empowerment. Baseera Khan is a Muslim American contemporary visual artist working out of Brooklyn, NY who has been creating exhibits around the country for the last 8 years. 

Baseera Khan’s Braidrage reclaims her identity in the representation and expression of her own physical body using oil, hair, architecture, and art. The dark paint on her body is especially important as a commentary on her race. Our conversation about minstrelsy in class assumes the negative use of black face paint related to minstrelsy, and we look at its use from a strictly historical viewpoint. However, the use of blackface has found a recent resurgence as a form on self-expression and power, taking back from racist traditions of the past and creating empowering and powerful artistic expression.

There is a long history of blackface in art leading up to exhibits like Khan’s, with varying degrees of controversy. While some of them turn a critical eye to the past, other artists misunderstand how their artwork can reinforce stereotypes and can further the disconnection between groups of people. Vanessa Beecroft is another artist who uses blackface in her artwork, who couples race with gender in her expressions.

[ iframe src=”https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/baseera_khan” width=”640″ height=”480″ ]

[ iframe src=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface_in_contemporary_art” width=”640″ height=”480″ ]

During her lifetime, the work of Florence Price, a Black woman composer, was often not performed on account of both her gender and race. She struggled to find conductors and musicians who would perform her work and recognize its merits. For instance, beginning in 1935 Price wrote a handful of letters to Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, urging him to examine some of her scores with the hopes of having them performed. Clearly aware of her positionality within the classical music sphere as a woman of color, Price implores Koussevitzky to judge her musical works on “merit alone” (Brown, xxxv). While Koussevitzky never replied to Price’s letters, others in the industry did identify Price’s musical excellence. In 1932, Price’s Symphony in E minor won first prize in the Wanamaker Music Contest. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Frederick Stock, performed the Symphony in E minor 1933. Price’s work thus became the first symphony composed by a Black woman to be performed by a major American orchestra. By examining the attitudes and motivations that were behind Frederick Stock and Serge Kousevitzky’s differing responses toward Price and her music, audiences and artists of today can recognize the how the reimagination of the canon is an ever-evolving process that has been occurring for many years. 

It is clear from Koussevitzky’s lack of action and Stock’s decision to program and perform Price’s piece that these two leaders in the classical music world had differing ideas and opinions regarding what music should shape the musical world of the time. We know that Stock had a great interest in performing ‘American’ music, and he likely saw Price’s work as an example of such repertoire. His interest in Price’s work can even be seen in Price’s own diary entries, as he asks her what she is working on and even helps her to premiere a piano concerto with him and his orchestra. Koussevitzky’s lack of action towards Price makes it challenging to understand his motivations or musical values, but we do know that he was interested in the creation and performance of new works through his founding of the Koussevitzky Foundation.

Using Florence Price’s unfortunate experience as a case study, we can recognize how difficult it is for composers, especially historically underrepresented composers, to break into the classical music sphere. It is even more challenging for their work to become a part of the canon, or to see themselves in the canon which major performing arts organizations uphold today. But Price’s story offers musicians and composers a great deal of hope. As disheartening as this history is, it shows that there is a desire to open up the classical music world to new works and ideas from those who have historically been pushed to the border of this genre. The work of reimagining the canon continues, and this process of rediscovery leads towards a musical environment which prioritizes representation and equity. 

Bibliography:

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Serge Koussevitzky”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Jul. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Serge-Koussevitzky. Accessed 14 November 2022.

Brown, Rae Linda. “Black Satin Clothes at the Fair.” The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence Price, edited by Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr, University of Illinois Press, 2020, pp. 108-117.

Brown, Rae Linda. “The Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago and Florence B. Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement.” American Music, vol. 11, no. 2, 1993, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3052554?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. Accessed 14 November 2022. 

Epstein, Dena J. “Frederick Stock and American Music.” American Music, vol. 10, no. 1, 1992, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3052142?sid=primo#metadata_info_tab_contents. Accessed 14 November 2022. 

Price, Florence et al. “Lifting the Veil: The Symphonies of Florence B. Price.” Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3. Middleton, WI, A-R Editions, Inc. 2008. 

Ros, Alex. “The Rediscovery of Florence Price.” The New Yorker, 29 January 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/the-rediscovery-of-florence-price. Accessed 14 November 2022. 

Frank Gerratana, Charles Edward Ives, 1947, http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b10888/

Charles Ives, the early twentieth century,American composer pictured pensively above, is situated at an interesting boundary between historical debates of what constitutes “American music” that we’ve discussed in class. While Virgil Tomson’s ideas considered American music “derived from the British Isles” to be authentic—using North America’s Anglophone predominance as explanation for a continued lineage of English culture and music over all else—other critics and musicologists have proposed that American music’s essence derives from diverse folk traditions.[1] Charles Ives was descended from pilgrims and grew up with Anglo-American melodies in New England—however, his shift to avant-garde styles, combined with influence from folk traditions considered part of an “American school” of composition, demonstrates the futility of trying to narrowly define “American music.”[2] Ives’ development problematizes the work of early twentieth century music critics like Tomson and Olin Downes, who—possessing prominent influence over public perception of American classical music—used Ives to promote contradictory, limited arguments over American musical authenticity.

The debate over American Music’s standards and authenticity, especially when considering the influences of white male composers, was a means of determining what whiteness was in an early twentieth-century cultural context. Tomson saw an evolving American idiom—though in some ways diverging from European music—nevertheless marked by similarities indicating “the products of a common tradition.”[3] Tomson believed Charles Ives’ music fit the characteristics closely linking European/Anglophone lineage to American music. However, in a 1937 New York Times article by music critic Olin Downes, a contemporary of Ives, the critic glances at “native scores” and lauds the many folk music traditions informing the development of modern American composers.[4] Downes believed that not all American symphonic repertoire had been “mere imitators of European models of composition.”[5] Instead of pointing out examples of American music deriving new forms from only a foundation of European music (as Tomson did), Downes emphasized the wealth of folk music that American composers could draw from, “either grown from the soil or transplanted there from outside sources.”[6] Still, he links and celebrates the connection of this distinctly American folk music to songs like “Dixie” which immortalized the ideals of slavery and the Old South. This fact demonstrates a racialized context which—well into the twentieth century—still held mainstream influence in legitimizing problematic forms of white American culture. Nonetheless, as Tomson, who drew from racist, controversial scholarly ideas like those of George Pullen Jackson, saw American history as too short to legitimize its composers, Downes declared that the young, white male composers of the era, including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Charles Ives, were too little performed.[7]

In conclusion, debates over what Ives represented showed incongruent definitions of musical authenticity, since one composer—Charles Ives—fit into both “camps.” It’s perhaps more important to consider how analyzing debates over American music through Ives and the perspectives of critics like Tomson and Downes problematizes their arguments. While they musically diverge, the convergence around attempts to define the raw materials worth lauding in American music as a reflection of whiteness (and thus white American culture) provides a glimpse into the mainstream, overtly racialized ways in which music critics influenced society and worked to further an exclusive conception of American music.

[1] Virgil Thomson, American Music Since 1910, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, 16.

[2] Harold C. Schonberg,. “Natural American, Natural Rebel, Natural Avant-Gardist: Charles Ives had no use for Mozart, Haydn, Mendelssohn,Tchaikovsky and Wagner- Charles Ives Ives at the Keyboard,” New York Times (1923-), Apr 21, 1974. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/natural-american-rebel-avant-gardist/docview/119909304/se-2; Olin Downes, “A Glance at Native Scores,” New York Times (1923-), Jul 25, 1937. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/glance-at-native-scores/docview/102135938/se-2.

[3] Thomson, American Music Since 1910, 20.

[4] Downes, A Glance at Native Scores,” https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/glance-at-native-scores/docview/102135938/se-2.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

The word “Tanglewood” still leaves the tingle of excitement in my chest it did when I was 15. It brings to mind dreams I once had of spending a summer with the Boston Symphony in a place to which admittance would truly mean I had made it. Little did I know that Tanglewood had been this pinnacle for quite some time, and Aaron Copland had played a great part in its notoriety. In this picture, Aaron Copland- the quintessentially American classical composer- sits with Darius Milhaud, a french composer of great notoriety who immigrated to America during WWII, in the place of a summer music festival that still has great musical notoriety today (Appold, photo). I would argue that this image is in many ways an accurate representation of American classical music because the figures in the image had so much influence from different musics in the Americas, and their relationship exemplified a similar musical relationship between their two respective countries.

Copland was asked to work at “Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood” for its first year in 1940 and “[continued] until 1965” (timeline). During that time, he composed many notable works such as the Tender Land Suites, Appalachian Spring, and Symphony No. 3 and won several awards to include the Pulitzer Prize, and an Academy Award (timeline). Copland’s dedication to Tanglewood is perhaps only comparable to Tanglewood’s dedication to his honor. From copious amounts of tribute programming, to the sculpture commissioned and installed in 2010, to the fact that his ashes were spread on the lawn of the Tappan House, one thing is made abundantly clear: America’s adamant patriotism made no exceptions for classical music (Shea).  

Perhaps the only people more infatuated with American classical music, or American music in general, than Americans, were the French. In this image, Darius Milhaud sits during one of his summers teaching at Tanglewood. Copland idealized the man, and wrote only the highest of praise saying “if France, like England, had a composer laureate, the post would rightfully be his” (Copland). Milhaud, much like Copland, was infatuated with music of South America (primarily Brazil) and their shared appropriation of such melodies could be described as inherently American. To suggest that American music has only positive defining factors would simply be false. Milhaud also used jazz and other forms of popular music very frequently in his compositions, and though he became renowned as a French composer, one could argue that his music is American because of all of the influences that he used and because much of it was in fact written here (Library of Congress). If Dvorak’s New World Symphony can be considered a work of American music, there is no reason that Milhaud’s couldn’t be on the same principle. Of course, it would be wrong to say that the music of these two composers could be accurately defined as American without acknowledging the shared trait of appropriating black and latinx ideas into something that became popularized by white composers. Unfortunately, this pattern could also be described as a shameful defining factor in American music. 

Sources

Appold, Juliette. “Darius Milhaud and the Americas.” Darius Milhaud and the Americas | NLS Music Notes. Library of Congress, August 6, 2020. https://blogs.loc.gov/nls-music-notes/2020/08/darius-milhaud-and-the-americas/.

Boriskin, Michael. “Aaron Copland: Timeline of a Musical Life.” Aaron Copland / Timeline // Copland House …where America’s musical past and future meet. Copland House. Accessed November 7, 2022. http://www.coplandhouse.org/aaron-copland/timeline/.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Darius Milhaud.” Encyclopedia Britannica, August 31, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Darius-Milhaud.

Copland, Aaron. “Music Out of Everywhere.” The New York Times. The New York Times, February 22, 1953. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/14/specials/copland-milhaud.html.

Kraft, Victor. Aaron Copland with Darius Milhaud, Tanglewood. , . Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/copland.phot0004/.

Rothwell, Jessie. “The Dreams of Jacob (Darius Milhaud).” LA Phil. LA Phil. Accessed November 7, 2022. https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/729/the-dreams-of-jacob.

Shea, Andrea. “Aaron Copland Sculpture Makes Its Home at Tanglewood.” WBUR News. WBUR, June 30, 2011. https://www.wbur.org/news/2011/06/30/copland-sculpture.

The resume of the prolific ethnographer and musicologist Frances Densmore is significant. As someone who has carried around many of her bulletins across campus on a daily basis, I can tell you that the weight of her work is heavy in more ways than one. As one of the founding researchers who developed and fostered the field of musicology in the early twentieth century, there is certainly a lot we have to thank Densmore for. However, we are not strangers to her wrongdoings either. From her white savior perspective towards many Indigenous peoples to her view that Native musics were not as evolved as the music of the white race, Densmore is anything but blameless. While we frequently discuss the recordings that Densmore produced, we might not be so aware of Densmore’s collection of Native American musical instruments and artifacts. This collection raises serious questions related to cultural and musical ownership and the benefits of ethnographic study. These collected artifacts serve as yet another Densmorian lesson to modern musicologists about the potential harm that ethnographic study can have on those from whom we wish to learn. 

After working with the American Bureau of Ethnography at the Smithsonian, Densmore was then added to the staff at the National Mueseum at Washington D.C. where she oversaw the a collection of musical instruments. She also composed a catalog of these instruments that includes everything from drums, stringed instruments, flutes, and horns. But Densmore did more than just maintain museums and collections, she did some of the collecting herself in the field. In 1917, she sold a collection of Lakota artifacts to the Museum of the American Indian in New York. In 1930, she collected functional materials used by the Ojibwes in Grand Portage, Minnesota for the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS). She ended up sending eight crates filled with artifacts to St. Paul, and sold these crates to MHS for two hundred and sixty dollars. Further, Densmore learned to play some of the instruments which she collected, and would played them at her lectures. By 1980, when MHS created an exhibit for Densmore’s collected artifacts, Native Americans had already began protesting the loss of their cultural items to white museums and institutions. Additionally, some indigenous people had begun to question the practice of collecting for research.

Thanks in part to her collection of indigenous mundane objects and musical instruments, 

Densmore remains the primary tutor for modern musicologists as they consider the ethics of ethnographic study. Similar to many musical expressions of her time, Densmore’s work is best understood as an expression of whiteness in academic research and transmission and not as an ernest attempt to understand the cultural values and practices of another. By identifying the shortcomings in the research of those who came before, modern musicologists can develop new research methods which seek to benefit both those who are being studied as well as those who will learn form the work produced. In order to truly and deeply learn from one another, the subjects of musicological study and their cultural values and priorities ought to be placed at the forefront. Otherwise, future generations will continue to discuss how ethnographic study says more about the researcher than the subject of interest. 

Bibliography:

Densmore, Frances. Handbook of the Collection of Musical Instruments in the United States National Museum. Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1927. 

De Vale, Sue Carole. “Densmore and the Smithsonian’s Instrument Collection.” Ethnomusicology. Vol. 25, No. 3, 1981, 500-502. 

Harris and Ewing. Miss Frances Densmore, expert in Indian music, who has been added to the staff of the Nat’l Museum at Wash., she was formerly connected with the Amer. Bureau of Ethnology, the Smithsonian. She is now in charge of the unique collection of musical instruments gathered from all lands and located in the Museum. Here shows with 2 of the oldest musical instruments of the Indians, an old violin and a horn made from elephant tusk. 1924, Library of Congress, Washington D. C. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016893319/

Jensen, Joan M. Patterson, Michelle Wick. “Collection with a Mission: Frances Densmore’s Chippewa Artifacts.” Travels with Frances Densmore: Her Life, Work, and Legacy in Native American Studies. University of Nebraska, 2015, 518-599.  

Using the search term “Burleigh” in the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox archive, what was initially meant to yield results pertaining to H.T. Burleigh presented a search result far more interesting to me: a recording of a piece titled “Indian Snake Dance” by Cecil Burleigh. The recording captured Toscha Seide on Violin and Francesco Longo on Piano (1). The record is shown in the picture below (2).

Almost immediately after finding this recording, the question of authenticity and cultural representation came to mind. As a student in this class with prior musicology experience, this piece screams cultural appropriation and misrepresentation. The piano accompaniment for the main theme is a misguided attempt to imitate the sound of the drum in Native American pow-wow music. The violin attempts to mimic voices, dancing around the beat, similar to how a western trained ear might perceive Native American singing. However, rhythmic subdivisions in the violin are too clean. This in combination with the low 5ths in the left hand creates a caricature that mocks its original source. Beyond its initial theme, it abandons its facade of representing Native American culture and adheres to its western classical musical heritage for the rest of the piece.

What’s ultimately disappointing about this recording and database entry is the lack of context surrounding it. Not everyone listening to this will have attended higher education institutions, let alone studied musicology. Those who don’t have the same background knowledge have to rely on the information provided on the page. The hyperlinks included in the entry are simply labels that pull up more loosely related content, and if you click on the composer’s name, you’ll find that “Indian Snake Dance” is his only recording in the database. There are no liner notes, no information about the piece. It was only through my own independent research that it became abundantly clear that Cecil Burleigh has no apparent cultural ties to Native Americans. He was immersed in western classical music, studying at Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin, the Chicago Musical College, and playing violin professionally (3).

If these materials like “Indian Snake Dance” -from relatively unknown authors- are made easily accessible to the general public, one would hope there could be more context surrounding these recordings. Those unlike myself, unwilling to do independent research, will lack the understanding required to explore the questions of authenticity beneath the surface level of this piece.

(1) Burleigh, Cecil, Toscha Seidel, and Francesco Longo. Indian Snake Dance. 1923. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-670039/.

(2) Burleigh, Cecil, Toscha Seidel, and Francesco Longo. Indian Snake Dance. 1923. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-670039/.

(3) Lowens, Margery Morgan. “Burleigh, Cecil.” Grove Music Online. 23 Feb. 2011; Accessed 8 Nov. 2022. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002092891.

There are some who love the idea of jazz borrowing from classical and there are some who hate it. I’m not sure which camp I personally fall into, but I love to see what arrangers and other instrumentalists do with older ideas that seem taboo to touch.

On this record titled Desecration Rag (A Classic Nightmare), Felix Ardnt takes us through several rags that use themes from western classical canon composers like Dvorak, Chopin, and Liszt. The record is a 10-inch vinyl pressing so it doesn’t have that many tracks, but the ones that are there are intriguing. The above listening selection is one of the tracks from the record and unfortunately the source doesn’t say which one it is. My best guess as a listener is that this track is the Dvorak track.

Recently, topics of discussion in class have revolved around how certain kinds of music grow and change to stay with the times and the benefits and drawbacks that has. With our recent discussions of what makes up the American Music Canon, I think this is a great artifact with which to tango.

This record raises some questions – is this music truly American or is it an Americanized interpretation? Is the music being transformed here truly European or were there some American elements in it? In the case of Dvorak specifically, that was the case.

Ragtime was one of the early stepping stones of jazz and to bring composers who didn’t write jazz into that realm of music through sampling their melodies likely raised some eyebrows in the audience that heard this record. At the time, there might have been a few that were familiar with the names of Dvorak and Liszt, but for those at the time who were purist of musical forms, they probably didn’t think very high of the sampling that was done on this record. Be that as it might have been, I think transforming music like this can make certain pieces that might seem stuffy to some more accessible and enjoyable – not everyone who likes jazz likes classical music and vice versa. This record could’ve been a cool way to bridge that gap and start conversations that might not have been had previously.

This recording from YouTube is a more recent recording that I thought would be cool to put beside the record. You can hear much more of Dvorak’s original sample in the YouTube recording, but the question remains the same: is this “American Music?” I think in the case of Dvorak in particular, it’s hard to not call his music American (at least what he wrote while in the country) because he was taking themes from local music that he heard and used it for his compositions. I think there are arguments for both sides, but with this being a ragtime jazz interpretation of a theme Dvorak wrote, I’m more inclined to call it American music than to try and call it something else.

Work Cited:

Arndt, Felix, and Felix Arndt. Desecration rag A classic nightmare. 1914. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-134701/

Blackface minstrelsy, a nineteenth-century theatrical practice where white men would blacken their faces, dress up in racist exaggerated clothing and perform comic skits, variety acts, dancing and musical performances to their white counterparts. If the racially stereotyped mimicking of enslaved Africans working on Southern plantations wasn’t enough, we might be shocked to discover these performances were recorded and preserved in history for anyone to listen to. Should these recordings exist and be heard today? I would argue they should, for the simple reason that all must listen, view and comprehend this awful tradition and understand the impact it had on whites and their development of white identity, African Americans, and all people of color in the United States. 

One part of these musical threaticies is “coon songs,” an aspect of ragtime music built on racial stereotypes of African Americans. These songs were often heard and observed as the centerpiece of Minstrel shows, and designed for the continuous humiliation and degradation of people of color. As you may have guessed, these best-selling hits could not exist without the performances of some of the world’s most talented and famous musicians at the time. A familiar name in the realm of Minstrel shows and “coon songs” stars was Silas Leachman, a Chicago-based politician and vocalist who specialized in the art of “coon songs.” These ragtime songs, wreaking of horribly racist African American dialects and stereotypes, were how Mr. Leachman made a living, and something all too common at the time. Mr. Leachman rose to popularity making his first recordings for the Chicago Talking Machine Company during the early 1890s. Later that same decade, he also started recording for Columbia Records. What I want you to listen to and further examine, however, is Mr. Leachman’s 1902 recording of “Whoa Dar Mule” by Victor Monarch Records.

