Over the summer of my freshman year, which consisted of using a large portion of my small paychecks on vinyl, I stumbled upon a Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway record at a good old fashioned Maple Grove garage sale. Aptly named “Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway” the 1972 album pins together two young R&B artists from Howard University and consists of an intimate and diverse collection of covered and original songs. While at the time of my purchase I didn’t think much of the record (besides the fact that I knew Hathaway’s famous cover of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” and a limited knowledge of Flack’s discography), I quickly fell in love with the ten sweet and sombre duets.

From the perspective of race, identity, and representation of “American music,” this album is a great representation of the assorted genres and influences that existed in the ever increasingly rich world of R&B, soul, and gospel in the ’70s. With a brief glance at the repertoire of covers, this notion immediately becomes apparent.

Track two, the initial recording by the pair, is a gospel tinged, lightly orchestrated cover of Carole King’s “You’ve Got A Friend.” Released around the same time as James Taylor’s sparse, singer songwriter version of the same piece, the song captures the initial spirit of the bohemian middle class that King set up, but extends it to the inner city, lower class communities, by use of the passionate call and response between chemically driven Hathaway and Flack, the driving wurlitzer electric piano base, and the tambourine infused percussion section. Similarly, “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’,” a Righteous Brothers cover, replaces the standard Spector “wall of sound” orchestration with wild harmonica lines, funk bass, and ever-increasingly mellifluous harmonies, and adds an extra layer of genre bending licks and sections. With a moody ostinato bass-line  that melds into an exotic verse fully equipped with a traditional Indian sitar and an undeniable trope of Bach’s Toccato and Fugue in D Minor played on harmonica (around 5:40 in the track for all you musical nerds out there), this tune blends a fair amount of culture-crossing musical practices and influences.

You’ve Got A Friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cOqfGPYc-E

You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0m812CC4kg

Having only given two of the ten tracks a brief genre-based analysis, this blog post can’t conceivably capture the scope and range of this record. Whether it’s “Be Real Black for Me,” a song that served as an anthem for the 1960’s “black is beautiful movement,” “Come Ye Disconsolate”, a traditional sacred song-turned-gospel arrangement of a well known Thomas Moore hymn, or “Mood,” a breathtaking seven minute classically infused piano duet, Hathaway and Flack’s album of undeniable chemistry demonstrates the far-reaching influence and diversity found in R&B music of the 1970’s.

Sources

Flack, Roberta, Donny Hathaway, Eric Gale, and Billy Cobham, writers. Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway. Recorded May 6, 1972. East West Records, Vinyl recording.

Koollatter. “Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway – You’ve Got A Friend.” YouTube. February 01, 2014. Accessed October 30, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cOqfGPYc-E.

“Music – Review of Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway – Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway.” BBC. Accessed October 28, 2017. http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/q6cg/.

77GhetooD. “Donny Hathaway & Roberta Flack – You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling (1972).” YouTube. April 3, 2011. Accessed October 29, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0m812CC4kg

From the perspective of St. Olaf, our institution has supported the oppression of marginalized composers, and it is evident when looking through the archives of the Manitou Messenger. For example, when searching Amy Beach’s name, only one article comes up: Month showcases women’s work. The 2008 article discusses a student recital of works by female composers as well as a faculty recital honoring Amy Beach’s work.

Extending the search to female composers, 3 articles appear, only 2 of them holding relevant information in support of female composers. The 2002 article Cecilia’s Circle visits discusses the four-woman ensemble Cecilia’s Circle, who came to St. Olaf for a week-long visit in order to honor female composers from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque eras. St. Olaf was lucky to have the opportunity to have a group like this come to give recitals, masterclasses, and guest lectures, but it’s also very disappointing that there has only been one other major occasion in which female composers have been celebrated on our campus in 15 years. In addition, the Halvorson music library only has six LPs that feature her works, five of them compilations with other composers and just one focusing on her piano works (The Piano Music of Mrs. H. H. A. Beach).