Aside from the racist text, it is difficult to listen to this recording and somehow conjure up a scholarly opinion of the music, if any at all. A syncopated ragtime, rhythmic style is common in a number of these “coon songs” so it is challenging to elaborate on their originality based on the individual song. A recording from the Library of Congress’ National Jukebox may help your ears understand what I’m trying to describe:

Link to song here: https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-5667/

Regardless of the obviously stereotypical lyrics, we should be more concerned with the racist dialect that is used in concert with the exquisite African American tradition of ragtime music. The contribution of the art forms of African American musicians from genres such as: spirituals, jazz, ragtime, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, pop and rap, deserve respect and acknowledgement. These contributions should be embraced and amplified, never diminished. This likely was not a part of Mr. Leachman’s mindset when he committed to becoming, and being compensated, as a major vocalist for Minstrel shows and their “coon songs.” Nonetheless, as Eric Lott declared in Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, “Every time you hear an expansive white man drop into his version of black English, you are in the presence of Blackface’s unconscious return.” This is a warning to stay vigilant when you are inclined to turn away and ignore mockery and other aspects of marginalization that may not directly impact you. 

When you degrade one you degrade us all. Sadly, elements of this behavior are ever present in society today. Irrespective of your lived experience and racial identification, this music is a reminder of how far from we were then, and how far we remain, from living up to the American ideal of equality for all men and women. Because it also offends all moral and religious teachings of compassion and love for our fellow people, we are compelled to watch, listen and dialog about the impact of these works as we raise children in a society that is based on a belief in the superiority of the white race. This exploitation of African Americans, while maybe not done in mainstream circles today, must be addressed by all of us to prevent giving unconscious approval to the white supremacy in our midst. 

Works Cited

“Blackface: The Birth of an American Stereotype.” National Museum of African American History and Culture, 22 Nov. 2017, https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/blackface-birth-american-stereotype. 

Leachman, Silas F. Whoa Dar Mule. 1901. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-5667/>. 

Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford University Press, 2013.

“What Were Coon Songs? – May 2005.” Ferris State University, https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2005/may.htm. 

The work I’ve found is an interesting one from 1851. This manuscript is a short song arranged by a pianist by the name of George W. H. Griffin. I think this makes a particularly interesting piece to look at due to its place in history, being a work for voice modeled after slave songs, but arranged for chorus and piano. From the cover, it looks to be a work dedicated to a tenor by the name of “S. B. Ball Esq.” from the “Ordway Aeolian Vocalists.” Not much is kept on this ensemble, but as far as can be found in drawings of the composer, G. W. H. Griffin, it appears as if he is a white man.

There are certain implications to the usage of these lyrics, then, given this context. The song goes as follows: 

“‘Tis just one year ago today, that I remember well,

I sat down by poor Nelly’s side, and a story did she tell

‘twas ‘bout a poor unhappy slave, that lived for many a year

but now he’s dead and in his grave, no master does he fear

—

She took my arm, we walked along, into an open field,

and there she paused to breathe a while, then to his grave did steal

she sat down by that little mound, and softly whisper’d there,

come to me father, ‘tis thy child, then gently dropp’d a tear

—

(chorus)

The poor old slave has gone to rest,

we know that he is free

disturb him not, but let him rest

way down in Tennessee”

First off, being released in 1851, this song was released many years before the abolition of slavery, meaning that the lyrics are not about the past, but are a commentary on the present. Additionally, from context, the story seems to take place in the north, as it, first off, references Tennessee as being “way down,” but also brings up the idea that “Nelly,” is a black woman, and the child of a slave, who is not currently enslaved herself. With this, the song, I believe, is about empathy for those who have been and were being greatly harmed by slavery, and the intent of its singing and performance is to strengthen the idea that slavery is an immoral practice. Given the context of a presumably predominantly white choir, the context of the lyrics suggest that this is a bittersweet, but ultimately pleasant song about the white person’s perspective, knowing someone who has had a close loved one taken away from her, but is now free herself to tell her story.

-mika natal

Works Cited

Griffin, George W. H. “Poor Old Slave.” Duke University Libraries, https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4fx7867f. 

Hard trials. Something every single person on this planet can relate to. When I think of hard trials the first thing that comes to mind is a difficult experience, finding yourself in a quagmire, if you will. In actuality, it is an unpleasant experience that attempts to prevent you from further reaching your desired goals. My question to you, dear reader, is how do your goals and desires differ from, or share similarities with, enslaved African Americans of the 16th, 17th and 18th century? I’m sure there is a lot to say about the differences in end goals between enslaved African-American and members of today’s current population, but a similarity I believe both parties would attest to in some way is the desire for freedom. Freedom comes in a variety of forms and entities, from the liberation African American slaves worked relentlessly to secure, to the inner landscape of one’s mind, where the desire is to free the self from the turmoil we all encounter. What this all boils down to is that freedom in all aspects is a sacred thing, and hard trials can be the building blocks of our lives, as long as we respect and adhere to their lessons with all of our love and strength. 

There is no better example of a composer who encapsulates aspects of freedom, hardship, faith and desire into his musical arrangements than H. T. Burleigh. H.T. Burleigh was one of the first African-American composers who utilized negro spirituals in his use of composing classical repertoire (both vocal and instrumental) and enjoyed public recognition and a high degree of success as a black composer. In Burleigh’s arrangement of “Hard Trials,” written in 1917 from his collection of Negroe Spirituals, the listener is likely to be deceived by the title in comparison to listening to the piece. Rather than a somber piece, it is almost cheerful in its tempo and lyrics. When you think of hard trials you may think of some of the examples I elaborated on above, trials accompanied by frustration and heartbreak, however Burleigh’s arrangement of this spiritual is one that emphasizes joy and hope over frustration and heartbreak. The piece incorporates textual ideas supporting the strength found in religioius doctrines including the deeply held beliefs voiced by a Methodist slave. The piece speaks to the strength and preservation that religion offers an individual, especially one who is enslaved, through the lyrics, “Methodis’ is my name, Methodis’ till I die, I’ve been reciev’d in the Methodis’ church.” I believe that the way these lyrics are arranged highlights the joy and promise of an afterlife that the singer aspires to, despite the brutality of white supremacy. The melody is written in E flat major, a key that brings a bright bounce and rhythm to it, painting the picture of a woman out on a leisurely stroll contemplating a brighter future and always moving forward despite the current harsh realities. It also depicts how religious faith is an aspect of one’s life that positively uplifts yourself and others, helping you overcome hardships when face to face with a difficult situation. 

Inside the front cover of Burleigh’s book of Negro Spirituals you will find notes Burleigh instructs the listener to read and reflect on before listening to his spirituals. An important aspect of this writing is the importance for the integration of both religion and music in one’s life to create a deep seeded spiritual experience. This mindset is required in his eyes, while singing spirituals and folk songs. Burleigh refers to a sense of spirit one must have and its priority over a uniquely beautiful voice. To Burleigh, this sense of spirit is idolized through the “spontaneous outburst of intense religious fervor.” This outburst is similar to the notion within the baptist and other Christian faiths to “get happy” and accept Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior. The spiritual musical score and its lyrics arranged by Burleigh are hopeful, aspirational and diametrically opposed to the harsh realities of day to day life as an enslaved person. The most compelling aspect of “Hard Trials” is that it is all accomplished within the realm of classical music by a black composer, and in this recording, featuring a world renowned black contralto soloist, Ms. Marian Anderson.

Works Cited

“H. T. Burleigh (1866-1949).” The Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200035730. 

“Sheet Music Consortium: Home.” Sheet Music Consortium | Home, https://digital.library.ucla.edu/sheetmusic/#fieldquery=Slave%2520spirituals&amp;searchType=regular&amp;start=150&amp;rows=10&amp;keyword=Slave%2520spirituals&amp;titles=false&amp;names=false&amp;places=false&amp;publishers=false&amp;subjects=false. 

Simkin, John. Spartacus Educational, Spartacus Educational, https://spartacus-educational.com/USASsongs.htm. 

Born in Marengo, IL, pianist and composer Egbert Van Alstyne (1882-1951) was an accomplished musician whose musical endeavors appeared on Broadway and in vaudeville. In 1903, he got his big break from a piece he composed entitled “Navajo”, which musically demonstrates racist stereotypes of Indigenous peoples perpetuated by white Americans. He and lyricist Harry Williams later composed “Oh, that Navajo Rag”, a ragtime piece with text which further pigeonholes and generalizes the Navajo tribe. Unfortunately, Van Alstyne’s work is one of innumerable examples of how music perpetuated and upheld racist stereotypes in the United States. Van Alstyne’s work, among many other composers and artists, raises significant questions about the portrayal of Native Americans throughout history, and how these portrayals might have impacted us all. 

Unfortunately, Van Alstyne and Williams’ bigoted repertoire is robust. Many more of their compositions are centered around prejudiced views towards Native Americans, such as “Cheyenne” and “San Antonio”. And many other composers were publishing similar works at approximately the same time. For instance, Don Bestor’s “That Indian Rag”, Edward Coleman’s “My Indian Maiden”, and Theodore Morse’s “Wise Old Indian” were all published around the same time as Van Alstyne and William’s works. What is especially alarming is the popularization of Van Alstyne and Williams music. “Navajo” was later included in Marie Cahill’s Broadway musical Nancy Brown, and “Oh, that Navajo Rag” was recorded and performed in 1911 by Billy Murray, one of the most famous vaudeville singers of his time. The creation of this work might be considered by some to be disappointing but unsurprising; but what is certainly appalling is that audiences were listening and applauding. 

When studying American music, it is important to be acutely and consistently critical of those artists and creatives who helped to lay the foundations of the American cultural framework we live in today. While we frequently critique musicologists in this course for their malpractices and wrongdoings, perhaps we ought to consider the sins of the artist as more significant. Our artistic ancestors in some way influence the art we make and thus the world we live in today. The effects of their art is long lasting, and it is difficult to write off these artistic pieces as a product of their time when their impacts are felt today. 

Billy Murray. Oh, that Navajo Rag. Victor Records. 1911.  Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-130930/.

Bestor, Don. That Indian Rag. Will Rossiter, 1910. 

Coleman, Edward. My Indian Maiden. The American Advance Music Co, 1904.

Ewen, David. Popular American Composers. New York, The H. W. Wilson Company, 1962. 

Levy, Lester S. “Growing Pains.” Give me Yesterday: American History in Song 1890-1920, University of Oklahoma Press, 1975, 169-195. 

Morse, Theodore F. Wise Old Indian. Theodore Morse Music Co, 1909. 

“Murray, Billy.” Grove Music Online, 3 Sept. 2014, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2267265. 

Van Alstyne, Egbert. Navajo: Indian Characteristique March and Two Step. Shapiro, Bernstein & Co, 1903. 

Van Alstyne, Egbert. Oh, that Navajo Rag. Jerome H. Remick & Co, 1911. Accessed from: https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/metsnav/inharmony/navigate.do?oid=http://fedora.dlib.indiana.edu/fedora/get/iudl:469351/METADATA&pn=1&size=screen.

“Van Alstyne, Egbert (Anson).” The Grove Dictionary of American Music. 2nd ed. 2013.

Many white composers compiled and arranged a multitude of African American spirituals for the western ear to consume, although more important to discuss is the influence of the first African American arranger to change the idea of what spirituals represent. Harry Burleigh was an African American vocalist, arranger, and composer who created a foundation for African American spirituals to be represented in classical music. Growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania, in the aftermath of the civil war, Burleigh was primarily influenced by the teachings of his grandfather, who lived in slavery as a child. Burleigh connected with original spirituals such as Deep River, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless, and Swing Low Sweet Chariot. His experience surrounded by music as a child led to his desire to become a musician, ultimately receiving a scholarship to the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. He had a prominent career in performing and extraordinary success in putting African American spirituals in the classical realm. Below is an arrangement I discovered on the Sheet Music Consortium that is a collection of spirituals, most specifically Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, arranged by Burleigh in western classical notation.

Just as discussed throughout Southern’s book The Music of Black Americans, white Americans often have stereotyped and simplified African American music, creating a falsified notion of the deeper meaning behind spirituals. Southern points out that white observers often “misunderstood the singing and dancing of slaves, interpreting such activities as indicative that the slaves were unfeeling and uncaring.” He further shares that they saw African Americans as “a large flock of cheerful and contented slaves… ever merry and ever working with a song” (Southern, Pg. 77). This misconception seeped its way into popular culture as African Americans gained freedom and their culture was much more prominent, specifically through minstrelsy.

Minstrelsy was a meld of African American stereotypes built on the sole purpose of entertainment for a white audience, instilling a sense of shallowness in African American folk music. Burleigh used his talents to arrange fifty songs that could stand beside other classical staples to instill a feeling of respect and empathy for spirituals. For instance, he wrote that “it is a serious misconception of their meaning and value to treat them as minstrel songs or to try to make them funny by too literal attempt to imitate that manner of the Negro in singing them… their worth is weakened unless they are done impressively, for through all these songs there breathes hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and the brotherhood of man” (Bell). Alternatively, while western notation can take away the culture and freeness that might initially be in a song learned and sung through rote, Burleigh proves that western notation can shed light on a piece’s depth and seriousness.

Bibliography

Bell, Danna. “Link to the Library of Congress: Harry T. Burleigh—The Man Who Brought African-American Spirituals to the Classical Stage.” Music Educators Journal 104, no. 4 (2018): 9–11. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26588647.

Ramsey, Guthrie P. “African American music.” Grove Music Online. 4 Oct. 2012; Accessed 20 Oct. 2022. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002226838.

Rubenstein, David. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child / Historic American Sheet Music / Duke Digital Repository.” Duke Digital Collections. Accessed October 19, 2022. https://repository.duke.edu/dc/hasm/n0735.

Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans a History. New York: Norton, 1971.

Song collections can be made for multiple reasons. For memory, for keeping record, or just to have as a collection. For BIPOC musicians and composers it can be a way to get their music to a wider audience and make sure that their music lives on.

Ronald Hayes (1887 – 1977) is a notable American lyric tenor. He studied for four years at Fisk University in Nashville and spent 12 years in London and Paris after school. It was in Europe that he met other African musicians and his meeting them led him to discover the importance of the African-American folk songs that were sung by enslaved people in America around this time. He eventually obtained some recordings of African music and decided he wanted to put a song collection together for the general public as well as other Black musicians at the time.

This collection is called My Songs: Aframerican Religious Folk Songs and it is organized into several panels to make choices of what to sing from it easier. He notes a specific panel to look at if you are planning to sing any songs for an Easter service in the forward of this collection. As the collection goes from panel to panel of songs (of which there are 30 total) he writes a few paragraphs about singing these songs in concert as well as their cultural importance.

We’ve talked in class a lot about how when looking at a collection of anything, it’s vital to take into consideration who made it, what’s in it, how old it is, and observe any other bias that might be present in the collection. For this one specifically, it is interesting to think about what wouldn’t be there if a white person had put it together. There probably would not be notes about the notation or markings and how those stem from African music traditions. The collection would also probably not be categorized the way it is in this book. There is also no negative light around this being Black music – he praises the tradition because it was what he grew up with. I don’t think a white person during this time period would’ve done the same.

Collections like these are vital to the preservation of music. No matter where they come from or what kind of music is in them, it is vital that these collections live on so that musicians for generations after can learn from them and have these traditions within arms reach.

Works Cited:

Hayes, Roland. My Songs: Aframerican Religious Folk Songs. Atlantic Monthly Press. Alexander Street, https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C355608. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Hayes

African American spirituals were infused with the experiences and emotions of enslaved people in the south as they utilized these religious folk tunes for praise, worship, and community. Many of these spirituals thrive today, performed by artists such as Nat Cole King, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and many more. However, some argue about the origination of these tunes, such as the musicologists recently discussed in class, like Henry Krehbiel and George Pullman Jackson. Throughout this blog post, I will discuss how the privilege of white men allowed scholars like Jackson and Krehbiel to argue the true origin of spirituals and how the power to change the narrative has primarily laid with the European white settlers.

The Primary document below is a piece of a newspaper listing published by the Afro-American Gazette, and it lists in chronological order the history of black achievement. Listed halfway down is the 1867 published book entitled Slave Songs of the United States. This book is also seen below. Written and edited by northern abolitionists William Francis Allen, Lucy McKim Garrison, and Charles Pickard Ware, Slave Songs of the United States was published in 1867. It was prominent in introducing written notation of spirituals that were never shared before; this book was the first space where the famous folk tune Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen was published. The three authors that gathered all 136 spirituals listed spent time during the civil war with recently freed enslaved people and, in turn, learned of the songs they used for worship.

Furthermore, William Allen gives background through the writing of the introduction to the purpose of this book and the biases it might hold. Allen admits that “the difficulty experienced in obtaining absolute correctness is greater than might be supposed by those who have never tried the experiment, and we are far from claiming that we have made no mistakes” (Slave Songs, Pg. iv). His identity as a white scholar with a Harvard degree and title as an educator in the civil war gives him an abundance of authority to hold the narrative of African American Slave songs. Thankfully, the book’s authors provide some credit for the actual creators of the spirituals; however, the main argument is that the privilege the three authors hold allows them to change the narrative just as scholars like Krehbiel and Jackson have done.

The score of Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, recorded by Charles Pickard, is a very prominent spiritual performed by many artists in pop culture. Consequently, the piece was recorded during a moment of grief, surrounded by when the population of Charleston. This song was specifically introduced to bring together the community in that moment of frustration. Those in the presence of the performance shared the intensity of emotions that flowed through the crowd. While the authors of this book were too in attendance, there stands to mention that the musicologists never could genuinely capture the integrity of the pieces through western, traditional transcription of music they later wrote down. Allen even remarks on this by stating that the mistakes embedded are “variations.” The issue, however, arises when these variations become the known versions of the original due to white privilege creating authority and power over all narratives.

One last primary document I came across is Frederick Louis Ritters’s book, Music in America, where he cites the Slave Songs of the United States and says it is “one of the best collections of old slave songs” (Ritter). At the time, it was the best collection of African American spirituals. Allen did indeed make recognition that these pieces were all derived from African Americans, that the notation depicted is the best that they can do and will only “convey but a faint shadow of the original” (Slave Songs, Pg. iv). Although, if we allow this narrative to represent African American culture and music, we allow authors like Henry Krehbiel and George Pullman Jackson to make claims of the white influence on black tradition.

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

Bibliography

Afro-American Gazette, vol. III, no. 2, 18 Jan. 1993, p. 12. Readex: African American Newspapers, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12A7AD36E8864712%40EANAAA-12C5F06DC6F7F750%402449006-12C5F06DF9520AB0%4017. Accessed 24 Nov. 2022.

Allen, W. F. W. (1867). Slave songs of the United States. Smithsonian Library. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/slavesongsofunit00alle

Wenturiano. (2007, August 24). Louis Armstrong – nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen (1962). YouTube. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from Louis Armstrong – Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen (1962)

Ritter, Frédéric Louis. Music in America by Dr. Frédéric Louis Ritter. New York C. Scribner’s Sons, 1890. Readex: Readex AllSearch, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=ARDX&docref=image/v2%3A%40EAIX-147E02D592F8DF60%40-1514D940AFDB4FF0%40449. Accessed 24 Nov. 2022. 

In class on Thursday, I mentioned potential issues with the readings from Krehbiel and Jackson. While differing in their overall intentions and attitudes towards African American music, both step into pitfalls we often see with early ethnographic and ethnomusicology research: they try to engage with other cultures from an “academic”, western-central perspective. Rather than engaging with spirituals on their own terms, they attach western concepts of musical ownership and authorship to an aural tradition that was communally shared amongst African Americans.