On the other hand, there are no results in the Manitou Messenger archive when searching “William Grant Still,” and only one article from 1979 when searching “black composers.” The article Lecturer to appear for Black History Month discusses St. Olaf guests William Nelson (Ohio State University political scientist) and Raymond Jackson (pianist) and Jackson’s recital of piano music by black composers. To me, this seems like an enthralling event that is long overdue to be done again on this campus. The article also cites the composers whose pieces Jackson played, so it is possible to use that as a starting point when searching for music by black composers. When turning to Halvorson’s LP collection, we only have two compilation albums that feature Still’s work, and no albums of only his works.

Mitchell, Elizabeth. “Month showcases women’s work.” The Manitou Messenger, No. 14, Vol. 121 (2008): 1.

Dion, Laurie. “Cecilia’s Circle visits.” The Manitou Messenger, No. 13, Vol. 115 (2002): 14.
Unknown. “Lecturer to appear for Black History Month.” The Manitou Messenger, No. 12, Vol. 92 (1979): 3.

A push to remove confederate monuments has swept the news in the past few months. This has sparked debate and dialogue across the nation, drawing attention to civil war history. The conversation extends from what the monuments themselves represent to the intention behind the civil war. It is important to acknowledge these issues today, and therefore it is also valuable to see how far back this conversation extends.

The Civil War lasted from 1861-65. While groups like the Sons of Confederacy try to push the message that the war was fought over states’ rights, historians cannot deny the major role that slavery played in the war (Dew). This debate and the attempted historical erasure is important to recognize at the heart of the monument debate. The question that remains difficult to answer is if Confederate monuments represent a system of oppression or simply the fallen soldiers in battle. In Portsmouth Virginia, Trinity Church put up a stained glass window that can be seen here.

This window tries to pay homage to soldiers fallen in battle. However, the Union did not like the wording on the window, so they made the church take it down in 1872. This action elicited a response from composer, George Camp. He wrote the song “Memorial Window” for the congregation of Trinity Church. The inscription on the cover page for the printed music gives a brief history, saying that

“the congregation of Trinity Church at Portsmouth, Va. placed an appropriate window in their church edifice if memory of Virginians slain during the war, which they were forced to remove, in consequence of offense taken by the U.S. Authorities.”

Camp’s disgruntled tone carries over into his lyrics as well. To camp, this monument was respectful of the soldiers who gave their lives in battle. However, it is clear that others saw the monument as a symbol that individuals were so invested in systems of oppression that they were willing to give their lives for it. This connotation casts monuments such as these in a different light.

Unfortunately, a recording of Camp’s “Memorial Window” does not exist. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to write about this object because of the political parallels that it seems to cary through to today. It has been 145 years since the 1872 debate of the window in Portsmouth Virginia, but the citizens are still trying to decide what to do with similar objects. In the past few weeks, the Mayor of Portsmouth has voiced a desire to move a civil war monument from the center of town. The story is covered here. I hope that highlighting examples such as these shows that efforts to combat racism and oppression need to be constantly pursued. These issues have been discussed in our country for a long time now.

Works Cited

Dew, Charles B. Apostles of disunion: southern secession commissioners and the causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016.

Trinity Episcopal Church: HISTORY. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2017, from http://www.trinity-portsmouth.org/anniversary-info

The cover for Amy Beach’s 4 Sketches, Op. 15, from the Americana Sheet Music Collection

It is without question that Amy Beach was among the early influential American composers, with a decorated career of both composition and performance. Her career took place during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th, which was prime time for white male hegemony, yet Beach still found great success. She was privileged to have taken music lessons and married young, which in turn allowed her to hone in on her compositional and piano performance skills. With the death of her much older husband in 1911, Beach was able to go abroad to Europe for a performance tour, returning to the States in 1914 because of World War I. This did not stop her from performing though, since she took on a cross-country tour of the United States. Beach often took her performance opportunities to play her own pieces, which is clearly shown with her extensive piano repertoire. Featured below is a the fourth sketch titled Fireflies, from her 4 Sketches, Op. 15.