A photograph of Fisk University

A contrary model for how we might engage with spirituals comes from Booker T. Washington. In an address on behalf of Fisk University -a historically based black university in Nashville, Tennessee- Booker T. Washington contextualizes what Fisk Day (May 19, 1905) signifies, relating it to “The Songs of Our Fathers”, and titles it as such. Washington starts his address by invoking the image of slaves coming across the Atlantic and connecting it to what he views as the cultural significance of Spirituals. “…It is from these songs of our fathers, that their children of past generation… have received the inspiration that has imbued them with courage to have faith that right may win…” (1). Washington continues this line of thought with a literary analysis of a preacher, quoting and alluding to well-known hymns and spirituals without needing to mention them by name.  He contextualizes them, inviting people to think about the spiritual in the mindset of a slave. “What encouragement to the patiently waiting slaves had been the faith songs that had banished the sight of the auction block, the separation of mother and child, father and mother…” (2).

A photograph of Booker T. Washington

In concluding his address, Washington makes the penultimate argument that Fisk day honors “the sacrifices, loving devotion and a belief in the possibilities of a despised people…” (3). While this address does not have the academic citations or research behind it that Krehbiel or Jackson exhibit in their writing, it serves as a model for how to engage with spirituals. Rather than focusing on the who, what when of spirituals, Washington focuses on the why and how which is all the more relevant to understanding the musical and cultural practice.

(1) “The Songs of Our Fathers. An Address Delivered on Fisk Day during the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition.” Plaindealer (Topeka, Kansas) VII, no. 20, May 19, 1905: [3]. Readex: African American Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12A7EF1A4AC47F2D%40EANAAA-12C8B913302F6748%402416985-12C8B9134BFB71A0%402-12C8B913A0F80C58%40The%2BSongs%2Bof%2BOur%2BFathers.%2BAn%2BAddress%2BDelivered%2Bon%2BFisk%2BDay%2Bduring%2Bthe%2BLouisiana%2BPurchase%2BExhibition.

(2) “The Songs of Our Fathers. An Address Delivered on Fisk Day during the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition.”

(3) “The Songs of Our Fathers. An Address Delivered on Fisk Day during the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition.”

“Sylvan Worship” is an article written by Chicago Inter-Ocean writer William Eleroy Curtis, published September 18, 1875. The article outlines a description of a trip that Curtis took to witness a ‘spiritual’ in person. Overall, the article is rich with fetishistic language and othering behaviors, describing the events Curtis witnessed as a sort of foreign and outlandish ritual. Certain possibly offensive terms will be replaced with more modern and inclusive language in direct quotes, for the purpose of this blog. 

There isn’t much information on who William Eleroy Curtis really was, but we do know for whom he wrote, the Chicago Inter-Ocean, and when he lived; Curtis was born in 1850, and passed in 1911. From the way that he writes, I assume that he was a white man, given he uses language that refers to African-American peoples as something that he is not. For example, take how he opens the article: “No race is more devotional than the African, and no class of people does the camp meeting revival prove so effectual as with them.”

With this position in mind, I’d like to look at the language he uses, and what the intent of writing this article may have been. The language used in the work is fetishistic, and while it offers high praise to the traditions that it highlights, it treats them as a sort of somewhat barbaric and foreign, indirectly invalidating the authenticity of the practices. Take, for example, this description of a spiritual: “[Black] ‘Spirituals’ will forever exist among the curiosities of music, and at the camp-meeting the ‘Spiritual’ is seen in its strangest light and found in its most unadulterated flavor.” The use of terms such as “ unadulterated flavor” permeates this article in a way that doesn’t really do it any favors. 

So what was it trying to do? I think that the article was written as either a curiosity piece, from the point of view of the white man, or as a sort of “they’re not all bad!” article, meant to highlight the good that black spiritual practices are doing. Like other earlier musicology works that we have covered, the frame of this article is one that does not paint black or minority musical practices in an equal and fair light. Either good natured or neutral, this work doesn’t seem to bring deliberate harm, but it also isn’t doing all that much good, the way that it is written. 

“‘Sylvan Worship.’.” Weekly Louisianian, 18 Sept. 1875, p. 1. Readex: African American Newspapers, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12B767D21CB17968%40EANAAA-12BEC31400554038%402406150-12BC002A0EA02018%400-12D621523A4D1068%40%2522Sylvan%2BWorship.%2522.

The Educational column of the Loyal Georgian written August 24th of 1867 describes a teachers festival in which the educators sent to the south by the New England Freedmen’s Society get together to celebrate the education of the recently freedmen in various locations in the south such as Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis (“Teacher’s Festival”). At this event, it is described that at least two “Negro Spirituals” were sung by various attendees of the event. One of the spirituals was sung by a mother and daughter with the lyrics “I think I see sister Hannah, I know her by her garments, She’s a blessing in the land.” (“Teacher’s Festival”). The title has proven difficult to find, but the story of Hannah is frequently used as a demonstration of the good fortune given by God (Klein). All members of the group concluded their meeting with the Hymn “Old Hundredth” also known as “All People Who on Earth do Dwell” (“Teacher’s Festival”, “Tune: Old Hundredth”). 

Though the event itself did not have a musical nor necessarily spiritual focus, these pieces of music added great joy, celebration, and fellowship for those in attendance. This Teacher’s Festival was happening to celebrate the work of those educators in the south during Civil War Reconstruction (“Teacher’s Festival”). This event in itself is significant because it is one of the few positive effects of Reconstruction (freed people getting education) and it’s very important both musically and historically to acknowledge the fact that African Americans were celebrating other African Americans with black music. This was not a performance for an audience but rather an act of fellowship for a group of people that had known and would continue to know great hardship. 

This article brings to mind the words of W.E.B Du Bois when he said “They came out of the South, unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine.” (Du Bois). It is clear both in this column and for Du Bois that this music was of great importance in passing along and celebrating black community. 

Sources

Klein (Abensohn), Lillian. “Hannah: Bible.” Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. 31 December 1999. Jewish Women’s Archive. (Viewed on October 11, 2022) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hannah-bible>.

Parkman, John, and W.E Stevenson. “Appointment: The New England Freedmen’s Aid Society, a Teacher of Freed People in North Carolina.” North Carolina Digital Archives, CONTENTdm, digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p15012coll8/id/10779/. 

“Teacher’s Festival.” Daily Loyal Georgian, 24 Aug. 1867, p. 3. 

“Tune: Old Hundredth.” Old Hundredth, Hymnary.org, hymnary.org/tune/old_hundredth_bourgeois. 

W.E.B. Du Bois. “”The Sorrow Songs,” from The Souls of Black Folk”. Book excerpt, 1903. From Teaching American History. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-sorrow-songs/ (accessed October 11, 2022).

It was no secret that enslaved people in America had their own traditions and practices outside of their labor. What can be surprising about these traditions held is who has anything to say about it.

Thomas Jefferson, this country’s third president and one of our founding fathers, was a consistent opponent of slavery. He once said, “I hope in all my soul that the day will come when slavery is a word without meaning in the English language…” The paper this quote comes from is one from the Fredrick Douglas Paper and this specific publication had his eulogy printed.

In Notes on Virginia with an appendix by Thomas Jefferson (1801), he openly praised them for being “equal in memory to the whites” and in the same sentence also claimed Black people were inferior in reason to white people. In terms of their music, however, Jefferson called Black people “generally more gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been capable of imaging a small catch.” This book is a collection of thoughts from Jefferson himself and a fair number of his colleagues wouldn’t have praised Black people this highly during this time. He was a liberal thinker for his time, though, but seeing this made my eyes go wide. It’s rare to see a white person praising Black people like this from this time period.

When we were reading sources from this time in class, we didn’t see a lot of white people talking about Black and enslaved people this way. Most white people who wrote about them at the time were quick to judge them for anything they saw or didn’t see. Opinions like Jeffersons are incredibly important because it shows that there were powerful people who did appose slavery and praised the enslaved people for some of the faculties they were trying their best to express. It shows that people saw them for more than property and in the sea of awful racist language (which some of his comments do have, mind you) it’s comforting to see those pockets of good.

Works Cited:

“Eulogy.” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, vol. I, no. XIII, 24 Mar. 1848, p. [1]. Readex: African American Newspapers, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A11BE9340B7A005AB%40EANAAA-11D0A375F6CC4A30%402396111-11D0A376083F6788%400-11D0A376375BB120%40Eulogy. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.

https://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/Evans/?p_product=EAIX&p_theme=eai&p_nbid=Y4EJ4EGBMTY3MDg5NDM0OS40NDI1ODE6MToxMjoxOTkuOTEuMTgwLjU&p_action=doc&p_queryname=3&p_docref=v2:13D59FCC0F7F54B8@EAIX-147E02D7E1F80B80@5280-14B3FF2F6A857B98@218

Front Page of “The Weekly Louisianian” on September 18, 1875 https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&sort=YMD_date%3AA&fld-base-0=alltext&val-base-0=spirituals&val-database-0=&fld-database-0=database&fld-nav-0=YMD_date&val-nav-0=&docref=image%2Fv2%3A12B767D21CB17968%40EANAAA-12BEC31400554038%402406150-12BC002A0EA02018%400&origin=image%2Fv2%3A12B767D21CB17968%40EANAAA-12BEC31400554038%402406150-12BC002A0EA02018%400-12D621523A4D1068%40%2522Sylvan%2BWorship.%2522

On September 18, 1875, an author with the surname “Curtis” wrote an article for a newspaper called “The Weekly Louisianian”, which was based in New Orleans, Louisiana. This article, titled “Sylvan Worship”, documents the author’s experience at an African American church where worshippers sang spirituals as a religious experience. The lens through which Curtis analyzes their experience in witnessing spirituals as a religious experience is especially interesting considering “The Weekly Louisianian” describes itself on the front page as “Journal of the Republican Party of Louisiana”, going so far as to further demonstrate their political affiliation through the motto, “Republican at all times, and under all circumstances.” Curtis’ article therefore gives an excellent example of how Southern, Republican white people in the nineteenth century perceived the spiritual practices of African Americans and the associated church music.

All of this being said, it is important to recognize that the meaning of “Republican” in 1875 is very different than how it is interpreted today:

“After the United States triumphed over the Confederate States at the end of the Civil War, and under President Abraham Lincoln, Republicans passed laws that granted protections for Black Americans and advanced social justice (for example the Civil Rights Act of 1866 though this failed to end slavery). Again Democrats largely opposed these apparent expansions of federal power,” (Wolchover).

Regardless of political party, the “othering” attitudes in Curtis’ writing are apparent and abhorrent. For example, Curtis states in his article, “Negro character has always been one of the most curious studies among human phenomena, and, although its peculiarities have been the theme of books and lectures for a hundred years, there is always something new and novel cropping out in association with the race.” By saying this, Curtis conveys the attitude that Black people are specimens and “phenomena” that need to be scientifically studied to understand, as if they are not humans with distinct voices, identities, and experiences. Curtis drives this point home by quoting the Black musicians and worshippers he observed in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which seems to have been used inappropriately with an overtone of condescension in order to undermine what the African American worshippers are actually saying and draw attention to linguistic differences. He even writes the lyrics of the hymn “Come, We That Love the Lord” in AAVE despite the fact that it was written by Isaac Watts, a white Anglican. Curtis does not seem to be attempting to purposely “other” the African American worshippers, in fact he praises the passion and intensity of the service. Curtis’ intrinsic racial bias comes through in vocabulary such as “primitive”, “barbaric”, and “pathetic” to describe the worship spirituals. Another interesting vocabulary choice is in the article title itself: “sylvan”. According to Oxford English Dictionary, “sylvan” is defined as “A person dwelling in a wood, or in a woodland region; a forester; a rustic”. Curtis’ use of this word almost implies that African Americans only live in rural country areas and are behind on cosmopolitan technologies and behaviors.

It is clear through the entire article that Curtis likely thought of himself as though he were scientifically observing a culture that was less developed than his own (which we know is problematic and inaccurate). This viewpoint parallels that of Frances Densmore’s while she documented Native American musical traditions around the United States in the early twentieth century. It is interesting to note that this article was released during Densmore’s lifetime (she lived from 1867-1957), so it can be inferred that racial othering and white supremacy in analyzing the music of other cultures was rampant in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Frances Densmore https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frances-Densmore

Sources:

Curtis. “Sylvan Worship.” African American Newspapers, Reader, 18 Sept. 1875, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&sort=YMD_date%3AA&fld-base-0=alltext&val-base-0=spirituals&val-database-0=&fld-database-0=database&fld-nav-0=YMD_date&val-nav-0=&docref=image%2Fv2%3A12B767D21CB17968%40EANAAA-12BEC31400554038%402406150-12BC002A0EA02018%400-12D621523A4D1068%40%2522Sylvan%2BWorship.%2522&firsthit=yes.

The Weekly Louisianian, 18 Sept. 1875.

Wolchover, Natalie, and Callum McKelvie. “When and Why Did Democrats and Republicans Switch Platforms?” LiveScience, Purch, 14 Apr. 2022, https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html.

Since spirituals first gained popularity in the United States – and certainly since they became a common feature of vocal concert repertoire – many theories have been published on their origins. You think those origins are simple? Just read the 1943 George Pullen Jackson paper claiming spirituals were directly plagiarized from British folk songs,¹ and you’ll realize our apparent shared understanding about the origins of this genre was once far from accepted.

One particularly interesting and egregiously racist perspective on spirituals’ origins was written by a Jeanette Robinson Murphy, in 1904.²  Murphy has abhorrent ideas about black people’s intelligence and role in society. And she in part attributes the emotional power of spirituals, as she observes it in black communities, to the ongoing influence of voodoo, which is demeaning to black people and disrespectful to the religion. There’s no small share of exoticization in her writing, either, if one examines the passages where she describes black people’s voices and lives:

But what’s fascinating is that she does acknowledge that the songs originated in black communities, though a product of acculturation and some amount of cultural syncretism, and she doesn’t claim (as some have) that black people are incapable of artistry without white influence.

Of course her language here creates an artificial distance between what she categorizes as “black” and “white” music – interesting, considering her acknowledgement of cultural syncretism. But through her racist lens, she’s somehow managed to preserve the cultural autonomy of black music in a way some of her contemporaries couldn’t. She performs some logical backflips throughout her work to preserve both her racist ideals and her genuine reverence for black music (too many to cite); maybe that logic is the only thing that actuates this dissonance.

But what’s even more interesting to me than Murphy as an example of racist psychology is the overlap between the ideas of those such as Murphy and the ideas of their black contemporaries. Murphy emphasizes the deep emotion ingrained in spirituals, and that of the performers; this is a focus her black contemporaries also uplifted. W.E.B DuBois’ “Sorrow Songs,” for example, connects the emotional potency and universality of spirituals to the generational trauma of slavery, and his assertions about spirituals’ direct descent from African folk music are essentially aligned with Murphy’s claims.³ Mrs. Booker T. Washington also draws this connection between the emotional resonance of black music and the horrors of slavery in her 1905 address about Fisk University and the Fisk Jubilee singers, given at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition:⁴

There are undeniable similarities between how Murphy understands and experiences spirituals and how at least these black authors understand and experience spirituals. Whether this is the result of some strategic essentialism, an emerging pan-African concept leading black public figures to emphasize the commonalities of their experiences as black Americans, political maneuvering, or just a genuine shared opinion, I cannot say. But when we’re studying music that has associations of “ownership” by one racial group or another, and music that has conflicting origin stories, these are the socio-historical questions we’re going to have to get comfortable addressing.

Garcilaso de la Vega was born the “illegitimate but loved son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess” was born in 1539 in the Viceroyalty of Peru, only about 5 years after the Spanish took advantage of the Inca civil war, and conquered the area. His peculiar situation allowed him access to both a Spanish education, and a good deal of exposure to the Inca culture of where he was raised.

In Vega’s account, he describes the various musical stylings of the Indigenous people in 1602 Peruvian culture. He mainly focuses on panpipe players who were requested to play for the court. A panpipe is an instrument of four reeds, each, as Vega described it, resembling treble, tenor, contralto, and counter-bass voices. La flutes are also mentioned (flutes with 4-5 notes often played by shepherds), and both types of instruments are used for programmatic music. 

It is interesting to note that Vega is, in some capacity, both Spaniard and Inca, but he still describes the music of “Native Americans” as an outsider. He writes with a similar stone cold curiosity as Francis Densmore in all her many accounts of Native American music centuries later, which proves both to dehumanize the people he describes without truly showing any sort of malice towards them either. 

However, what makes this cold curiosity so interesting is that Densmore was hundreds of years removed from the beginnings of Native American displacement. However, Vega is writing from what is truly a new empire, less than a hundred years removed from the era in which Inca was its own empire, and a well-governed, well-documented one at that (Britannica). Considering the fact that the Inca Empire was just that, an empire, makes it even more curious that Vega would consider them “Native Americans” since they held a similar governing body to Spain. 

In a way, this account could also be seen through a similar lens to Eileen Southern’s newspaper clippings of advertisements for slaves in early American newspapers. It is almost as if the musical abilities of these people who are considered to be “less than” make them more valuable, both literally and figuratively in a certain sense, where either the slaveholder or the court is slightly more reverent of servants with musical abilities. Obviously, we must address this idea with the caveat that the curiosity of the colonist as it pertains to the indigenous person or slave, does not in any way make their treatment of these people less egregious. 

Works Cited:

 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Inca”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 Aug. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Inca. Accessed 3 October 2022.

 Densmore, F. (1929). Pawnee music. United States Government Printing Office.

 “Garcilaso De La Vega: Description of Inca Music (1609).” The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022, latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1541276. Accessed 3 Oct. 2022.

 Southern, E. (2006). Chapter 2: The Colonial Era. In The music of Black Americans: A history (Third Edition, pp. 25–27). essay, W. W. Norton & Company.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were the first and premier ensemble of Fisk University in Nashville, TN. The university was founded in 1866 as the first American university which offered a “liberal arts education to men and women irrespective of color”; the Jubilee singers began traveling and performing five years later, in 1871, where they began performing to raise money for the university. They performed for American and British audiences until 1878, including for president-to-be James A. Garfield, from who they received a glowing review and for whom they gave an inscribed version of their book of songs.

A diary entry from President James A. Garfield

An inscribed version of “The Story of the Jubilee Singers; with their Songs” given to President Garfield as a gift by the ensemble on August 9th, 1880.

Through religious music, the Fisk singers reached audiences never thought to be possible by a group whose members were born into slavery. In 1877, they travelled to Germany on their world tour. In the land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, the Fisk Singers used Christian messages and content to entice audiences to listen. While the Fisk singers made waves in the history of music, it was only through a lens of the music and the religion of the colonizer that they were able to sell themselves. Scholar Toni P. Anderson was the first to provide critical historical scholarship the Fisk singers. As Stephen A. Marini writes in their abstract on Anderson’s work, “Anderson’s principal contribution is to place Fisk University and the Jubilee Singers in the context of what she calls “Christian Reconstruction,” the AMA’s militant program of Evangelical religion, liberal education, and acculturation to Victorian values and norms designed to produce proper leaders for the four million newly freed slaves. Immediately after the war, the Congregationalist-led AMA [American Missionary Association] undertook heroic efforts to create Christian colleges in the South to serve the Freedmen. Fisk University in Nashville (1866) was designed by its leaders Adam Spence and Erastus Cravath to be a prime embodiment of this Christian Reconstruction strategy.” Fisk University’s roots in colonial and Christian traditions enabled the Fisk Jubilee singers to have the success that they had. Were it not for these connections, the Fisk singers would not have been able to sell themselves to religious audiences, especially how they did overseas.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers

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[ iframe src=”https://muse.jhu.edu/article/631575” width=”640″ height=”480″ ]

Today’s performers have access to a wealth of information to place their musical selection in the context of modern discourse and consider the role and presence of gender and racial stereotypes in the art and lyrics. Any performance that draws from the vast repertoire of patriotic American musical lyrics written in the late 1800’s provides an abundance of racial and gender stereotypes, fueled by the ignorance that permeated society at that time. Nowadays, the American music cannon is often seen as a source of racist ideology promoting images and lyrics that maintain the status quo of white supremacy.  A little research, coupled with the desire to find and spread the truth, exposes the tendency in American patriotic music to promote traditional and stereotypical ideologies.

 While American patriotic music is a genre that readily falls under the umbrella of misinterpreted music, the music of New Spain (colonial Mexico) also faces a similar disconnect. There is a tension in reviving its music which lacks any “local content” as a whole (Davies). According to Davies, New Spanish music, “is overwhelmingly European in character and congruent with conservative European practices. The absence of local vernacular content overwhelms its presence in this aesthetically austere music” (Davies). This is an example of music around the world that is misinterpreted and misunderstood due to a lack of education and understanding on the subject. This missing content was intentionally diminished by white European influences. 