A 1915 opinions article by the Morning Oregonian defends not only Beach’s piano skills, but her compositional feats as well. Discussing how major composers of the time such as Claude Debussy or Hugo Wolf didn’t write a single symphony like Beach did, the author claimed that hers was one that demanded the highest respect. Despite sexism of the time, Beach was still regarded as a great composer, but why don’t we hear about her music anymore?

In September 2017, the New York Times honored Amy Beach’s 150th birthday with an article on her life and works. The biggest takeaway I found in this article was that her “Gaelic” Symphony shot her to compositional fame, but no orchestras have programmed hersymphony or any of her orchestral works for this season. While Beach experienced sexism at the height of her career, it is clear that sexism in classical music is still alive and well when none of our major orchestras will honor her works on this anniversary.

Robin, William. “Amy Beach, a Pioneering American Composer, Turns 150.” The New York Times. September 01, 2017. Accessed October 24, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/arts/music/amy-beach-women-american-composer.html.

“Capacity House Greets Kathleen Lawler in New York Recital. Tom Dobson, Also, among Oregonian Singers to Occupy Limelight.” Morning Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), March 28, 1915. (found on America’s Historical Newspapers)

Amy Beach was a prominent composer of American music during her lifetime. While I was browsing UCLA’s Sheet Music Consortium I was led to some interesting findings. However, much to my disappointment all of the artifacts I found were not accessible online and therefore I felt the need to search outside sources. I browsed the library of congress for Beach’s works. In it I found a sound text that I was familiar with, but in a different musical context. Because of this I was intrigued by it and decided to take a closer look at it. This artifact is Beach’s setting of the Shakespearian text Take, O Take Those Lips Away. This score is the second of three scores from a collection of Shakespearian texts set by Beach. The first and third being O, Mistress Mine, and Fairy Lullaby.

Beach was not only significant because she was a composer of American music, but that she was the first female composer of American music to gain success and recognition in the art music world. She was a musical prodigy. According to Grove Music Online

“At the age of one she could sing 40 tunes accurately and always in the same key; before the age of two she improvised alto lines against her mother’s soprano melodies; at three she taught herself to read; and at four she mentally composed her first piano pieces and later played them, and could play by ear whatever music she heard, including hymns in four-part harmony.”

As a vocalist, it’s hard to believe that these statements aren’t exaggerated, but it certainly emphasizes the point that Beach was an amazing musician who is definitely worthy of our attention as musical scholars.

Bibliography

Beach, H. H. A., Mrs, and William Shakespeare. Take, O take those lips away. Op. 37, No. 2. Arhut P. Schmidt, Boston, 1897. Notated Music. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200215426/>.

Adrienne Fried Block and E. Douglas Bomberger. “Beach, Amy Marcy.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 23 Oct. 2017.<http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2248268>.

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When slavery was abolished in 1865, it did not simply disappear overnight, rather, it evolved. Racism and Discrimination became the new form of slavery in the united states and has continued to be a pressing issue, even in 2017. The middle of the 20th century brought the beginnings of people standing up against this injustice and speaking out a message of hope for the future. Two of these people were Mahalia Jackson, and Marian Anderson. Both of them, around the same time period, used their musical influence to stand up and peacefully strive for equality.

Marian Anderson

What these two woman have in common was their use of song to make a statement against political opposition and oppression. In an article from 1939, it discusses Marian Anderson sinning American Folk Songs, as well as Gospel on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson was to have a performance at Constitution Hall in D.C. but the “Daughters of the American Revolution” (DAR) refused to allow her to perform to an integrated audience This performance was a demonstration of her strength and unwillingness to back down. Closing her performance with a performance of the spiritual “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen” gave a solid stance of her strength.

https://search.proquest.com/docview/492549785?accountid=351.