A primary source selection that I want to draw attention to comes from the genre of American patriotic musical cannon and has also been misinterpreted time and time again. Found in the Latin American Experience database, “The Yankee Message or Uncle Sam to Spain,” written in 1898 by Edward S. Ellis and Chas M. Hattersley, glorifies the Spanish-American War, Cuba’s independence from Spain, and the impact on U.S. monetary interests. During the Spanish-American War era, songwriters were similar to yellow journalists as they made popular songs to celebrate the war and honor victories and heroes (PBS). The self interest and self righteousness of the United States is present in both the lyrics and illustrations of Ellis’ and Hattersley’s song. The cover art is composed of patriotic symbols including the U.S. Flag, an eagle, and a knife. Each illustration signals an allegiance to freedom and liberty, core values espoused by the U.S. Similarly, the lyrics point out the patriotic ideals of the U.S. government:

We’ve got the boys to do it

A million men and more

We’ve got our new born Navy

And deweys by the score

These Eurocentric lyrics make it clear that their actions are right, sending a direct message to Spain from Uncle Sam and reinforcing the notion that if they simply act like Yankees, all their issues will be resolved. 

During my research I also stumbled across an alternate edition of the piece, this time titled “Free Cuba” instead of “The Yankee Message.” This alternate title suggests a poor attempt once again at the United States trying to manipulate and influence people’s perceptions of them as a dignified nation at the time. “The Yankee Message” title suggests power and strength and boils down to a negative declaration to the opposition rather than the perception of hope and a desire to do the right thing in the alternate title, “Free Cuba.”

The lyrics in all showcase honor and patriotism however, a deeper dive reveals a surface level attempt at this. The American’s lust for Cuban independence is reflected in lyrics glamorizing combat, colonization, and the liberation of Cuba from Spain. “The Yankee Message or Uncle Sam to Spain” is a musical declaration of patriotism and power, disguised as a fun loving cannon of America’s pastimes.

Sources:

“Patriotic American Sheet Music.” The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022, latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1470303. Accessed 4 Oct. 2022.

Hattersley, Chas. M. Free Cuba; or, Uncle Sam to Spain. Pond & Co., Wm. A., New York, monographic, 1873. Notated Music. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/sm1873.15560/>.

Public Broadcasting Service. (n.d.). Crucible of empire : The Spanish-american war – PBS online. PBS. Retrieved October 4, 2022, from https://www.pbs.org/crucible/frames/_music.html

There can be multiple definitions of what “American Music” actually is. There are so many cultures that exist in this country and in its history that it can be difficult to pinpoint an exact genre that is strictly “American.”

Let’s rewind a little bit in history. When the colonizers from Europe first came to this land mass initially, they were bringing a multitude of cultures with them – Spanish, French, German, etc. In addition to the cultures that already existed before they got here, the newer artistic cultures melded (both by force and by accident) to create new kinds of art and music that was a beautifully twisted combination of the two.

In the Andes in the 16th century, there was a son of a Spanish conquistador and an Incan princess – Garcilaso de la Vega. He was a poet himself and he is known mostly for his writings about Incan history, culture, and society. In those writings, he wrote about the history of both of the musical traditions from which he is descended. He brought to light how many different instruments they used in both types of music (commonly flute and organ), how each kind was distinct and how there were certain songs for each occasion, and where most of the songs were performed.

His writings were particularly special because they were the first literature by an author born in the Americas to enter the Western Canon. Without his writings, there would’ve been much less written down knowledge about the Incan culture and their cultural practices.

Writings like this are important in our work in this class for the purpose of following how cultural traditions move. The musical influence of both of these cultures can be seen in places like New Spain and later on when the territories dissolve and become the country we know and exist in today. While the flute and organ usually are not played together in early music performance practice anymore, we have records of what early court music sounded like to inform the performance practice early music groups do today.

Understanding history is vital to understanding where we come from and knowing where our short comings are so that the mistakes and disappointments of the past are not repeated.

Work Cited:

“Garcilaso De La Vega: Description of Inca Music (1609).” The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022, latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1541276. Accessed 3 Oct. 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Garcilaso_de_la_Vega

Church in Chihuahua, Mexico https://airlines-airports.com/aeromexico-in-chihuahua-mexico/

In 1892, James D. Faton wrote an article for “The Independent” newspaper titled “Mexico: A New Church Dedicated” that celebrates the recent erection of an Evangelist church in Chihuahua, Mexico. In the article, Faton praises the role of religion in Mexican sociopolitical life for serving as “a powerful aid to [Mexico’s] progress” and for having “deepened the sentiments of patriotism in the hearts of our people”. Mexican churches used sacred music such as alabados in order to lure citizens to church and then to further instill a sense of Mexican nationalism in worshippers and performers in order to create an original identity and sound for the recently independent country (Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821).

According to the U.S. Department of State Office of International Religious Freedom, approximately eighty-nine percent of Mexico’s population identifies as Christian (“2020 Report…”). One of the largest aspects of the Christian faith is the role of liturgical hymns and worship songs, and it is no surprise that there is a rich history behind Mexican liturgical music. The most traditional style of sacred song from Mexican origin are alabados. Alabados are “ancient religious hymns based on the New Testament that lament the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ,” (García). Similar to Aaron Copland and Charles Ives’ attempts to create a distinctly American sound by borrowing music from other cultural influences, alabados often “…reveal traces of Middle Eastern musical influence (most likely Moorish and Sephardic), mixed with Iberian medieval plain chant and traces of Pueblo (Tanoan and Keresan) Indian. Alabados were introduced to the New World by the Franciscan monks, who used them in converting the native peoples to Christianity. Eventually mixed with New World cultural elements, today’s alabados are genuine hybrid expressions of the Americas,” (García). Mexico was very clearly following in the United States’ footsteps in combining multiple cultural influences present in the area to create a new and distinct sound. In fact, Faton noted “citing the United States as a shining example” of religious freedom, which encompasses multiple different musical traditions. Alabados and other forms of nineteenth-century sacred Mexican music not only brought Mexican citizens together in worship but sought to create a unique Mexican musical tradition based on a conglomeration of cultural influences around the country. Mexico defining its musical canon at an early stage after the country’s independence from Spain signifies a desire to be more present and powerful in the international musical scene in the early twentieth century.

Sources:

FATON, J. D. (1892, Dec 08). MEXICO.: A NEW CHURCH DEDICATED. The Independent …Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, History, Literature, and the Arts (1848-1921), 44, 21. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/magazines/mexico/docview/90478917/se-2

“2020 Report on International Religious Freedom – United States …” U.S. Department of State, 12 May 2021, https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-report-on-international-religious-freedom/.

García, Peter J. “Alabados.” The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022, latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1329447. Accessed 3 Oct. 2022.

When examining American music, it is clear to see that no musical tradition has come about without the fusion of many cultural properties. This ceaseless blending and creation is what we ought to thank for the multiplicity of beautiful and unique music that has come out of the Americas. However, such musical synthesis frequently leads to questions about the injustices and power struggles that led to the development of new musical traditions. In addition, we often also consider how these musical styles give voice to historically oppressed people today and whether this art can be a medium through which justice might be sought. The cultural, religious, and musical tradition known as ‘Las Posadas’ is an example of such cultural blending that has its earliest roots in the first attempts to Christianize the Aztecs in the early sixteenth century. As an ever-morphing ritual with centuries worth of history, Las Posadas serves as an example of how cultural amalgamation forces us to ask questions about historical and present inter-ethnic transgression.  

The tradition of Las Posadas occurs annually in the American Southwest and is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Las Posadas (“the inns”) refers more directly to Mary and Joseph’s search for lodging prior to the incarnation. During each night of this nine-day Catholic devotion, two individuals play the roles of Mary and Jospeh and ask various members of their community for lodging. They are denied a place to rest each night, and are sent on their way. This nightly ritual is accompanied by posada songs, music specific to this ritual. One of the primary songs for this event is simply titled “Las Posadas” in which Joseph asks the innkeepers for a place to stay for the night. 

While this tradition is a beautiful example of cultural blending in the United States, it has its roots in the colonization that occurred early on in the development of the New World. The history of this music and tradition begins in the early sixteenth century when Augustine priests attempted to christianize the Aztecs. By coincidence, the Aztec people celebrated the birth of their god Huitzilopochtli at approximately the same time as Christmas. The overlapping religious events made it easier for the Augustinians to convert the population, and out of this conversion came the traditions and music that is now referred to as Las Posadas. Today, many connections have been drawn between Mary and Joseph’s search for a home and ultimate rejection to the on going issue of immigration in the United States. In 2002 at the Posada sin Fronteras event in San Diego, California, alternate lyrics to the Las Posadas song were composed to demonstrate the similarity in relationships between the Holy parents and the innkeepers along with immigrants and border officals. By recognizing and connecting the power struggles of the past to those which are still ongoing, this art which once was used as a means to overpower or dehumanize becomes a medium for protest and vehicle for change. 

There is much to be learned about the tradition of Las Posadas and the multiplicity of meanings imbedded in this ritual. While there is a significant amount of cultural dissonance within this music and its history, there is just as much hope to had for its in its performance and reinvention. 

Cantos de Las Posadas and Other Christmas Songs (recorded by Elena Paz and Carlos Garcia Travesi). Performed by Suni Paz, and C. G. Travesi., Folkways Records. Alexander Street, https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Crecorded_cd%7C72362.

“Las Posadas Student Procession.” The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022, latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1922421. Accessed 3 Oct. 2022.

“Traditional Las Posadas Song.” The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022, latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1839445. Accessed 3 Oct. 2022.

De La Torre, Miguel A. “A Colonized Christmas Story.” Interpretation (Richmond), vol. 71, no. 4, 2017, pp. 408–17, https://doi.org/10.1177/0020964317716131.

Nolan, Seth. “Las Posadas.” The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022, latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1329879. Accessed 3 Oct. 2022.

Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., et al. “‘There’s a Spirit That Transcends the Border’: Faith, Ritual, and Postnational Protest at the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Sociological Perspectives, vol. 47, no. 2, 2004, pp. 133–59, https://doi.org/10.1525/sop.2004.47.2.133.

December 19-20th 1979, Students participate in Las Posadas.

The photograph on the left features students, portraying the characters of Mary and Joseph, participating in Las Posadas (1). Las Posadas is a Christian pageant tradition practiced throughout Latin America and Spain as part of the Las Posadas tradition. Based on the New Testament, the pageant lasts nine days and focuses on Joseph and Mary and their search for a place to stay in Bethlehem (2). While the subject matter of the tradition is not of much intrigue and doesn’t connect to the course content, its role in the colonization of Latin America does.

The Las Posadas tradition dates back to the 16th century with the Augustinian missionaries’ conversion of the Aztecs. The pageant tradition coincided with the celebration of the birth of the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli, which occurred at roughly the same time and shared the same amount of cultural weight as Christmas did to the missionaries (3). This served as a bridge between the two cultures and made Christianity easier to teach to the Aztecs.

This puts our cultural understanding of the traditional Las Posadas song in a predicament. We understand that the song was part of a larger tradition aimed at converting the Aztecs, along with other indigenous cultures. This thus westernized them and made them easier to conquer and assimilate. However, one cannot deny the fact that the Las Posadas tradition has been a part of Latin American culture for roughly 500 years, and has different cultural connotations and intentions now compared to then. Seth Nolan notes that Las Posadas has “…become a community affair with friends, relatives, and neighbors gathering together to share in a tradition that has come down through the years” (4). While the reckoning of these two identities associated with this song doesn’t present a clear answer, the ethical and moral debate it sparks around historical context and cultural significance is important.

(1) “Las Posadas Student Procession.” In The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022. Image. Accessed December 13, 2022. https://latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1922421.

(2) Nolan, Seth. “Las Posadas.” In The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022. Accessed October 3, 2022. https://latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1329879.

(3) Nolan, Seth. “Las Posadas.” In The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022. Accessed October 3, 2022. https://latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1329879.

(4) Nolan, Seth. “Las Posadas.” In The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience,

First Ever Album Cover by Alex Steinweiss (1938) https://illustrationchronicles.com/alex-steinweiss-and-the-world-s-first-record-cover

If you’ve ever seen an album cover, you might have an idea of what can commonly be found on the front page of musical scores. These score covers use visual elements to package and advertise music, often with elaborate illustrations that drew in prospective performers to the part. Score cover art for Native-American-influenced popular music (which unfortunately is more often than not inaccurately appropriated by white composers and/or artists with no indigenous backgrounds) provides an interesting insight into how Native Americans were perceived in 19th- and 20th-century America. Two common themes that I noticed in examining these score covers is the narrative of the Native American as primitive soldiers and on the contrary, as love interests.

Sioux March & Waltz—Louis Wallis https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/sheetmusic/id/23812

The cover art for Louis Wallis’ “Sioux Waltz & March” (1856) shows “A man on horseback in uniform is about to cut down with his saber a Native American he is chasing. Behind him, another of his comrades, at whom the Native American is aiming a bow and drawn arrow, is about to shoot the Native American with his pistol. A battle rages in the background, with Native Americans and soldiers visible,” (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). The simultaneous use of the Native American’s bow and arrow and the white man with a pistol reflects the 19th-century attitude that Native Americans were less developed in technology and other aspects of life than that in Western civilization.

“Lackawanna: An Indian Love Song Story in Florida” by Eugene Francis Mickell (1912) https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/ShtMus/id/13

“A Wigwam Courtship; Intermezzo” by Sadie Koninsky (1903) https://repository.duke.edu/dc/hasm/b0229

Another interesting theme in score cover art for Native American-inspired music is the fetishization of both relationships between two Native Americans as well as relationships between one Native American and a Westerner. “A Wigwam Courtship; Intermezzo” by Sadie Koninsky (1903) and “Lackawanna: An Indian Love Song Story from Florida” by Eugene Francis Mickell (1912) show two Native Americans lusting after each other.

“My Indian Maiden” by Edward Coleman (1904) https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/inharmony/detail.do?action=detail&fullItemID=/lilly/devincent/LL-SDV-083015

Meanwhile, the cover to Edward Coleman’s “My Indian Maiden” (1904) depicts a Native American woman dressed in full regalia with a pleasant expression on her face, while a European man in colonial period clothing stands in the mirror behind her.

It is inconclusive whether depicting these Native American relationships on score covers is for representative purposes or as a form of exoticism. According to Oxford Bibliographies, “exoticism is considered a form of representation in which peoples, places, and cultural practices are depicted as foreign from the perspective of the composer and/or intended audience. In earlier usage of the term, “exoticism” and “exotic” referred to an inherent quality or status of the non-Western other”. It is clear that the illustrators for the score covers thought of Native Americans as the “other” and sought to depict them as stereotypically as possible. Every album cover that I researched with Native American subjects had them depicted in full regalia, surrounded by nature, and often using weapons.

These score covers provide an interesting historical insight into how Westerners viewed Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. Not only were Native Americans thought of as underdeveloped and uncivilized warriors, but Native American relationships served as an exotic spectacle to Westerners. Native Americans were treated by score illustrators as commodities to help increase score profits, instead of actual people. The cover art to “My Indian Maiden” shows that Native American women may have been fetishized by white men especially, which is a dangerous rhetoric to spread. “The Justice Department reports that one in three Native women is raped over her lifetime, while other sources report that many Native women are too demoralized to report rape.  Perhaps this is because federal prosecutors decline to prosecute 67 percent of sexual abuse cases, according to the Government Accountability Office. More than 80 percent of sex crimes on reservations are committed by non-Indian men, who are immune from prosecution by tribal courts” (Erdrich, 2013). In fact, a 1915 letter by the U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners addressed to Edward E. Ayer states that attempted rape of Native Americans is “impossible” to prosecute: “Outside of certain specific offenses provided for by the Statute, it is impossible to punish anyone who may have attempted rape, an assault, seduction under the promise of marriage, and theft,” (American Indian Histories and Cultures). There were no punishments for the maltreatment and fetishization of Native Americans during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The anti-Native American attitudes that can still be seen today are evident in the 18th- and 19th-century score covers for pieces inspired by Native American music. Cover art of scores and albums can serve as an extremely credible lens into what life looked like in the past, which can help scholars today determine when and where certain racist attitudes may have begun and how they were perpetuated.

Sources:

“A Wigwam Courtship; Intermezzo / Historic American Sheet Music / Duke Digital Repository.” Duke Digital Collections, https://repository.duke.edu/dc/hasm/b0229. 

Erdrich. L. (2013). Also the author of “The Round House.” New York Times Op Ed, February 27, 2013, on page A25: Rape on the Reservation.

“Exoticism.” Obo, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199757824/obo-9780199757824-0123.xml.

“In Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana.” IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana – Item Details, https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/inharmony/detail.do?action=detail&fullItemID=%2Flilly%2Fdevincent%2FLL-SDV-083015. 

Kennedy, Philip. “Alex Steinweiss and the World’s First Record Cover.” Illustration Chronicles, 20 July 2021, https://illustrationchronicles.com/Alex-Steinweiss-and-the-World-s-First-Record-Cover. 

“Lackawanna : an Indian Love Song, Story from Florida.” CONTENTDM, Ball State University Digital Media Repository, https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/ShtMus/id/13. 

“To Mrs. Graham Atkinson. Sioux March & Waltz by Louis Wallis.” Playmakers Repertory Company Playbills, https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/sheetmusic/id/23812. 

“U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners Files [Manuscript]: 1912-1922 [ Box 3, Folders 15 to 18].” AMD, American Indian Histories and Cultures, https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/SearchDetails/Ayer_MS_911_BX03_1#Snippits.

Alice Fletcher, Meepe, and Martha, ca. 1887-1889, BAE GN 4439, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. https://transcription.si.edu/articles/alice-cunningham-fletcher-and-francis-la-flesche-transcription-center

As a class, we recently learned about Frances Densmore’s ethnographic research on Native Americans, in which she recorded and documented myriad songs and information about the culture of multiple Native American tribes in Minnesota and the US.  Densmore approached her research on these groups as a scientific endeavor—viewing Native Americans through a nineteenth-century racialized lens that perceived them as tantamount to the natural landscape and representative of a primitive European past. However, she was not the first, nor the only ethnologist learning about and extracting the sonic resources of Great Plains tribes at that time. Consider Alice C. Fletcher, who “began collecting ethnological and musical data in 1883 among the Omaha and Dakota Indians.”[1]As both Densmore and Fletcher’s work perpetuated cultural imperialism, understanding how it contributed to the development of ethnomusicology at the expense of native cultures perhaps leads to a better understanding of the discipline’s tainted, yet prolific, roots.[2]

An 1893 news clipping from the scrapbook of Ely Samuel Parker describes Alice C. Fletcher as  “A Woman Who Worthily Stands for Her Sex,” referring to her work as President of the Anthropological Society.[3]  Having studied “Indians in our Western Territories,” the writer declares that “there is no one in this or any other country whose knowledge on the subject approaches hers.”[4] For her research, Fletcher “…spent years among the Indians, living in their camps unprotected, learning their language, studying their customs, music…”[5] The writer states that at the time of this publication, she was in the midst of “revising…an important work on the music of the Omaha Indians…”[6] Two decades later into her career, she published a 600+ page work on the history of the Omaha Tribe that I tracked down in the library.[7] Like Frances Densmore in numerous works like Chippewa Customs, she notates indigenous songs using western notation (reinforcing its colonial hierarchy), and uses a social scientific lens to try and explain their culture. Yet in the 1893 clipping, the writer assures us that her “work among the Indians has a benevolent as well as scientific side”[8]

Ely Samuel Parker scrapbooks: Vol 11, 1828-1894, The Newberry Library, 34.