Mahalia Jackson was a gospel singer who also used her voice in  a similar way to

Mahalia Jackson

Anderson. While she herself was not considered an opera singer, she was considered to be the “queen of gospel” and known as…

“the single most powerful black woman in the united states” -Harry Belafonte

In a quote from Jackson she describes her singing: “I sing God’s music because it makes me feel free”

Jackson once said about her choice of gospel, adding, “It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.” The power to which this woman sang was an obvious representation of her pride and hope for peace. In a world where even with all of her fame she was still considered a “colored” person. To have such strength and an the attitude to fight for what you believe in so strongly is incredibly commendable and admirable. Their connection to Americana Folk music, while still sticking to their gospel traditions was their attempt to bridge the gap between races and to sing for an America that is equal and free. 

Sources

“MARIAN ANDERSON SINGS TO 75,000 IN OPEN AIR RECITAL.” 1939.The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Apr 15, 1. https://search.proquest.com/docview/492549785?accountid=351.

Thejazzsingers. “MAHALIA JACKSON PRECIOUS LORD TAKE MY HAND.” YouTube. June 18, 2009. Accessed October 17, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as1rsZenwNc.

While browsing the Chicago Defender archives I discovered a newspaper article in which the author writes a short tribute to the legendary B.B. King. The author acclaims B.B. as well as other popular blues artists’ musical performance style saying that they communicate “simple and beautiful truth” that “touch[es] the inner core of black lives leaving us only to say, ‘he knows, he knows.'” In the poetic tribute, the author refers to B.B. as if he were a great king at the top of a royal ladder. He “beg[s] for forgiveness” and wishes to “further dedicate ourselves to the spirit of life and love that is ours and yours (B.B.’s).”

In the Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 database I found another article praising B.B. King. The article in fact, was actually a response to comments made in a Mick Hutchinson interview. The author clearly has a strong opinion from the very first sentence in which he writes “In an interview with MickHutchinson (MusicIT/73) it was said among other stupidities, that BB King’s style lacked originality.” Clearly offended by these remarks, the author dives into an analysis of Mick Hutchinson’s musical ability in which he claims Hutchinson “can’t MOVE people, he hasn’t anything to lay on them.” The argument made is that though B.B. King is known for using simpler melodies and licks, he conveys far more meaning in it than Mick Hutchinson ever could. And if that wasn’t enough, the author even finishes the paragraph with an aggressive “(So UP YOURS Mick Hutchinson!!).”

Little Richard achieved international fame in 1955 with the release of his hit single “Tutti Frutti.”  His unique sound, blending aspects of rhythm and blues and boogie woogie, came to be known as “rock and roll,” and marked the beginning of an exciting new trend in American popular music.  Despite Little Richard’s extraordinary success and far-reaching influence, he experienced significant resistance when trying to create a music that was palatable to white audiences.  

In an interview with Andy Gill, Richard described some of the frustrations he had with  record companies early on in his career: “They wanted me to sound like other people, to be a blues singer. I had this other thing, they’d never heard nothin’ like it, so they was afraid of it. But when I went to Specialty with Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom! they said, ‘OK!’ ” (Rip It Up). Hesitancy on the part of record companies to endorse Little Richard’s unique new style illustrates a racial bias in the popular music industry: they believed that a African-American popular musicians could only sing the blues, and that a black artist singing anything else would not be financially successful.  When Specialty published “Tutti Frutti” in 1955, however, the exact opposite proved to be true, with the track rocketing to No. 2 on Billboard’s Rhythm and Blues chart and No. 17 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

Little Richard also had to combat racist attitudes when crafting his band’s public image.  White audiences oftentimes stereotyped black men as lascivious sexual predators, and white men often discouraged their wives from attending concerts by black artists such as Little Richard.  To subvert this harmful and untrue stereotype, Richard cultivated an effeminate, androgynous image, attempting to convince audiences that he and his bandmates were gay.  He wore heavy makeup and hairspray and donned flamboyant clothing, all in the name of crafting an image that was “palatable” to white audiences.