The article goes on to describe her friendship developed with the tribe, and how she leverages this to “secure for the Peabody museum trophies and relics from the different tribes which had never ever been seen by a white man.”[9] Ultimately, this transactional relationship unfortunately outlines how researchers of her era thought it ok to exploit the trust of tribes. Native Americans fit a Western narrative believing that “these supposedly primitive musical cultures were part of a dying world that was succumbing to American civilization and that scholars needed to preserve what they could before their assumed extinction.”[10] Fletcher’s work was profound—she published the first ethnographic presentation of a Native American tribe’s music in 1893 (the aforementioned work on the Omaha) and she wrote more than 97 entries for the Bureau of American Ethnology’s Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico in 3 years—however, it was grounded by racist assumptions all too common at the turn of the century.[11] It’s important to conceptualize how Fletcher’s work as among the first to record Native American music provided detailed documentation of their history while perpetuating biased beliefs of a racialized musical hierarchy that others, like Densmore, would build upon.

[1] Sue Carol DeVale, “Fletcher, Alice Cunningham,” Grove Music Online, 2001. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009816.

[2] Krystyn R Moon, “The Quest for Music’s Origin at the St. Louis World’s Fair: Frances Densmore and the Racialization of Music,” American Music 28, no. 2 (2010): 191-210. muse.jhu.edu/article/379952.

[3] Ely Samuel Parker scrapbooks: Vol 11, 1828-1894, The Newberry Library, 34. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_Modern_MS_Parker_VL11/24#VisualMaterials

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Alice C Fletcher (Alice Cunningham), and Francis La Flesche, The Omaha Tribe, Washington: [publisher not identified], 1911.

[8] Ely Samuel Parker scrapbooks, 34. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_Modern_MS_Parker_VL11/24#VisualMaterials

[9] Ibid.

[10] Moon, “”The Quest for Music’s Origin at the St. Louis World’s Fair,” 191-210. muse.jhu.edu/article/379952.

[11] Alice C. Fletcher, et al., Life among the Indians: First Fieldwork among the Sioux and Omahas  (Lincoln, Nebraska, 2013): 61, 71.  http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/stolaf-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1495860.

Along the border of New Mexico and Arizona one can find the Zuni people, a North American Indian tribe. Believed to be the descendants of the prehistoric Ancestral Pueblo, they have a long history of connection to the Pueblo tribe, including the involvement in the Pueblo Rebellion against the spanish. Their culture is deeply rooted in religion, spirituality, and the earth, specifically being known as the “Sun Worshippers”. Additionally the Zuni people, much like many other native tribes, utilize music in order to create a community space while completing activities like fire starting or welcoming the sunrise. The main primary source that I would like to share is a journal written by Castañeda de Nájera as he described his journey to Cibola, New Mexico. The book begins with his departure from Compostela on February 23, 1540 to Cibola. This happened to be the “poor pueblo village of the Zuni Indians”. There are also accounts of discovering as they travel America, but I will primarily focus on the Zuni tribe. Additionally, the later section of this book described the native american tribes including the making of their houses, customs, religion, agriculture, and dress. The book then ends with their unsuccessful expedition back to Mexico.

The infamous 16th century Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado led an important expedition in 1540 to New Spain in search of gold. Much like many other explorers of the time forced his way into many tribes including the Zuni tribe of Hawikuh, where modern New Mexico remains. This was the first discovery of native tribes for Coronado and it ultimately ended in violence as he attempted to take the town, which caused the tribe to flee their homes. This failure led to further exploration and several more battles with various tribes. As Coronado inserted himself into tribes such as the Tusayan, Triguez, and Acoma, he accounted for more and more traditions that the Native American tribes took part in, leading to the manuscript shown above.

Alongside the score that I have described, attached is a book written by Carlos Troyer entitled Indian Music Lecture published in 1913. This book encapsulates Troyer’s life and experiences as he traveled various spaces in order to discover and share various tribes’ religion, government, and lifestyle. Troyer is yet another example very similar to the primary source journal shown earlier in which an outsider takes initiative to research and implement their presence on a Native Tribe; interestingly enough both Coronado and Troyer both research the Zuni Tribe.

Carlos himself is a musician born in Frankfurt in 1837 who then traveled to America at a young age and began teaching music, composing, and traveling to a variety of countries to learn and share native culture. His contact with the Zuni people occurred when he was entrusted to interpret their songs through his work in California. Instead, Troyer visited the tribe and learned of their sacred dances, ceremonies, and “traditional lore”. His goal of the trip, just like his work with other tribes like the Incas, was to give insight to mainly American and European people about indigenous culture.

While it can be said that he achieved his goal and spread awareness on the tribe’s way of life, the way in which Troyer went about entering the tribe is questionable in terms of ethics. It appears that he gained permission and was well received, but one wording in a letter at the beginning of the book by Charles Cadman claimed that he “conquered ” other tribes. Whether liked or not, it comes to reason that his privilege of power as a white man allowed him privileges to expect acceptance for researching the tribe. Lastly, there is the occasional phrasing that invokes a sense of superiority such as the title of the book which is “an address designed for reading at musical gatherings, describing the lives, customs, religions, occult practices, and the surprising musical development of the cliff dwellers of the south west”. Wording like “surprising” gives indication that little was expected of the tribe and it places indigenous culture in an othering position.

2019 Buffalo dance/Pueblo of Zuni,NM @ Sañto Ñino

Bibliography

Castañeda de Nájera, Pedro de. “Narrative of the Expedition to Cibola Undertaken in 1540
[Manuscript]: Translated into English by Brantz Mayer.” American Indian Histories and Cultures – Adam Matthew Digital. The Newberry Library, 1851. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_MS_1058/4.

History.com Editors. “Francisco Vázquez De Coronado.” History.com. A&E Television
Networks, November 9, 2009. https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/francisco-vazquez-de-coronado.

Mateya. “2019 Buffalo Dance/Pueblo of Zuni,NM @ Sañto Ñino.” YouTube, YouTube, 6 Jan. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=o74Z0ZZOTEI.

Robert Stevenson. “Troyer, Carlos.” New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Oxford
University Press, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.28481.

Stevenson, Robert. “Troyer, Carlos.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Date of
access 22 Sep. 2022,
https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001
.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000028481

Troyer, Carlos, and Charles Wakefield Cadman. Indian Music Lecture: The zuñi Indians and
Their Music: An Address Designed for Reading at Musical Gatherings, Describing the
Lives, Customs, Religions, Occult Practices, and the Surprising Musical Development of
the Cliff Dwellers of the South West. Theo. Presser Co., 1913.

When studying Native American music, it is common to hear the earliest recordings of indigenous music taped by Francis Densmore in the early twentieth century. As students and musicologists, we turn to these recordings for many reasons. We listen in order to observe and acknowledge the history embedded in this music. We hear both the beauty of the long-standing traditions of Native American people, along with the racist beginnings of our own field of study. Numerous intense emotions are wrapped up in these recordings: awe and curiosity along with disappointment and generational pain. While there are many excellent educational and valuable reasons to listen to these recordings, what if we continued our study of Native American musicking by fixing our gaze on the more recent past, or even the present? Perhaps by observing the recordings and music being created and produced by Native Americans during the more recent past, we can begin to understand what this music sounds like today and what influences and is influenced by this music. By examining a music review from a 1996 publication of Akwesasne Notes along with some of the music that the artists mentioned in the article wrote and produced, we might begin to learn more about what the soundscape of the modern Native American has begun to sound like in recent history.

When reading through Radioactive Indians – Music Reviews by Alex Jones, the variety of musical influences used in modern Native American music becomes operant. For example, Jones describes the music of the ensemble Brian Black Thunder “as country music with some rock flourishes”. The instrumentation of Brian Black Thunder’s music also includes. “mandolin, strings, piano, [and] organ” (Jones 114). A musical feature from the same periodical entitled Howard Lyons: Traditional Roots Empowering Contemporary Music, also describes the way that genres and influences intersect in the music of Indigenous musicians. In this feature, Lyons’ album Hope and Dreams is described as a combination of “the beautiful rhythms and repetition of traditional native music” and “the acoustic instrumentation and simple melodies of mainstream folk music” (117). Both of these examples, along with many others in these articles, exemplify an effort made by Native musicians at the time to embrace some musical features which would be beyond the boundaries of what might be considered traditional Native American music. 

There does seem to be a variety of ideas about the role of genre bending in Native American music today. In an article in News from the Indian Country, Lyons states, “I would like to stay close to my roots because there is so much that can be said through my music and through our history that people can benefit from”. In addition, Lyons stated that he does not wish to capitalize on the sacred musical traditions of his tribe. While his music is clearly inspired by his identity, he appears to value having a separate spiritual life rooted in the music traditions of his tribe. 

By turning our eyes towards music made by Native American composers and performers in the recent past and present, we might begin to see this music as a living, ever-changing and developing art rather than something stuck in antiquity with Francis Densmore. If we claim to value representation in our field of study, we ought not allow Densmore to clearly stand out as a primary figure for native musics. Instead, we ought to look to present and past musicians and artists who continue to the work of creating this music. In so doing, we can work towards creating more accurate portrayals of what a certain musical community looks and sounds like. 

Bibliography:

Jones, Alex. “Radioactive Indians – Music Review.” Akwesasne Notes, 1996, 114-116. 

Lyons, Howard. “Howie Lyons Music.” Howard Lyons: Native American Musician. https://www.howielyons.com/music.html. Accessed 21 September 2022.

Murg, Wilhelm. “Musical Spirit Walker – Interview with Howard Lyons.” News from Indian Country, Jul 15, 2002. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/musical-spirit-walker-interview-with-howard-lyons/docview/367717161/se-2.

“Howard Lyons: Traditional Roots Empowering Contemporary Music.” Akwesasne Notes, 1996, 117.

As an extension to our semester group project on Historically Black College and University (HBCU) Marching Band, I’m going to explore and reflect on the topic of gender roles and implications in HBCU marching band traditions and visions going forth.

First emerging as a military tradition, the marching band experience can be closely associated with not just musical talents but also discipline, hard work, as well as conservative values such as traditional gender expectations and roles. And indeed when we think about a marching band performance on a football stadium, it’s not hard to picture groups of girls doing their dancing routines while their male counterparts doing heavy percussion and marching routines.

A YouTube video documenting the 2019 North Carolina A&T State University Marching Band routine.

As our society is gradually progressing from our learned gender dichotomy towards an intersectional lens to understand, respect and welcome non-binary and LGBTQ community into the different facets of social structures and system, more research and studies are starting to take an interest on the gendered structure of a marching band. However, even though interests have been taken into this matter, literature concerning such are focused on Predominantly White Institutions (PWI) and not so much for student experiences in HBCU.

“While professional educational literature concerning racial identity, sexual identity and sexual orientation of students have been emerging, the literature is widely from White, Euro-American perspectives and excludes the Black gay male experience.” (Carter, 27)

In a research done by Bruce Allen Carter, he revealed that all the four participants who all identified as black gay male shared the sentiment that there’s a constant state of anxiety surrounding their participation in HBCU marching band and that “there’s nothing better or nothing worse than being Black, gay and in the Marching band” (Carter, 37)

In a essay Reclaiming the Beat: The Sweet Subversive Sounds of HBCU Marching Bands written by Antron D. Mahoney, he also shed light on the experiences of non-binary communities in the marching band and pointed out an underground performance practice “J-setting” or “bucking” that is an outlet for self-expression and community building for many non-binary or LGBTQ black males. These underground practices, similar to what females partake on a regular basis in marching bands, are being criticized and ostracized as a transgressive art form. This documentary When the Beat Drops as referenced in Mahoney’s essay further elaborates on the experiences of non-cis black men as well as origins, significance and development of “J-setting” and “bucking” as a new fledging art form.

According to HBCU marching band scholar, Yulanda Essoka, she attributed the success and competitiveness of HBCU bands to their distinct style that integrates and meshes up different genres and styles of music and routines than their PWI counterparts.(Mahoney, 83) This is often celebrated as the pride of HBCU bands, an ode to musical experiences of blackness and diversity. Will we take the next step to embrace also queerness, gayness, intersectionality and celebrate their embodied pride and experiences through marching band?

As I continue to contemplate on this topic, I envision a more in-depth extension to our HBCU marching band mapping project to be focusing on mapping data of existing scholars’ findings and statistics of intersectional, LGBTQ participation and experiences at HBCUs as well as collaborating with HBCUs in further research, data collection, support and even reformation in the band culture for a more inclusive experience for the non-binary and LGBTQ community.

Sources:

Carter, Bruce Allen. “‘Nothing Better or Worse Than Being Black, Gay, and in the Band.’” Journal of Research in Music Education. 61, no. 1 (2013): 26–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022429412474470.


2019 HBCU HOMECOMING & BAND SHOWCASE | NC A&T State Takes Field Highlights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIX3AuqPKLs

Mahoney, Antron D. “Reclaiming the Beat: The Sweet Subversive Sounds of HBCU Marching Bands.” Southern Cultures 27, no. 4 (2021): 78–97. https://doi.org/10.1353/scu.2021.0059.

When the Beat Drops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxLY1Aydebo

Through the digital archives of the American Indian Histories and Cultures, I came across some Akwesasne Notes newspaper articles and as I read through them, this article struck me deeply, especially in juxtaposition to some of the texts and journals we read in class written by European settlers and expansionists.

Screenshots of the article titled A Dying People in the Akwesasne Notes, Vol 13, No. 5, Winter 1981.

To begin with, Akwesasne Notes is a newspaper publication of the Mohawk Nation, named after the location Akwesasne, situated between the New York and Canadian borders. The publication first started in 1968 and continued irregularly through 1992 until a hiatus until 1995 in which new series were published until 1997.

In this news article, a journalist from Albany was struck by the state of constant decay at Akwesasne both environmentally and culturally and went around town seeking opinions from some locals. The response he got from Marcy was painful and saddening. Marcy attributed big parts of the cultural disintegration and the fading sense of community towards the young generations’ reluctance in learning their own traditions– the white assimilation.

A video documenting the importance of the water bodies in Akwesasne, its pollution and the potential for works of restoration.

“The white man’s ways, money, it confused us… it weakened us. We forgot about the real things… How to fight for the real things… They poisoned us, they tricked us.” – Marcy

The assimilation process as she described was characterized with deceit and dishonesty, using temporal materialistic gains such as money as bait for natives to abandon their traditional ways and beliefs. The consequences of a collective assimilation was devastating and irreversible. On one hand we see the issue of clashing ideals and different ways of life between the natives and the Americans; on the other hand, there’s the question of how to make amends and restore the damage and disruption.

The colonizers, settlers and the United States government in their misguided attempts to “convert”, “educate” and “civilize” the Native Americans, failed to acknowledge and respect an alternative way of living and belief system just as valid as their own realities. Marcy in the article wishes the white men to stop using their ways to make amends and instead just leave it alone. Maybe instead of forcing our ways and realities on others, we should make the effort to learn from them, to restore and rebuild the community and cultural heritage in their ways instead of ours.

In terms of folk tunes, poems and music-making, I’ve seen many attempts in academia to analyze and make sense of Native American music using western music terminology and descriptions. Although it is a gateway of connection, it is still a reluctant refusal to really see and experience a different culture that is different from our realities. I hope in academia, scholars will start becoming more aware of their own positionality and use terminologies accurate of Native American cultures.

Sources:

mdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_Akwesasne_Notes_1981_12Wnt/2?v=1652413313&SessionExpired=True

https://youtu.be/L1ePZtYxy7A

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=akewsasnenotes

https://www.fold3.com/collection/native-american

In today’s blog post, I want to dive in to talk about Bert Williams (1874-1922), a popular black comedian, singer and film director in the entertainment industry at the turn of the century. He was also a pioneer of bringing African-American participation and involvement in the entertainment and music industry in the early 20th century. I came across Bert Williams as I browsed through the sheet music consortium, finding a printed sheet music of Somebody Else, Not Me published with Bert Williams at the front cover in blackface.

The piece titled “Somebody Else – Not me” was composed by Hanley, James F. (James Frederick), 1892-1942 with lyrics by Ballard MacDonald (1882-1935) for voice and piano. It was famously performed and introduced by Bert Williams in the musical Broadway Brevities at the New York Winter Garden. Featuring Bert Williams himself in blackface, the cover was printed by New York : Shapiro Bernstein & Co, c1920.

The following are the lyrics and recording of the piece “Somebody Else, Not Me” performed by Bert Williams.

To begin with, “blackface” was a racist performance tradition popular in the United States a century or two ago where white Americans of European descent put on temporary black pigments in minstrel shows to portray black Americans in a theatrical or even derogatory manner with the intention to entertain white audiences. Although nowadays, we consider this to be a deeply racist tradition, it was unfortunately a socially-acceptable common practice in the 19th and early 20th century. With the start of racial awakening and awareness stemming from the civil rights movements in the 1950s, the Blackface tradition started to decline and was beginning to be considered as an outright racist practice.

Now, jumping back in time to Bert Williams’ contemporary in the late 19th to early 20th century when minstrel shows and blackface traditions were prominent, that was also a time when racial inequality and discrimination led to the exclusion and devaluation of black people in most industries and professions. Bert Williams himself was born in the Bahamas and migrated with his family to Florida in the United States when he was 11. Despite being a black American, he was determined to be in the entertainment industry and started performing, joining various minstrel troops around the states in 1886 even if it meant that he also had to smear black pigments on his face to partake in shows and entertainments that essentially taunted his own racial identity and experiences. He later met the dancer George Walker and together, they created the first all-black performance cast and was one of the most famous African American performance troupes ever.


Some of the interesting and important things to note is that in Bert Williams’ famous silent-film “Natural Born Gambler”, he appeared in a self-imposed blackface as many other of his works. It presents highly racialized stereotypes and themes such as black people being deceitful and dishonest and taking advantage of wealthy white people. However, as Williams created this as entertainment for white audiences, this film was a great success congruent with societal dynamics. Partly because his role as a black producer and performer himself enables the white audiences to feel even more at ease knowing it was created willingly by a black person himself with the intention to entertain. However, in the ending of the story, the black man is arrested while the white man has a three-day grace period to leave town, reflecting the racial injustice congruent to the time that is still relevant even to this day.

In a way, we can see Bert Williams as a successful breakthrough for black people’s involvement in the entertainment industry even though through his works, he had to reinforce or create racial stereotypes for humor and entertainment. “Blackface” as a practice is in a way a means to be included in a highly racialized society. We see a lot of BIPOC comedians even nowadays participate in self-deprecating humor as a way to entertain or relate to the BIPOC identity and experience.

Nowadays if someone is to debate whether Black Music, however they define it, is simply a copy or imitation of white music, it would be outrageously offensive and unacceptable. However, back in just the past few centuries, in the somewhat recent past, (white) scholars have differing views and have even attempted to conduct pseudo-“scientific” research to prove otherwise. For instance, George Pullen Jackson, in 1943, attempted to compare black folk songs and spirituals to many white folk songs and hymnals, trying to prove it using a flawed, and biased style of commentary.

Continuing my attempt to learn and search for the origins of “Black Music”, I looked into the archives from the African American Newspaper collections. What caught my attention was this article called “Plea for Negro Folklore” published in The Freeman in Indianapolis, Indiana, dated January 27, 1894.

Black cultural heritage and performance practices have been endangered and “whitewashed” since the early times. In an attempt to seek and preserve the roots of the black cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, this piece of news article calls for action to connect with and rediscover authentic Black experience instead of passively accepting the predominantly whitewashed, assimilated cultural stereotypes.

The writer is concerned that an immeasurable amount of black cultural heritage such as folklores, songs and poems are in imminent danger of being lost as younger generations of black Americans are eager and swift to embrace and integrate themselves into the white dominated academia, society and culture.

“The common school system with its teachings of eradicating the old and planting the seeds of the new, and the transition period is likely to be a short one.”
(quote from the news article)

I then looked further for some African-American folklores and stumbled upon this audio visual narrative of The Myth of the Flying African on youtube. This story is also told by Virginia Hamilton in her narrative of African-American Folklores series- The People Could Fly.

“Kum kuba yali
Kum buba tambe
Kum konku yali
Kum konku tambe”
(In the legend, these words and many variations of such are believed and spoken by many enslaved for their freedom from bondage, according to Virginia Hamilton as well as many other sources)

The following is an audio recording of a tune in which the origins can be attributed to this folklore, sung by an African American female. Although this is only one among the many existing as well as lost folksongs and folklores of African American heritage, it speaks to the authenticity of Black Culture and Music.