Although Little Richard was clearly one of the first rockers, white artists like Elvis Presley are more frequently celebrated as the early leaders of the genre.  To this day, Little Richard’s legacy continues to struggle against the racist structures that he struggled with during his life.  It is important that we keep these structures in mind when we study the popular music of America.

Sources

Brown, David P. Noise Orders: Jazz, Improvisation, and Architecture. University of Minnesota Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, accessed 17 Oct. 2017.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4ZnqFqoT9TFKWR6fUmrmhoGaines, Grady. I’ve Been Out There: On the Road with Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Texas A&M University Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, accessed 17 Oct. 2017.

Little Richard. Mirrorpix Photographic Archive, 1966. Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975, accessed 17 Oct. 2017.

“Little Richard Scores Triumph.” The Chicago Defender (National edition) (1921-1967): 14. 02 Jun. 1956. ProQuest, accessed 17 Oct. 2017 .

“‘Little Richard’ Wows Way to Top.” The Chicago Defender (National edition) (1921-1967): 17. 12 May 1956. ProQuest, accessed 17 Oct. 2017 .

Rip it Up: The Black Experience in Rock ‘n Roll. Edited by Kandia Crazy Horse. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, accessed 17 Oct. 2017.

Marian Anderson was an incredibly accomplished African American opera singer, having performed for European royalty, even garnering a song written specifically for her by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Her success in Europe was welcomed back home in the States with a debut at Carnegie Hall in 1935. However, her decorated performance history was not invincible to America’s racism. Like any other African American, Anderson was restricted to use of “colored only” waiting rooms, hotels, and train cars.

The Chicago Defender reported on Marian Anderson’s iconic performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Howard University and Anderson’s manager arranged for her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington D.C., but were met with common racial bias of the time. The Daughters of the American Revolution owned the hall and refused to host her, likely because of her race. In response, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Marian Anderson Committee made alternative arrangements for Anderson to perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday of 1939.

Her first set of songs opened with “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” followed by standards from the classical repertoire. However, the real defiance came after intermission, in which Anderson performed a set of spirituals. Because of the history that spirituals hold, Anderson was essentially making a political statement that she would not let the barriers of racism hold her back from performing for the masses (in fact, there were 75,000 people at this performance). Having built a career off of opera, singing spirituals and closing the concert with an encore of “Nobody Knows de Trouble I’ve Seen” showed her strength in her refusal to be held back by racial bias of the time.

“MARIAN ANDERSON SINGS TO 75,000 IN OPEN AIR RECITAL.” 1939.The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Apr 15, 1. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/docview/492549785?accountid=351.

“Marian Anderson: Musical Icon.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eleanor-anderson/.

On the subject of authenticity, I think it is fair to say that one should deeply understand the context of the music they are performing in order to reproduce it in a manner that respects and preserves its roots. For example, spirituals come from an African American slave tradition, and several people reproduce spirituals outside of the gospel.

Elvis Presley – Joshua Fit the Battle (1966)

The jazz setting of Green’s recording is pretty appropriate for the song, especially when the history of jazz is taken into account. In our readings, we have learned that a large part of the African musical tradition includes improvisation, which appropriately takes places in spirituals, the blues, and jazz. In other words, Green’s performance furthers the tradition of African music in America.

A small comparison between the two recordings is that Green’s album lists the song as Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho while Presley’s is listed as Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho. The subtle change of “de” and “the” actually show the difference between how the two artists likely absorbed the song for the first time. The fact that Presley’s album lists it as “the” buys into the idea that “de” is not proper English, and should therefore be corrected, while Green leaves it as is because that is how slaves created and sang the song.

Grant Green – Feelin’ the Spirit (1963)

Lastly, I think a big fault in Elvis’ recording is that he decided to sing this spiritual in a major mode, which fails to pay true homage to the origins of the piece. I’m not trying to say that every spiritual must be in a minor mode to depict the anguish of the tradition that it comes from, but I think that altering the mode of specific songs poses a problem, especially when the performer will never experience the context in which these spirituals were originally sung in. In addition, it seems that Elvis recorded spirituals because he enjoyed them, which was not the reason why they existed in the first place. Spirituals were a means of consolation for the suffering of slavery, and Green’s album, Feelin’ the Spirit (1963), captures this in his time-appropriate era of the Civil Rights Movement. Green did not necessarily want to reproduce the music in its original context, but to bring this music to the nation at a time when they needed the same hope for equality that slaves did.

With its beginnings in the late 19th century, the Cakewalk has become a staple of the early African American dance culture in the United States. This style of dance first found popularity on black slave plantations came about during forms of “prize-walks” in which people would dance or “walk” to receive prizes. It is called a Cakewalk because at the end of the dance, the winning couple would be presented with a cake as a reward for their dancing efforts. This dance began as a part of minstrel shows and was exclusively danced by men until the 1890’s when women were allowed to participate. 

With this dances beginnings, it was done primarily by small ensembles of either brass or piano and banjo. This recording from the album “Rusty Rags: Ragtime, Cakewalks & Stomps” shares with us a prime example of an early cakewalk. While the original

recording date is unknown, what we can hear is an example of a simple melody and chord structure with a small brass ensemble.

http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Crecorded_cd%7C1037073

An Advertisement for a Cakewalk

As this dance develops from a minstrel dance into a full fledged art form, we begin to hear transitions in its structure and instrumentation. Here is a recording by pianist Lincoln Mayorga from 1937. In this recording we have just a solo piano, but the rhythmic and harmonic structure are beginning to become more complex while still maintaining its jaunty and consistent driving motion.

http://ezproxy.stolaf.edu/login?url=https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/1019889

In modern times, the Cakewalk is not a regularly performed, but modern interpretations have led to this style of music being continued mostly in forms of Jazz, which also has roots in black culture. A prime example of this is this recording by the Oscar Peterson Trio on their album “Nigerian Marketplace”. This takes the final evolution of the Cakewalk. This recording from 1988 keeps the same style with adding a large influenced jazz flair to the music, while still keeping the piano prominent.

http://ezproxy.stolaf.edu/login?url=https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/597040

Sources

Cakewalk. 1898. Prints and Photographs, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

No Cakewalk On The Program For the State Convention of Afro-American Leagues–A Haytian Lecturer’s. March 5, 1890. New York. New York, NY: NewsBank/Readex, 1890. Accessed October 9, 2017. America’s Historical Newspapers.

Rusty Rags: Ragtime, Cakewalks & Stomps. Recorded July 1, 2009. Qualiton – Saydisc, 2009, Streaming Audio. Accessed October 9, 2017. http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Crecorded_cd%7C1037073.

Pianist On Tour. Recorded October 17, 2006. TownHall Records, 2006, Streaming Audio. Accessed October 9, 2017. http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Crecorded_cd%7C1019879.

Oscar Peterson Trio: Nigerian Marketplace. Recorded January 1, 1988. Pablo, 1988, Streaming Audio. Accessed October 9, 2017. http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Crecorded_cd%7C597035.

In her Los Angeles Tribune article published in 1959, Almena Lomax reviews the newly released debut album Little Girl Blue by Nina Simone. In this review, she traces Simone’s influences to several big-name jazzers at the time including, but certainly not limited to Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Louis Armstrong. The article also notes of how Simone draws upon her classical piano studies and how she freely dances across the lines of classical and jazz styles, combining them in such a way as to never stray too deep into one of those musical territories, but consciously being aware of the genre mixture she was playing with. In this respect she also can be compared to George Gershwin, from who she also draws much inspiration, this is evident by her cover of “I Loves You, Porgy” from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The article further goes to suggest that Nina Simone is “ an ethnic American Negro who is so ‘ethnic American Negro’ that we feel like the expression was coined for her. Already ecstatic about her quick rise to fame, little did the author know that Nina Simone would eventually become a common household name and her music a staple in the American Jazz idiom. Now we face the question: was Lomax right? On the one hand, to say that Nina Simone’s music is a holistic representation of African American music is certainly inaccurate. However, Simone’s influence over not only African American music but all of American popular music from the time she first released her Little Girl Blue even to the present day still goes strong. We can see this through numerous recordings and live performances of her music put on by contemporary jazz and popular musicians today.