Bibliography / Source:

Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana) 6, no. 4, January 27, 1894: [2]. Readex: African American Newspapers.https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12B28495A8DAB1C8%40EANAAA-12C8A12E849E6750%402412856-12C8A12E9A8258B0%401.

George Pullen Jackson, White and Negro Spirituals (1943)

Henry Krehbiel, Afro-American Folksongs: A Study in Racial and National Music (1914).

AFRICAN-AMERICAN FOLKLORE SERIES | Episode III: The Myth of the Flying African. https://youtu.be/F1NjulB7v1Y?t=669

William Grant Still

Edgard Varése

William Grant Still’s feelings on the importance of musical form could not possibly be made clearer than in his 1950 essay, The Structure of Music. He describes in detail the importance of learning the rules of musical form, and how laying out the form of a piece is integral to his composition process. However, most striking about this essay was the way that Still opens and closes by thoroughly berating composers who reject traditional musical form in favor of a modern, atonal sound. 

“They believe that in order to compose, one need only find a few bizarre harmonies, string them together without thought of melody, form or sequence, and emerge with a ‘composition’ that would bring them acclaim.”

“Indeed, it is hard to detect the actual themes, since the members of this school actually scorn what we know as melody.”

“Their occasional consonant intervals are weak because of bad handling; their vaunted counterpoint is incorrect, disjointed and muddled.”

These strong words left me with one particular question for Still. Who hurt you? In her introduction to Still’s essay within the collection Readings in Black American Music, Eileen Southern mentions that he had gone through a phase of writing “experimental music” before deciding to go in a different direction. In all of his admonitions against composers who abandoned form, was Still merely repeating what critics had said about his compositions from this experimental phase? In the beginning of his essay, he insists that “faulty form is immediately apparent” to a trained listener, and that an untrained listener “will wonder why he has not been able to retain a coherent impression of what has been performed.” This sounds to me like evidence taken from personal experience.

William Grant Still did indeed compose at least two works that were on the edgy side for his time, namely From the Land of Dreams in 1924 and Levee Land in 1925. Both works were performed and immediately withdrawn after puzzled reviews from critics. He received feedback that called his compositions “curious noises,” “unprofitable to compose or listen to,” and “a slavish imitation of the noises which Edgard Varése calls compositions.” 

Edgard Varése was a French-American composer who worked closely with Still as one of his mentors, even called one of his most influential teachers by several sources. His music, or as he called it, “organized sound,” fits all too perfectly into the category of music criticized by Still in 1950. In the 1920s, when he was working with Still, he was producing works like this:

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWXRAOLMq1M&t=121s

By the 1950s, when Still had completely rejected any kind of experimental music, Varése was still going strong. 

This leads me to believe that sometime in between Still’s more experimental compositions and his complete rejection thereof, his relationship with Edgard Varése changed somehow. I’d like to imagine that there was a dramatic argument where the very purpose of musical composition was brought into question. Perhaps someday I can uncover some telltale correspondence between these two composers that will reveal the truth about their disagreement.

Sources:

“Edgard Varèse [1883-1965] – ‘Hyperprism’ [1923].” YouTube. YouTube, August 11, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWXRAOLMq1M. “

Edgard Varèse – Déserts.” YouTube. YouTube, August 9, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cnEo7-g880. 

“Edgard Varèse.” Smithsonian Institution. Accessed December 20, 2021. https://www.si.edu/object/edgard-varese:npg_NPG.97.120. 

Griffiths, Paul. “Varèse, Edgard [Edgar].” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, January 20, 2001. https://www-oxfordmusiconline-com.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000029042?rskey=FVClre&result=2#omo-9781561592630-e-0000029042-section-3. 

Murchison, Gayle, and Catherine Parsons Smith. “Still, William Grant.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, January 20, 2001. https://www-oxfordmusiconline-com.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000026776?rskey=PNPQkx.

Peyton, Dave. “THE MUSICAL BUNCH: THINGS IN GENERAL.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Nov 13, 1926. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/musical-bunch/docview/492099005/se-2?accountid=351.

Smith, Catherine Parsons. William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions. Berkeley, Calif:  University of California Press,  c2000 2000. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1h4nb0g0/

Smith, Catherine Parsons. “William Grant Still, Darker America, Africa, Symphony No. 2.” American Symphony Orchestra. American Symphony Orchestra, April 22, 2020. https://americansymphony.org/concert-notes/darker-america-1924-africa-1930symphony-no-2-1937/. 

Southern, Eileen, and William Grant Still. “William Grant Still.” Essay. In Readings in Black American Music, 314–17. New York, New York: W.W. Norton, 1983. 

“William Grant Still, 1895-1978.” The Library of Congress. Accessed December 20, 2021. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200186213. 

The coverpage of the J. W. Pepper’s French Horn book.

For today’s blog post, I decided to search up something I find interesting, which is French horn. I went onto the Library of Congress database, and I found this horn method book. I thought that was an interesting primary source to look into, and see if there are any interesting things in here that reflect social issues and surprise surprise, we did find something. 

What we are looking at today is a horn method book, specifically the J. W. Pepper’s Self Instruction for French Horn. It was published by J. W. Pepper in Philadelphia in 1882. This was an ongoing collection of self instruction method books for instruments, and I thought that was quite cool. I am not entirely sure what age group this collection is marketed towards, because adults would be able to read this book and get a vague idea of how to play the french horn, but kids would literally stare at this book and not know what to do. 

I mean… the book wasn’t really marketed towards kids, but this is still way too much method way too little fun. XD

Compared to method books nowadays, such as Standard of Excellence, it is a lot more readable for kids because the amount of information presented on the page would not overwhelm them. There are also graphics so that the children can be entertained, whereas this book is a lot more bland. The instruments selected are mostly band and orchestra instruments, and there were also books on Fife, Accordion and Flageolet, which is an instrument I have never heard of before. I did a quick search about its origin, and according to Encyclopedia Britannica, it originated and developed in Paris, France, and it served the role of modern day piccolo in an orchestra. However, in that collection, there is already a piccolo method book. Hmmm. Eurocentrism? 

I might be jumping the gun here, but let’s take a closer look at the excerpts provided here. It is all, yes, ALL European music. The title of this section says Fifty Classic, Popular and Operatic Melodies, but there is no variety in representation. On top of that, there is a lot of patriotism snuggled in, such as tunes like Stars Spangled Banner and America. What really made me question the legitimacy of this collection is the actual music itself. In a lot of the tunes, the highest pitch is a horn G, which is not beginner friendly at all. When I played the horn, it took about two to three years to get there. Wow, music education sure was a lot darker back then.

Works Cited

“Flageolet.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/art/flageolet-musical-instrument.

J. W. Pepper’s Self instructor for french horn. Pepper, J. W., Philadelphia,monographic, 1882. Notated Music. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/sm1882.15228/>.

Standard of Excellence: Comprehensive Band Method Book 1 (French Horn). Kjos (Neil A.) Music, 1997. Print.

As I embarked on mapping the musical traditions in colonial Mexico, my teammates and I were quite frankly overwhelmed with a vast time period, the vast geography, and despite the amount of music being made, we were faced with a scarcity of primary and secondary sources alike. One way in which we were able to come into contact with primary sources is through the online database at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. This database has a large amount of the Villancicos which were a popular form of music at the time. A villancico is now known as a Christmas carol, but during the colonial period in Mexico, these songs were often set to love poems, poetry, or religious text. They were sung in the vernacular and had an alternating refrain and verse. Moreover, villancico’s varied widely and there were different genres such as a villancico negrilla which depicted the style and dance of African slaves in the colonies¹.

Before we begin, I do want to clarify what a chapelmaster was. During the era of colonization, chapelmasters were in charge of all music at a cathedral and often composed and performed in the cathedral. The job of Chapelmaster was reserved for individuals with musical talent and Spain sent chapelmasters from all over Europe to preside over the cathedrals in the Spanish colonies. Furthermore, cathedrals were the place in which all ‘art music’ was performed. basically, they were the concert halls of colonial Mexico².

The villancico I would like to look at for the purpose of this blog post is by a chapelmaster named Antonio Slazaar and was written between 1650 and 1715. The name of this song is “Va de vejamen” which translates to “goes from humiliation”. Antonio Salazar was originally born in Spain and became the chapelmaster of the Puebla Cathedral and later at the Mexico City Cathedral. Antonio Salazar is also one of the most famous composers of the Baroque period in Mexico.

“Va de vejamen” is a part of Salazar’s set of 6 songs called “A sies de la Natividad de Nuestra Señora” or “6 to the nativity of our lady”. Salazar’s piece is about the Christmas season, but not all villancicos were and I want to be clear about that because it is often assumed all villancico’s are carols. I inserted a modern recording of Salazar’s piece below. Something interesting to note is how similar it sounds to a renaissance madrigal. This similarity is common with villancico’s. There is also percussion instrumentation and a strummed string instrument.

The piece itself luckily was preserved well and we have digital access through the National Autonomous University of Mexico database. It includes the parts for the different instruments and voices all written separately. I would encourage you to listen again and try and follow along in the score, especially the tenor³.

¹“Repertoire.” San Francisco Bach Choir: Antonio de Salazar. Accessed December 12, 2021. https://www.musicanet.org/sfbc/repertoire/salazara.html.
²Pedelty, Mark. Musical Ritual in Mexico City: From the Aztec to NAFTA. Austin, UNITED STATES: University of Texas Press, 2004. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/stolaf-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443236.

^{http://www.musicat.unam.mx/nuevo/estrada_resultado.php#3}

The villancico was the most popular musical genre in the Spanish colonies of New Spain and Peru, dominating the cathedral radio waves from the 16th century through the end of the 18th. A somewhat ambiguous term, villancicos are best understood as folk tunes and texts formalized into a Renaissance or Baroque style and performed by cathedral musicians on feast days and holidays, especially the feasts of Immaculate Conception, Corpus Christi, and Christmas. There was a wide variety of texts and instrumentations used to compose these villancicos; especially in the colonies, they would also take on the dialect or “style” of an ethnic group, particularly that of Aztecs and enslaved Africans in the form of tocotines and negrillos, respectively.¹

It isn’t difficult to see the parallels throughout the history of the Americas; as they say, history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but it often rhymes. The ubiquity of villancicos negros is just an early iteration of the same general trend of Europeans appropriating dialect associated with enslaved Africans and their descendants for views, just like 19th century minstrelsy and 21st century white TikTokers. In New Spain and Peru, villancicos negros were extremely popular and can be found in almost every major cathedral archive.² Beyond being labeled as such, negrillos can best be identified by the use of onomatopoetic syllables and dialectic speech in the text, and syncopation in the music; besides these elements, they tended to be composed much the same as other villancicos.³

“Tarará, qui yo soy Antón,” by Música Temprana

The above audio is a recording by Música Temprana, a Netherlands-based Early Music group specializing in Latin American Baroque, of a villancico negro by 17th century composer and chapel master Antonio de Salazar. The refrain (estribillo) “Tarará, qui yo soy Antón” is repeated between short verses (coplas); the elements of a typical negrillo, onomatopoeia and strong syncopation, are quite apparent in this piece, especially in the refrains. The large majority of chapel masters, who were composing the most music, had either immigrated from Europe or were descended from Europeans; in modern lingo their use of dialectic styles in these villancicos negros, whether “accurate” or not, would be considered cultural appropriation. 

Florence Price was one of the countless Black musicians in America to compose and perform during the 19th century. She was a classical pianist, composer, organist, music teacher, and the first Black woman to have her composition played by an orchestra. Doing a Google search for her though turns up many articles about how America has forgotten about her. During the time of her life, however, audiences seemed quite delighted with her performances. A search on newspapers.com reveals many reviews of her doing all kinds of performance.

This clipping from Chester, Pennsylvania in 1917 reads: “Mrs. Florence Price was greeted with a complimentary audience at the auditorium where she made her debut a few years ago…Her rich, clear contralto voice was never heard to better advantage. She carried her audience throughout the program, and the hearty applause she received showed the appreciation.”¹ Interestingly, the rest of the review goes on to talk about what she was wearing that night. I did not look, but doubt performance reviews for H.T. Burleigh capitalized on his wardrobe choices. Perhaps this is one of the reasons America has forgotten about her. After all, she won the Wanamaker prize just as H.T. Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, and William Dawson all did. Her symphony in E minor for which she won the Wanamaker award for in 1923 is particularly interesting to analyze. According to a review by notorious commentator Alain Locke, her symphony provided a way for any person to enjoy music in an “un-racialized” way because it did not include overt references to recognizable African American music. Instead, the way it incorporates folk songs is by use of the pentatonic scale, juba rhythms, polyrhythms, and call and response.²

[1] 31 Jan 1917. Delaware County Daily Times. https://www.newspapers.com/image/5425595/?terms=%22Florence%20price%22%20piano&match=1

So often throughout history, research evidence has been used to enforce master narratives of White supremacy and anti-Black racism while also conditioning us to believe that this social order is, in fact, legitimate. To not have to acknowledge the use of research evidence in the maintenance of White supremacy and anti-Black racism is itself an act of White supremacy and anti-Black racism.

David E. Kirkland, No Small Matters: Reimagining the use of Research Evidence from a Racial Justice Perspective

This is how higher educational music departments are maintained in my opinion. In other words, sometimes it’s hard to recognize when courses are exclusionary because we have been conditioned to believe it is natural. Specifically, I justified the exclusion of people of color performers and musicians in most of my music education for a long time with the idea that white power led to underrepresentation. It seems antiracist enough, until I realized that underrepresentation is an illegitimate social order which we have the power to change. If you saw my last blog post, I talked more in depth about how music departments are shaped by white power after reading Philip Ewell’s, Music Theory’s White Racial Frame. Here though, I would like to provide some examples to support a future of inclusion in music courses. 

Studying music of white composers is so easy because it does not require much historical knowledge to understand, but why should it be a problem to give historical context to the pieces we study in theory? Ewell encourages students to challenge their professors on why they elect to share pieces with complicated histories without providing context. Dare I suggest, we might even change some of the material we study by including more pieces from historical events such as the Harlem Renaissance. Samuel Floyd Jr. writes about the creativity of Black musicians during the Harlem Renaissance in his book, Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance. He writes, “The music of Black theater shows, the dance music of the cabarets, the blues and ragtime of the speakeasies and the rent parties, the spirituals and the art songs of the recital and concert hall all provided an ambiance for Renaissance activities and contemplation.” ² He also writes about the theft committed by white composers. The song, “Lady Be Good” is a piece by Black composers which was then ripped off by Gershwin later. I could not find the original composers in my search. Instead, here is Gershwin’s version:

Oh, Lady Be Good

With all this music making happening, at the very least there are great pieces of music that can fit into existing course structure for analysis. Ewell states that musicologists tend to be better at grappling with representation issues than music theorists, but imagine if the responsibility for representation was shared across the whole music department. Ewell writes to students, “You have power, more than you know,”³ and I do believe that we have power to chip away at our white male history. 

In searching the Chicago defender, I was curious to find any information about Frances Densmore’s colleagues. In my previous blog post, I researched James Mooney, an ethnographer of the 19th century, but I wanted to search for other scholars who worked directly with Densmore. Additionally, I was interested in what kinds of projects Densmore was involved in other than Indigenous song collection.

I found a newspaper clipping from 1937 that gives insight into Densmore’s career while giving the names of her colleagues at the time. The clipping announced the staging of the first National Folk Festival to be held in the north for May 22nd through May 28th, 1937. The National Folk Festival is a folk festival that has been run by The National Council for the Traditional Arts since 1934, with the first performance held in St. Louis, Missouri. It celebrates multi-cultural performances, and many prominent musicians, such as W.C. Handy have performed at the festival. The newspaper clipping outlines its purpose as the following:

The objective of the festival has been summed up as: “to bring together in a colorful, joy-giving National Folk festival the native and traditional Folk arts which, for centuries, have refreshed the hearts of the American people in the various sections of our land.”

Listen to a recording of the Metropolitan Community Church Choir perform “Fare Ye Well” at the festival in 1937: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200196400/?

Below is a photo of an Irish group from Chicago rehearsing for the 1944 Folk Festival.

The article lists Densmore as one of the sixty members of the national committee, along with another familiar name that Music345 has engaged with, George Pullen Jackson. Jackson was an American musicologist who studied hymnody, and as the class remembers from our past discussions, had racist opinions of the origins of spirituals. Although it is unclear based on this article alone how much contact Jackson and Densmore had, they did end up on this same committee. Did they exchange ideas and influence each other? What were their motivations to be on the committee? This newspaper article reminds researchers of the importance of investigating the motivations of scholars and considering the overlap in ideas.

National Folk Festival newspaper clipping

Works Cited

“A Brief History of the National Folk Festival.” Ncta-Usa. Accessed December 14, 2021. https://ncta-usa.org/the-national-folk-festival/a-brief-history-of-the-national-folk-festival/.

Ferrell, John, photographer. Washington, D.C. Irish group from Chicago rehearsing for the National Folk Festival. United States Washington D.C. District of Columbia Washington D.C, 1942. May. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017764309/.

Metropolitan Community Church Choir, and Sidney Robertson Cowell. Fare Ye Well. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200196400/.

“National Folk Festival to be Staged in the North for First Time, may 22: People from all Over U. S. Will Come to Orchestra Hall with Songs of their Communities.” 1937.The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), May 22, 3. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/national-folk-festival-be-staged-north-first-time/docview/492484882/se-2?accountid=351.

Pegg, Carole, Philip V. Bohlman, Helen Myers, and Martin Stokes. “Ethnomusicology.” Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 14 Dec. 2021. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000052178.

Jackson, George Pullen. White and Negro Spirituals : Their Life Span and Kinship, Tracing 200 Years of Untrammeled Song Making and Singing Among Our Country Folk, with 116 Songs as Sung by Both Races New York: J. J. Augustin, 1944.

Jackson, Richard. “Jackson, George Pullen.” Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 14 Dec. 2021. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000014025.

Every popular source about Bert Williams sings his praises. Although he lived (1892-1922) during a time when racial inequality was blatant and accepted, he had an extremely successful career in the entertainment industry. He was the first black man to have a leading role in a film and a leading role on Broadway, the best-selling black recording artist before 1920, and was hailed as one of the greatest comedians of his time. 

Bert Williams was also a black minstrel performer. He and his partner Geroge Walker worked to reclaim minstrelsy and entertainment from the white performers that so often belittled and violated black life and culture through minstrel performances. And judging by his successful career, Williams was able to achieve some degree of reclamation. 

But in his article, titled “The Unfunny Bert Williams,” published in the Chicago Defender, one of the nation’s largest black newspapers, Enoch Waters juxtaposes this vision of success with a story about Bert Williams. Basically, Eddie Cantor, a white comedian, visits Williams in his room during a dinner party, only to find that Williams is eating dinner alone. Cantor accuses him of being exclusive, but Williams has to explain that he has been refused service in the restaurant downstairs, due to his race. This exposes the paradox in their society; Bert Williams is exceedingly famous among white people, loved by all, yet he still has his rights stolen from him due to the racism of the time. 

This incident happened during Bert Williams lifetime, but Enoch Waters considered it relevant material in 1954 when he published his article. And I believe that it is still relevant today. No matter the value of a person of color, or their “success,” they are still subject to the racist thoughts and systems present in our society.

Citations

Waters, Enoc P. “Adventures in RACE RELATIONS: The Unfunny Bert Williams.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Aug 14, 1954. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/adventures-race-relations/docview/492840513/se-2?accountid=351.

“Bert Williams (1874-1922).” Library of Congress, biographies, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200038860/#

If you know anything about minstrelsy, you know that it is a prime example of America’s horribly racist past. But what’s striking is how present it is in our media today, almost normalizing this appalling phenomenon. 

The music group “The New Christy Minstrels” is a demonstration of the legacy of minstrelsy. But to understand this, we must first understand the old Christy Minstrels. 

Cover for sheet music used at Christy’s Minstrel shows

Cover on New Christy’s Minstrels vinyl

Minstrelsy was formed around the 1830s and was a theater tradition in which white performers painted their faces black with burnt cork and greasepaint. They would produce comedy shows satirizing black life, complete with songs, backing bands, dancing, and sketches. The Christy Minstrels were a minstrel group that formed in 1844, and toured the US, making money from performing in blackface. 