Nina Simone For Lovers. Cond. Hal Mooney and Horace Ott. Rec. 25 Jan. 2005. Verve Records, 2005. Music Online: Jazz Music Library. Web. 9 Oct. 2017. 

TY  - NEWS
N1  - Provider: NewsBank/Readex, Database: America's Historical Newspapers, SQN: 12C5FE5C375C5530
TI  - Notes for Showfolks by Almena Lomax an Ethnic American Negro
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JF  - Los Angeles Tribune
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ER  -

[Stavin’ Chain playing guitar and singing the ballad “Batson,” Lafayette, La.]

Often times, stories that exemplify this mix come out in African American blues tunes. Coming from the African American work song tradition, a crucial part of these tunes is that they tell a story. One blues, in particular “Stavin’ Chain” tells the story of a train engineer. He was hailed as strong and powerful. This figure was so strong and unique that Wilson Jones, one of the artists who recorded a version of “Stavin’ Chain” also went by the nickname, “Stavin’ Chain.”

This begs the question for the story how Wilson Jones came to adopt “Stavin Chain.”

[Stavin’ Chain playing guitar and singing the ballad “Batson,” Lafayette, La. (fiddler in the background)]

Nevertheless, Wilson Jones became “Stavin Chain,” a figure of strength and prominence. This term may refer to the American tradition of arms manufactures in the late 19^th century utilizing chains to hold barrel staves together, or perhaps it refers to chains used to bind ankles on chain work gangs (Americanbluesscene.com). I believe that this term could easily have come from a blend of the two stories, as African American folk so heavily relies upon cultural blending.

–Brock Carlson

[Portraits of Stavin’ Chain and Wayne Perry performing, Lafayette, La.]

Works cited

Lomax, A., photographer. (1934) [Stavin’ Chain playing guitar and singing the ballad “Batson,” fiddler also in shot, Lafayette, La]. Lafayette Louisiana United States, 1934. June. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007660068/.

Lomax, A., photographer. (1934) [Stavin’ Chain playing guitar and singing the ballad “Batson,” Lafayette, La]. Lafayette Louisiana United States, 1934. June. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007660069/.

Lomax, A., photographer. (1934) [Stavin’ Chain playing guitar and singing the ballad “Batson,” Lafayette, La. fiddler in the background]. Lafayette Louisiana United States, 1934. June. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007660070/.

Baraka, A., & Harris, W. J. (2000). The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka reader. New York: Thunders Mouth Press.

In Amiri Baraka’s Blues People: Negro Music in White America, he regards African music in terms of its intent, saying that one of its stark differences from Western music was that it was purely functional; it wasn’t meant to exist as art. We see that this African tradition appears in the life of the slave, with work song and spirituals existing as a means of necessary expression that called to God for freedom.

Zora Neale Hurston’s also discusses slave song in Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals, and how they never remain in their original form regardless of publication because each rendition depicts a different mood. For example, the spiritual “Gospel Plow” was originally a work song, but it was performed in during the Civil Rights Era, changing its context, which proved her statement that spirituals are not confined to slavery. In this situation, lyrics have been altered to fit the context of the performance. Looking at “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” we see the lyrics of “Gospel Plow” change to fit the context of freedom marches. The tunes stayed the same but the verses changed as folks improvised them. In addition, the lyrics vary between each recording, so the side by side comparison is only one example of the lyrical change.