The New Christy Minstrels are a music group that performs folk music, and although they stopped producing music in the 90s, they still have over 50,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. In 1962 they won a grammy, and in 1970, they performed at the super bowl half-time show. They were extremely successful in their time, and still, hold relevance today. The founder of the New Christy Minstrels admits openly that his group is named after the original (racist) minstrel troupe, and their most popular albums feature minstrel songs. 

On the Library of Congress database, there is a recording of The New Christy Minstrels performing a song titled, “The Cotton Picker’s Song,” a piece of music that’s clearly about/sung in the voice of enslaved people. I came across this recording while searching for material about Christy’s Minstrels, the original troupe. I’m still shocked by the existence of this group and their blatant and careless references to one disgusting part of America’s past. Do they not know about the violent and unacceptable history of minstrelsy? Or do they not care? 

The New Christy Minstrels display a shocking amount of ignorance and prove that education about minstrelsy and racism is necessary.

Citations

For this blog post, I decided to return back to and take a in-depth look at the American Indian Histories and Cultures archive. As we wrap up the semester and finalize our mapping projects, taking the time to locate more specific primary sources that relate to my group’s mapping project on Indigenous Song Collection and Repatriation is especially important. 

The American Indian Histories and Cultures archive presents an array of resources that detail interactions between American Indians and Europeans from their earliest noted contact. The archives’ hope is to explore the consequences of European colonization on the political, social and cultural life of American Indians. 

In a 1969 edition of The Indian, a song notated by Frances Densmore was published under the heading “A Sioux Song.” The newspaper was published by the American Indian Leadership Council in Rapid City. The Library of Congress associates the American Indian Leadership Council with the National Congress of American Indian:

“The National Congress of American Indian (NCAI) founded in 1944, is the oldest nation-wide American Indian advocacy organization of the United States… The Congress also aimed to educate the general public about Indians, preserve Indian cultural values, protect treaty rights with the United States and promote Indian welfare.”

AC# 010: Records of the National Congress of American Indians, 1933-1990

Supposedly a product of an Indigenous right organization, The Indian randomly places Densmore’s transcribed lyrics of “A Sioux Song” within the paper. There is nothing that contextualizes the music beyond the fact that it is attributed to Charging Thunder and the Sioux people. 

This article could be used as an interesting example of contrasting opinions on Frances Densmore’s song collecting work. On the one hand, “A Sioux Song” has been published within a larger collection of texts that speak to Indigenous rights and advocacy. Densmore’s song represents what the publishers saw as valuable information or knowledge that a reader could acquire should they wish to consider and evaluate Indigenous culture of South Dakota. On the other hand, this article also highlights some of the problems with Densmore’s work that we explore further in our mapping project (linked above). The lyrics that Densmore transcribed exist in a space without context and largely removed from their original meaning. It is surely a colonial idea to say that an audience is entitled to all of the information that the song contains, but considering the purpose of the newspaper and the legacy of Densmore’s song collecting work more broadly means that The Indian’s presentation of Densmore’s research might be a little too vague- not to mention that the column is titled “A Sioux Song.” Ultimately, the publication of Densmore’s “A Sioux Song” is an excellent example of some of the issues that my research group and I tried to parse out in our map and offers further examples of the value of considering context when studying music more generally. 

Works Cited:

 “National Congress of American Indians Records.” National Congress of American Indians records | National Museum of the American Indian. Accessed December 14, 2021. https://americanindian.si.edu/collections-search/archives/sova-nmai-ac-010?destination=edan_searchtab%2Farchives%3Fpage%3D1%26edan_q%3D%252A%253A%252A%26edan_fq%255B0%255D%3Dset_name%253A%2522National%2520Congress%2520of%2520American%2520Indians%2520records%2522%26edan_fq%255B1%255D%3Dset_name%253A%2522National%2520Congress%2520of%2520American%2520Indians%2520records%2520%2F%2520Series%25205%253A%2520Records%2520of%2520Indian%2520Interest%2520Organizations%2520%2F%25205.5%253A%2520Other%2520Indian%2520Organizations%2522. 

 Densmore, Frances. “A Sioux Song.” The Indian. December 1969, 9th edition. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/SearchDetails/Ayer_The_Indian_1969_12Dec_18#Snippits

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 →

Who knew that a simple word search of “women” could bring me to thinking about feminism in the United States in relation to Native American women and their influence? In my search for primary sources, I wanted to dive deeper on my understanding of the Native American culture pertaining to women. But the obvious question reveals itself: what about women in Native American music? This question was secondary to my research- I found it necessary to get a really solid foundation on Native American women traditions. But regardless, there is something to say about the history and traditions of Native American women and how they were viewed and how they viewed themselves within the environments they lived in. This search process started when I came across various newspaper articles and book sections that discussed Native American women- in tradition and in practice.

Akwesasne Notes, Vol. 13, No. 5, Dec 1981, © The Newberry Library

This first primary source I came across was written by Katsi Cook, a young Mohawk woman, “lay midwife and organizer around women’s health care issues” who played a vital role in Native American women’s advocacy and health. She is the found of the Women’s Dance Health Program in Minneapolis, MN- “translating traditional concepts into a practical tool” for women’s health. Cook goes in great depth about the “origin” of the woman and how various cosmologies have shaped the way that women are viewed in the Native American culture and how they’ve viewed themselves. Cook’s descriptions of the traditional view and journey to womanhood in the Native American culture leads to the emphasis on the dire need for women, the “center of the Circle of Life”, in their culture.

“Women are the base of the generations. They are the carriers of the culture.” -Katsi Cook

I found a newspaper article that supports the theme of the importance of women and the strong role that they have in the Native American culture. This article advertising the Native American Women’s Action Council stood out to me in just how much importance this seemed to hold, even in the 1970s, when the US at the time was ramping up its second wave of feminism pushing for equality. But that’s the thing. Native American women are viewed as equals in their societies. In an article written by Sally Roesch Wagner, the Six Nations Haudenosaunee (Iroquis) Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca tribes) women have lived with “rights, sovereignty, and integrity” a lot longer than the European settlers that came after them. The suffrage leaders Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Fletcher, etc. learned a great deal from the Native American women in the late 19th century. There were stark differences in the way women were treated, viewed, and valued.

“Fletcher explained to the International Council, ‘As I have tried to explain our statutes to Indian women, I have met with but one response. They have said: ‘As an Indian woman I was free. I owned my home, my person, the work of my own hands, and my children could never forget me. I was better as an Indian woman than under white law.’” -Wagner

In reading about all the ways Native American women were able to participate and have authority over so many aspects of their culture, it made me ask about how that translated to the music. Did this egalitarian culture of the Native Americans have any influence on how women were involved in the music scene? I couldn’t help but think that it did. It honestly makes me sad that I do not know more about this type of representation. And I feel as if I have barely scratched off the very top layer on this topic. In our Western education, we put a lot of emphasis on mis- and underrepresentation of white, Euro-American women composers and performers, but there is so much more music that has yet to be emphasized and women to be recognized.

This week, I came three Christian hymns translated into some indigenous languages of the Northwest coast. One of these, a Chinookan language, is spoken by the Chinook people whose native lands are in what is now called Washington and Oregon (Britannica). The Chinook people have their own spiritual practices that emphasize the powers of nature, but many of them were forced or coerced into Christianity by white missionaries (The American History). This forced Christianization often took place at residential schools where children were forced to abandon their Native culture and assimilate to European cultural norms. Besides the trauma of being separated from their culture, these children were often subject to other kinds of horrific abuse (Hanson).

The hymn pictured below was translated into Chinook in 1892 by Charles Montgomery Tate, a Methodist minister who ran such a school (The Children Remembered). The hymn is a verse and chorus of “Nothing but the blood of Jesus” (Tate).
I think it is puzzling to find hymns that have been translated into the languages of indigenous peoples, because the ultimate goal of ministers like Charles Montgomery Tate was to assimilate Native Americans into white Christian culture, robbing them of their traditions and even their languages; the Chinookan languages are in danger of extinction, with all of the native speakers of the languages deceased, and very few speakers left at all (Vachter). But in addition to his conversion efforts, Tate also did a lot of work in translating indigenous languages, for example, the Chinookan to English dictionary pictured below (Tate).

What is sad is that some of the only written evidence of how Chinookan languages might have sounded in the past was written by the very people who sought to rob Chinook people of their language and culture. Unfortunately, it is often the case that those in power are the ones who write history; as we have discussed in class, much of the written evidence of how early African American music sounded was written by white slaveholders. As musicologists and historians, it is important to recognize that the primary sources that are left over often leave out the voices most suited to speak to musical and linguistic traditions: the practitioners of those traditions themselves.

Spirituals are a popular topic for discussion in vocal music because they bring about many questions to consider. The genre was created by black enslaved people and later notated and arranged by various composers. However, their origins make us pause to consider whether or not predominately white ensembles or vocalists should be allowed to perform these works. I think the general consensus on the subject is “yes, but…”. Conductors should be careful not to tokenize the spiritual in their repertoire for the night, perform it last as is often the case, provide informative program notes about every piece, and they should ensure the song is sung appropriately. There are many more things to say about this subject, however, you get the picture. Likewise, I would argue, and I think most would agree, that while we should perform spirituals by black composers, performing spirituals arranged by white composers is highly problematic. Lily Strickland is one such white composer from South Carolina, and the song in question today is “Dah’s Gwinter Be Er Lan’slide”.

Strickland was born in South Carolina in 1884 and died in 1958. She wrote many songs ‘inspired by her southern upbringing and black spirituals and dialect and then her later music reflected her experiences in the continents of Asia and Africa and also wrote works imitating songs of indigenous people. She was wildly successful and her works were played by famous ensembles including the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. Furthermore, Melissa Walker, a writer for the South Carolina encyclopedia claims that Strickland wanted to rebel against cultural norms for women in the South¹. Arguably, Strickland’s work and success were highly unusual for a female composer in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and so it is really hard as a feminist to face the fact that most of her music plays into harmful practices of cultural appropriation, especially pertaining to her numerous papers on Asia which perpetuate orientalism that I came across while searching through the St Olaf library. Therefore, celebrating or performing her work seems impossible and highly problematic today with our modern lens.

One of her pieces I stumbled across on the Sheet Music Consortium database is the aforementioned “Dah’s Gwinter Be Er Lan’slide”. This song is allegedly “A Negro Sermon” about the coming of Christ. The lyrics imitate southern black dialect and contain phrases like “All who don wanter get lef’ in de lurch, Had bedder cum up now an’ jine de church…”²  From the song title, to the fact that she calls it a “Negro Spiritual”, to the imitation of black dialect, this song is already racist for so many reasons. First of all, the text was written by Teresa Strickland. Teresa Strickland was Lily Strickland’s mother, but it was also lily Strickland’s middle name. Therefore, I’m unsure as to which of the women wrote the text. Regardless, it was written by a white woman, and therefore the language is an unacceptable form of appropriation by today’s standards, and also a blatant falsehood to call it a sermon written by a black person.

Lastly, what frustrated me as I did my research was the lack of critical lens applied by scholars to Strickland’s work. I saw books and scholarly articles that all celebrated her pieces, books, and artwork, but nothing that took a deeper glance into the racism she partook in and the implication of performing her works, and especially the spiritual I discussed.

¹Walker, Melissa. “Strickland, Lily.” South Carolina Encyclopedia. University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, November 18, 2016. https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/strickland-lily/.

²Walker, Melissa. “Strickland, Lily.” South Carolina Encyclopedia. University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, November 18, 2016. https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/strickland-lily/.

As we enter into this section of our class and begin to grapple with the complexities of Native American song collection, I really wanted to avoid talking about and uplifting white voices. However, I woke up in a “I hate Frances Densmore” mood, and decided that a bit of nuance and background might be necessary to really understand what she was trying to accomplish with her work. Furthermore, Densmore can be compared to a broader trend, the trend of white women “fighting” for Native rights. 

Continue reading →

Before this course, I had not thought in depth about how something usually perceived as “neutral” by the viewer (i.e. maps) can actually contain many clues as to the motivations and thoughts of the creator. I always saw maps as an unbiased source of information, which of course, I have come to learn is completely false. With this new found enlightenment, I decided to take a look a a map I found in the American Indian Histories and Cultures database. This map is titled “A map of the British and French settlements in North America”. It is dated to be created between the years 1745 and 1749. I could not find a single cartographer or artist name, but we can assume the creator came from a British perspective because the language of the map is English.

https://www-aihc-amdigital-co-uk.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/FurtherResources/VisualResources/Image/Ayer_MS_632/192

The first thing I noticed is that this map is extremely chaotic. Certainly not up to Maeve’s standards. The colors do not correspond to any particular legend or key and too many things are labeled so that the viewer doesn’t know what to focus on.

So besides the fact that this is just a poorly designed map, what does this tell us about the perspectives of colonialists?

The first thing that I noticed is the way the territories are color coded in completely straight lines or rarely with landmarks such as lakes or rivers. This reveals a couple of things. Firstly, this gives us insight to the way in which colonialists either negotiated with each other to create such clear and arbitrary boundaries or that the British (creating this map) are simplifying the ever changing territories with these completely perfect barriers. Nonetheless, we can recognize that these boundaries are indications that the colonialists had very little regard to the Native Americans that were living on these lands in the context of dividing up land.

Speaking of Native Americans, we can also notice from this map that although the land division among the colonialists does not regard them at all, their presence was almost certainly known among colonialists, as the rivers are labeled after them. For example, we can see, a “Chickasaw” river and a “Cherokee” river. There is even an area labeled “Chactaws” where I assume that the Choctaw people inhabited.

This dissonance between the recognition of Native American presences in labeled landmarks and the absence of them in territory borders gives us lots to grapple with. For one, we have to realize that Native Americans were obviously a notable part of life for colonialists in the 16th century. The map shows us this. However, the map also shows us how the lack of inclusion of them in drawing boundaries, at least in the perspective of the British, illustrates how colonialists saw Native Americans as “uncivilized” or “savages” not worthy of owning land.

Much like the tunes from our sheet music discussion, “Can’t Yo’ Heah Me Callin’ Caroline” features a sweet tune with racialized lyrics, leaving a bad taste in the mouth for most twenty-first century listeners who stumble upon it. (Side note: the plethora of sheet music that fit this exact description is somewhat overwhelming, to be honest.) 

Can’t Yo’ Heah Me Callin’ Caroline

Composed in 1914 by Caro Roma, this song features the words of the poet William Henry Gardner — who she seemed to work with quite often, according to WorldCa. Like many popular minstrel songs and vaudeville pieces, W.H. Gardner writes in the dialect white people  projected onto African Americans. Although the title is heavy with this racist misrepresentation, this poem also includes phrases like the following:

 “I miss yo’ when de moonbeams out on de ribber shine,” and 

“It’s mah heart a-callin’ dine.” 

Likewise, the song follows the narrator who pines over his love Caroline, equating a lot of this emotion with natural imagery, as evidenced in the lines featured above. However, Caroline could be either oblivious to their attempts to swoon or is simply not interested. Regardless of what Caroline thinks of the narrator, I think this tune is not only relatable to most people, but speaks to a more common theme of unrequited love in art music — I digress, but Robert Schumann’s Dichterleibe comes to mind, especially considering the rich harmony combined with the expressive chromatic melody. 

While I do enjoy the tune and the story,  I chose this song because of  a secondary video recording I discovered when searching for a recording of the piece. Listen to Bill Power’s rendition of “Can’t Yo’ Heah Me Callin’ Caroline” below.

To quote the only YouTube comment accompanying this video, I “don’t know [of]  bill powers but this is mighty moving.” I shared a similar reaction to El Baby Snail after watching this video. Singer Bill Powers takes Roma’s prescriptive text “with expression” to heart. Each repetition of sweet Caroline’s name seems to stretch for longer and longer, articulated with a thoughtful breath or pause. Not only does the emotion of love and lack thereof come through in his voice, but his facial expressions and gestures take this performance to another level. 

from the 1st verse of “Can’t Yo’ Heah Me Callin’ Caroline”

This performance actually reminds me of some of the interviews featured  in Sheryl Kaskowitz’s article “Before It Goes Away….” In this blog post, Kaskowitz presents Rhiannon Giddens’s argument to understand the many layers that minstrel songs contain, including knowing a song’s history and even “replac[ing] offensive lyrics with those that uncover, rather than denigrate, the experience of African Americans.” In this recording, I see Bill Powers engaging with some of Giddens’s ideas, long before Giddens’s birth. The singer omits some of the lyrics–  the line about the “ribber” and the entire second verse– and plays the written dialect way down. If anything, “heah” sounds reminiscent of a British accent in this recording. 

Ultimately, I think this combination of sheet music and recording shows how the steps that African American performers took were incredibly small. Bill Power’s rendition of this tune produces a dignified version of a song that could have easily gone the other way. “[M]ighty moving,” indeed.

References

Kaskowitz, Sheryl. “Before it Goes Away: Performance and Reclamation of Songs from Blackface Minstrelsy,” The Avid Listener Blog. https://theavidlistenerblogcom.wordpress.com/2020/07/28/before-it-goes-away-performance-and-reclamation-of-songs-from-blackface-minstrelsy/  

Merrill, Sally. “Roma, Caro.” Grove Music Online. 2 Jun. 2011; Accessed 28 Oct. 2021. https://www-oxfordmusiconline-com.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002093474.

Reynolds, Christopher. “Documenting the Zenith of Women Song Composers: A Database of Songs Published in the United States and the British Commonwealth, Ca. 1890-1930.” Notes – Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 69, no. 4 (06, 2013): 671-687. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/documenting-zenith-women-song-composers-database/docview/1370890418/se-2?accountid=351. 

Roma, Caro and Gardner, William Henry, “Can’t Yo’ Heah Me Callin’ Caroline” (1914). Historic Sheet Music Collection. 38. https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/sheetmusic/38

In my own independent research for our culminating semester project, I’ve been exploring Indigenous song collection in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. So, with my exploration of the Sheet Music Consortium this week, I wanted to see what sheet music could tell me about this particular ethnographic practice. What is particularly challenging in my own research in Indigenous song collection is the tension between Indigenous musical practice and ethnographers like Frances Densmore who recorded songs, through both audio recordings and written scores. Though written scores, especially like those Densmore published in her bulletins (like Chippewa Music)  for the Bureau of American Ethnology, can provide insight into Densmore’s experience with Indigenous music, there are still questions as to how accurately they represent concrete, traditional musical practice.

Continue reading →

We often focus importantly on the elements of minstrelsy which tie each troupe together; the costumes, dialect, racial humor, and urban audiences, however the Georgia Minstrels were breaking this tradition as early as 1876. Black people doing minstrelsy is complicated as though minstrelsy poked fun at Black people, the performing arts were one of a very limited number of spaces where Black people could occupy during the reconstruction era. ¹ Although the idea of white people consuming Black performance art meant to dehumanize the performers is repulsive, the autonomy, creativity and talent of the Black performers involved should not be overlooked. The Georgia minstrels created for themselves a path to spaces where Black people could not occupy just over 10 years earlier. They were often asked to perform in vocal ensembles in churches and classical music performance venues, often part of a larger organized group’s performance.

One such performance was on March 12 1876 at the Boston Theatre where the Georgia Minstrels were invited to perform at the Grand Sacred Jubilee Concert, featuring the Grand Jubilee singers and others presenting works by Haydn, Rossini and other classical composers as well as Negro spirituals. Here is one piece which is from Peter Devonear’s Plantation Songs (1878):

“Run Home Levi” from Peter Devonear’s Plantation Songs.³

Peter Devonear was a songwriter for the Georgia Minstrels who relied heavily on the conventional minstrel or “plantation” song rather than the spirituals. This piece is similar to many minstrel songs which invent new material for verses that rely on character creation, “Run home Levi, run home for de sun’s down.” The line, “Den I dont want to stay here no longer” then draws on plantation song sentiment. Eileen Southern writes of the intricacy behind an all-Black troupe performing songs rooted in slavery, “The Georgia Minstrels undertook to produce shows which were novel and distinctly ‘genuine,’ planation Black-American, and, at the same time enough in conformity with minstrel traditions to please their interracial audiences and keep them returning for more.” ²

One of the other groups on the program for the night were the Hyers Sisters, a group of three Black female performers who toured around the U.S. during the nineteenth century, impressing audiences with their musical talent. They, like the Jubilee Singers, performed repertoire in the Western music tradition yet are also an example of the opposition of Black performers to predefined role fulfillment. Jocelyn Buckner writes, “They pushed boundaries of acceptable and expected roles for black and female performers by developing works that moved beyond stereotypical caricatures of African American life.”⁴

Taking a look at Black performance groups during reconstruction has dramatically challenged my knowledge of racial power dynamics. In my opinion, criticizing minstrelsy for its racism alongside acknowledging the accomplishments of Black performers is one way in which students today can seek an antiracist, critical knowledge of American history. Of course this is just an opinion, and if you as the reader think I am misguided, I would love to hear what you have to say!

References

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

There’s little information about composer Dave Reed Jr. available online. And although many records of his compositions exist in Databases, there are few recordings and even fewer quality recordings. What I’ve learned from my research is that Dave published his sheet music, for which he was the composer and lyricist, from 1894-1921. His father was Dave Reed Sr., a famous minstrel performer. That being said, I still couldn’t figure very much out about either of these men.  

In all of my research, what I was most interested in finding was the context for some of Dave Reed Jr.’s published songs. On the sheet music consortium, I found 3 pieces by Reed that piqued my interest. They were all about women, specifically women of color (two about black women and one about a native American woman). Interestingly, all of these songs describe these women as beautiful, graceful, and even aristocratic. Take a look at these lyrics from “Lady Africa”

“…She is de Queen of color’d high society

They shout Hurrah for Lady Africa

For she’s the perfect essence of propriety…”

I found myself wondering, are these songs actually celebrating black women? Spoiler alert: I don’t know. But in researching and reasoning, I ended with one final thought: Perhaps it doesn’t matter. I’ll elaborate.

First, I was curious about the race of the composer, since I figured there would be a higher chance for celebrating black women if the composer was a black man. Some of the songs are also written with a black-American dialect. Dave Reed Sr. was part of a group called Bryants Minstrels, who at first glance seem to be a white troupe since the leaders (the Bryants) were white. But with further reading, I learned that they did have at least a few black performers. Additionally, I found a picture of David Reed Sr. wearing blackface, where he looks white, but of course, I can’t say that definitively. 

Next, I examined the music in relation to the time period. These songs were all published before 1920, placing them in the minstrel time period, yet there was no evidence that they were ever performed as minstrel songs. But when comparing the music to other music at the time, it is not very different. The instrumental parts all seem similar to a ragtime style, which we know came almost directly from minstrelsy. Furthermore, the subject matter is the same as that in minstrels. The lyrics simply talk about romantic themes and black women: something that doesn’t seem out-of-place now but could’ve been satirical in that time. 

After researching, it seems as though Dave Reed Jr. was not intending to celebrate black women. But without context, it might not matter. These songs talk about black women in high standing, from beautiful lands, who are desirable in many ways. I think it’s possible that these songs could be reclaimed today, given that the lyrics could be seen in a positive light.

Citations

Music Division, The New York Public Library. “My Hannah lady, whose black baby is you” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed October 25, 2021. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-f04d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Books and Media, Duke University Library. “Lady Africa” Duke University Library Digital Collections. Accessed October 25, 2021. https://find.library.duke.edu/catalog/DUKE005411564

Arizona State University. “My Kickapoo Queen” Arizona State University Sheet Music Collection. Accessed October 25, 2021.https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.A.127822

Discography of American Historical Recordings, s.v. “Reed, David,” accessed October 25, 2021, https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/names/107887.b0807

This week, we continued our discussion on minstrelsy, so I looked up some primary sources by searching up minstrel shows and performances. There was one source that was quite interesting and concerning at the same time. It is a book of songs and jokes performed at minstrel shows with a frankly horrible sense of humor, and I want to present to you a few pages in this book. 

This source is a book titled Joe Davis Entertainment and Minstrel Folio, and it was published in 1931 in New York, and was compiled by Joe Davis. This book also included works by some other musicians and composers, which are all credited on both the cover page and individual scores. Honestly, it was hard to determine who this source is for, but Joe Davis himself seems very proud of this work. In his foreword he said, “Never before has such a wealth of material suitable for Radio, Home entertainment, professional or amateur show been assembled in a single folio.” I can’t imagine playing minstrel songs with racist undertones and bad jokes that are mostly unfunny and unbearable… Yeah I roasted him. I tried to do a deepdive on Davis, but when I typed his name into google, this same book showed up and it is quite easily accessible still, and it is sold on amazon for the sweet price of 26 dollars. It is quite concerning to me that this part of the history is not dead, but pretty much still alive. 

There are two specific things in this book I want to talk about. First, there are a lot of short early stages dad jokes (which I may or may not be stealing), but there are also some pretty racist jokes. On page 14, which is a section of jokes titled “Da*ky-ology,” and the one at the bottom of the page does not involve any slurs but makes jokes at black people’s death. It goes like:

Sam: Where were you the other morning at nine o’clock.

Ruf: I went Black Berrying.

Sam: Black Berrying? What do you mean by that?

Ruf: Well, I went to a colored funeral.

So… I don’t see how this is funny, and it was quite uncomfortable when I first read it.

Another page I want to talk about is page 51, which is a music score of a song titled Dixie Jamboree. Similar to the joke, this song takes black experience and makes entertainment and mockery out of it. The lyrics suggests the theme of  slavery and plantation life, hence “Way down South there in the land of cotton.” A theme I have noticed in minstrelsy (and white scholars’ study of African American music) is that they try to skew the realities of slavery and try to make it seem like the enslaved black people were enjoying their lives, when in reality they are far from that. One of the arguments they would use is that enslaved people would not be singing if they were not having a good time, but we have discussed that although sometimes music was used in celebratory scenes, a lot of times it was a way of mourning and praying. The lyrics delivered the same ideology, such as, “They have some times, wonderful times, known as Dixie Jamborees, Such good fun one seldom sees.”

This source connects with course material quite closely, and I really hope what happened a century ago will not happen again today, where white people and society as a whole finds interest in black art, but separates it from black emotions, faiths and experiences. I know it is still happening today. We NEED to be better. 

Works Cited

https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p15037coll1/id/6939

In many African American music traditions that we have studied thus far, we have seen music as a tool of expression of joy, sorrow, or hope, to name a few. While this class has mainly focused on spirituals, popular music, and sacred music, I was interested in looking at African American expression in classical music. This brought me on a search for sheet music by Samuel Coleridge Taylor, an English composer, conductor, and professor of music during the late 18th century and early 19th century. My question was, “how might Coleridge-Taylor choose to express the topic of race in a musical tradition in which white people have held the power?”.

After Coleridge-Taylor met the African American poet P.L. Dunbar in 1897, his music began to focus more on his heritage and his desire to “establish the dignity of African Americans” (Banfield), leading to works such as African Romances (1897) or African Suite for Pianoforte (1898), among others. The work of Coleridge-Taylor that I’m focusing on in this blog post, Five Fairy Ballads, was written in 1909 to poems by Kathleen Easmon, a friend of Coleridge-Taylor and the first West African to earn a diploma from the Royal College of Arts.

I thought that this work was interesting to investigate because of the clear way that Coleridge-Taylor is choosing to use the text of another artist with African heritage. Due to racism, classical music repertoire has been overwhelmingly white for most of its history, despite the fact that many black composers have created masterpieces. The classical music world still has a lot of work to do in terms of representation and inclusivity, but Coleridge-Taylor’s music, along with other BIPOC composers of his time, established that it should be a place for everyone. Five Fairy Ballads makes a space for African voices in a world that has silenced them, and invites others to join in.

https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p15037coll1/id/6046/rec/6

Works Cited

Banfield, S., Dibble, J., & Laurence, A.  Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 26 Oct. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002248993.

I was quite “successful” in finding sources for this blog post, and please take the air quotes with a lot more weight than a grain of salt. Let’s just say I wasn’t super thrilled with the plethora of findings I had in searching this topic. This post “piggybacks” off of my last post talking about fascination. Let the conversation continue!

It should be no surprise that Asian Americans have constantly dealt with harsh racism throughout American history. Although, the proof of this racism can be found in the musical scene of the first few decades of the 20th century in particular. From derogatory slang to severe stereotypes, this music is not lacking in either. The interesting content I found can seamlessly tie to Eric Lott’s thoughts, despite his focus on specifically blackface minstrelsy, points to the dichotomy regarding “love and theft” and “envy as well as repulsion” (page 8) in regards to how white people have gone about these traditions.

I found numerous pieces of sheet music alluding to this dichotomy of this expropriation yet strange eroticization towards Asian people. For example, in From Here to Shanghai, a song written in 1917 by Irving Berlin, it explicitly brings up various aspects that Americans tended to deeply stereotype the Chinese. It references sitting in “bamboo chairs”, “sipping Oolong tea”, pairs of “wooden sticks”, “Chinaman that speaks away up high”, and the list goes on. This song alludes to a sense of fantasization of the Chinese- “I’ll soon be there”- referring to almost an urge to want to see this culture that differs from America.  

From Here to Shanghai (1917) – Irving Berlin

Another source I found points to the side of the dichotomy revealing themes of “envy” and eroticism. Where the Yang-Tze Ki-Ang Flows talks about the narrator wanting to find a “sweet little China pearl” with “dreamy almond eyes.” It goes on in this “search for love”: “I’ll fix my lips for some Chinese kisses” and “I’m going to find what Chinese bliss is.”

Where the Yang-Tze (1917)- pg. 4

This overtly reminds me of the quote in Lott’s book:

“…because they were so attracted to the culture they plundered” (page 8).

 

Where the Yang-Tze Ki-Ang Flows (1917) – Cover Page

It is painfully clear that there was an immense, oddly obvious attraction to the Chinese. This seems contradictory to other lines in the song that again refers to stereotypes and terrible generalizations. I couldn’t help but make the ties between this type of music with the practice of blackface minstrelsy. These songs written about the Chinese people can define the whiteness and white perspective of most likely a large chunk of the American society, especially considering the political climate emerging from the Chinese Exclusion Act published in 1882.  

The underlying themes that we’ve talked about in class have been perspective-altering, to say the least. The fact of how much they tie together astounds me, as well. It will be hard to look at any music from now on in a non-critical manner, which I think only benefits us as musicians in the long run.

References:

From Here to Shanghai:

https://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/collection/077/080

Where the Yang-Tse Ki-Ang Flows:

https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/where-the-yang-tze-ki-ang-flows-way-out-in-china/15790?item=15794

Content Warning: Anti-Asian Racism

“Oyster pail takeout box.” Image is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oyster_pail_takeout_box_(2558467231).jpg

If you take a look at this photo of a takeout box, you probably don’t have to even think to know what kind of restaurant it came from; the font is clearly “Chinese.”

However, the reality is that there is nothing truly Chinese about this font at all. “Chop Suey Font” is so named because like the American food “Chop Suey,” the font has come to be associated with Chinese culture despite being an entirely American creation (Quito). The first version of this stereotyped font was patented in the United States in 1883 (United States Trademark Office) and has been frequently used in anti-Asian propaganda for the United States government (Quito).

Anti-Japanese propaganda printed by the United States government in 1943. Image is in the Public Domain in the United States. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AntiJapanesePropagandaTakeDayOff.png

Chop Suey Font is also everywhere in early 20th century American music, where sentimentalization and satirization of people of color was a common feature of music enjoyed by white audiences. Here are four examples that I found in the Sheet Music Consortium database (My Chinese Butterfly, My Oriental Girl, Chinese Blues, Oh that Oriental Rag).

While “Oh That Oriental Rag” is not written specifically in Chop Suey font, the lettering resembling bamboo is also an example of an ethnic font, or a font associated with an ethnic identity.

The lyrics and music songs of these songs reflect American attitudes of Orientalism, which defined “Eastern” culture as different and inferior to “Western” culture. Specifically, the East was seen as untamed, seductive, and emotional, while the West was civilized, rational and logical (Grove Music Online). The songs include sensual melodies full of accidentals, sexualized Asian women as love interests, and open fifths, which are frequently used in stereotyped representations of Eastern music, perhaps because of their bare and “primitive” sound.

With Chop Suey font so often being used in disparaging contexts, it is worth wondering if the font should be used at all, especially by white people. However, the font is also frequently used by Asian American business owners, which reminds me of our discussion of how early 20th century Americans of marginalized ethnicities often satirized their own identity in order to sell music to white audiences. Like many facets of American culture, Chop Suey Font is a remnant of America’s past that reminds us to consider the less obvious ways in which our country’s history of racism continues to pervade our society.

CW: Images of blackface

Prior to the 1840s, performers of minstrelsy were depicted on sheet music and other performance advertisements in costume, with props, and simulating stereotypical aspects of African American life. The images featured white performers in blackface, and often in “dance-like” positions, emulating a dancing enslaved person.

In this representation, the performers are not depicted as someone giving a performance, but rather a “character”, which gives the impression that the performance is realistic and representative of the lives of enslaved people. This can be seen in an advertisement for a performance by Mr. T.D. Rice, a.k.a “The Original Jim Crow”. It can also be seen on the sheet music cover for “At a Georgia Campmeeting”. Continue reading →

Oh Susanna is a song I personally remember singing in my childhood, during daycare, summer camps, and elementary school. So, when I learned in class that Oh Susanna is a song written for minstrel shows in the mid 1800s and has extremely racist origins I wanted to do a deeper dive on the history of minstrel songs that are still sung today, and learn more about why said songs have had such an effect on our culture.

The first thing that I learned when researching was that Oh Susanna was one of the first popular ‘American’ songs to be published- there were over 100,000 copies sold, where before no song had sold more than 5,000. Many articles I read stated that minstrel songs had been considered in the early 1800s to be America’s purest or singular musical contribution to the world. This is obviously not true. But, the fact that minstrel troupes and songs were published internationally and minstrel shows were extremely popular forms of entertainment led to this genre of music having a great impact on American culture. An article written by Dr. Katya Ermolaeva on the history and impact of songs such as Oh Susanna and Camptown Races states, “Minstrelsy left an indelible mark on the American music and entertainment industries”. The first ever film with sound in America, The Jazz Singer (1927), was a story of a singer who wanted to work in a minstrel troupe.

Why are these songs are still taught and sung by people often, and why were they so popular? The answer to that question is complex, but I would like to focus on a singular issue- the whitewashing of their lyrics. Oh Susanna’s original lyrics include racist slurs and is written in a stereotyped black dialect common in minstrel shows of the mid 1800s. Ermolaeva explains how, throughout the decades of the 20th century, due to the civil rights movement and growing social justice movements, minstrelsy and blackface became more and more unacceptable in society. But, instead of being removed entirely from songbooks and soundtracks, minstrel songs and stereotypes merely became more and more subtle. Ermolaeva discusses such a change in the context of the minstrel song also still popular today: I’ve Been Working on the Railroad. “ The mythologizing of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” as a tune celebrating American values has continued into recent decades. When Smithsonian Folkways reissued Seeger’s recording in 1990, the liner notes touted the “democratic passion” of folk revivalists to include the “music of working-class Americans” as part of the “national cultural conversation.” The Black Americans represented in “Railroad,” however, barely had any rights as laborers in railroad camps and arguably still lack basic rights as Americans today.”

The fact that minstrel songs are still sung and accepted as unproblematic additions to the  ‘American music canon’ is incredibly distressing. I would like to finish this blog post with Ermolaeva’s words, which I think speaks to our responsibility to work towards never letting these songs with their racist pasts exist unchallenged. Ermolaeva states, “Removing minstrel songs from children’s music programs will not undo the damage already done by blackface minstrelsy. Their removal, however, would serve as an acknowledgment of the damage wrought by these songs and a pledge to no longer promote that legacy. Our children won’t know the difference now, but one day they will be grateful for our efforts to rid their classrooms — and their childhoods — of racist songs…”

Citations

Ermolaeva, K. (2019, November 7). Dinah, Put Down Your Horn: Blackface Minstrel Songs Don’t Belong in Music Class. Medium. https://gen.medium.com/dinah-put-down-your-horn-154b8d8db12a

Oh! Susanna. (1848). The Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sm1848.441780.0/?sp=1

Wikipedia contributors. (2021, August 14). Oh! Susanna. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh!_Susanna

I’m sure many of us have read about the influence that minstrel shows have in our daily lives. We’ve heard about how all of our favorite Disney movies are filled with racist minstrel songs, how our favorite folk songs stem from minstrel shows, and how many of the racist stereotypes people still hold about black folks originate from minstrel shows. I personally experienced a run in with material from a minstrel song that made me think twice about the ways in which we engage with this material.

When looking for music in the Sheet Music Consortium, I looked for music by the famous American (and minstrel song) composer Stephen Foster. The first search result that came up was a piece titled “Under the Willow She’s Sleeping”.

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/metsnav/inharmony/navigate.do?oid=http://fedora.dlib.indiana.edu/fedora/get/iudl:384485/METADATA

My breath caught in my throat when I saw the title. One of my all time favorite choral songs is an arrangement of this text titled “Under the Willow” by Susan LaBarr. I was introduced to this piece as a sophomore in high school in my state choir. It’s a beautiful song, here’s a recording of the choir singing this piece:

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyA0VZGRnxI&ab_channel=TexasAll-StateWomen%27sChoir-Topic

This is a time when my mind was far detached about the realities of minstrel shows, in fact, I had never heard of them. All I knew is that the text discussed a mother burying her daughter. The conductor never acknowledged the origins of the text, which, when looking back, is troubling. Here are the lyrics:

Under the willow she’s laid with care
(Sang a lone mother while weeping,)
Under the willow, with golden hair,
My little one’s quietly sleeping.

Fair, fair, with golden hair,
(Sang a lone mother while weeping,)
Fair, fair, with golden hair,
Under the willow she’s sleeping.

 

Under the willow no songs are heard,
Near where my darling lies dreaming;
Nought but the voice of some far-off bird
Where life and its pleasures are beaming.

 

Under the willow by night and day
Sorrowing ever I ponder;
Free from its shadowy, gloomy ray
Ah! never again can she wander.

 

Under the willow I breathe a prayer
Longing to linger forever
Near to my angel with golden hair
In a land where there’s sorrowing never.

A beautiful text is it not? Not a text you would assume to be involved in a minstrel show no?

But unfortunately this text has origins as a minstrel song. Stephen Foster composed it for the Christy Minstrels. ¹

So besides the shock of learning that one of my favorite choral pieces and texts has its origins in a minstrel song, there is also the responsibility of how to handle this information. Firstly, there is the fact that this text is not inherently racist. This gives a nuanced view of the minstrel show as having both racist and non racist text. This paradoxical nature of the minstrel show gives us the challenge of figuring out what to do with a beautiful text such as “Under the Willow”. Do we do away with it because of its minstrel origins? Or do we continue using this text with a disclaimer? Personally, I think it is better to grapple with the duality of these texts than to get rid of them completely.

Throughout our long and complicated militaristic history, music has both shaped and reflected the public perception of the military. In my casual browsing of the Sheet Music Consortium, I began to notice patterns within the depictions of the military in both the art provided on the cover of the sheet music and the music itself, specifically with popular music written either pre or during World War I. As I dug deeper, I realized that I had seen these patterns before in the vast majority of post 9/11 country music.

Continue reading →

Content Warning: Racist representation of Black Americans

Illustration from the introduction of Paskman’s book.

Blackface initially used visuals to create an image of whiteness, deriving from a contrast with the Blackness portrayed on the stage. However, blackface has adapted to mass media to continue to survive through mediums like the radio. I was intrigued by a book of “new” minstrel music published in 1936 by Dailey Paskman. Paskman was a radio programmer and producer who founded the Dailey Paskman Radio Minstrels, whose popularity led them to vaudeville circuits.¹ The introduction of this minstrel folio sheds light on how minstrelsy persisted through a medium without visuals.

In the introduction of his book, Paskman demonstrates his awareness that minstrelsy has changed to maintain an audience. He asserts that

“times and styles may change, but nature persists in reproducing the thoughts, the aspirations, and the accomplishments of mankind.”²

Central to this quotation is the idea that minstrelsy is part of human nature, fighting against an unnamed enemy that resists this art form. This also implies that Paskman sees minstrelsy as an accomplishment worthy of being celebrated. Continue reading →