Gospel Plow and Keep Your Eyes on the Prize with commentary

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

So when Hurston says “Each singing of the piece is a new creation,” the Civil Rights Era literally made a new creation out of this spiritual to adapt to special events such as freedom marches. This also connects back to Baraka’s argument that work song and spirituals were a necessary means of expression because these songs gave a message of perseverance during the freedom marches, no matter what they protesters were faced with.

Slavery has had roots in this country almost as long as the country itself. Prior to 1865, the majority of Africans who were brought to this country were as slaves. These people were forced to labor under harsh conditions without any freedoms or graces. It was during this time where workers were allowed to sing songs and attend church, either with the gospel given by a white male, or while being supervised by a white mediator. Both in the congregation and in the fields, workers would sing songs that became known as “Negro Spirituals” to express personal feelings, and to cheer for one another.

This picture above is from the Library of Congress’ Alex Loman Collection. This picture is from a congregation at an all Black Baptist church on the Alma Plantation in False River, Louisiana 1934. This shows a small congregation that would sing these songs together to praise the lord and look for a brighter future. As well, these songs would help to give strength to those were tired and weak.

Music was such a vital part of survival for these people. Many of these black people would use and create instruments for their worship and singing times. The picture below is an example of a few instruments that were created between 1934-1950. These instruments were mostly horn-like instruments designed to use in singing and creating music together.

In 1865, Slavery was abolished. It was after this time that some African Americans were allowed to go to school to become educated. One such establishment – Fisk University, was one of the first universities for African Americans in Nashville Tennessee. It was here that the “Fisk Jubilee Singers” were founded. This group was organized in 1871 with the intention of sharing African American spirituals with the world on several tours. This group recognizes the significance of singing and performing these songs, not for fame or recognition, but rather to use their music as a lens to glimpse at what the life for these slaves could have been like and how their music affected them and their lives. The mistreatment of these people were horrid, and their music reminds us of their struggles and the raw emotion that was poured into this singing.

http://http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/search/results?q=spirituals

Sources

Lomax, Alan, photographer. Baptist congregation, Alma Plantation, False River, La. False River Louisiana United States, 1934. July. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007660048/. (Accessed October 02, 2017.)

[Folk Musical Instruments Including Homemade Horns]. , None. [Between 1934 and 1950] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007660366/. (Accessed October 02, 2017.)

American Missionary Association, Black, James Wallace, photographer. Jubilee singers, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. / negative by Black. Nashville Tennessee, 1872. [Place not identified: Publisher not identified, ?] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2015650289/. (Accessed October 02, 2017.)

Fisk University Jubilee Quartet — Vocal group, Noah Walker Ryder — Bass Vocal, Alfred Garfield King — Bass Vocal, John Wesley Work II — Tenor Vocal, and J. A. Myers — Tenor Vocal. “Swing low, sweet chariot.” Browse All Recordings | Swing low, sweet chariot, Take 3 (1909-12-01) | National Jukebox LOC.gov. December 01, 1909. Accessed October 03, 2017. http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/1797.

This photograph from the Lomax photography collection, depicting a group of African-American prisoners singing while working in the Darrington State Farm woodyard in Texas, interested me upon first sight as it seemed to me to be familiar to what we have learned about slave-era music and musical functionality despite being shot in 1934. In this photograph is featured “Lightnin’” Washington, an African-American prisoner during this time whose singing was recorded multiple times alongside his group who usually accompanied him in these recordings, also pictured here. The act of physical labor accompanied by singing is a type of functional music very familiar to slave music, specifically work songs, in which slaves would sing to the rhythm of physical labor to keep a consistent work pace and pass the time working, among other things. This photograph shows that such musical tradition had not died out after slavery had ended and likely retained its musical functionality to some extent.  

Field Recordings CD

Washington and his group were some of many African-American musicians during the early twentieth century to have been recorded for the Library of Congress by John Henry Faulk. In 1933, Faulk recorded the group performing a call-response song called “The Grey Goose,” which is featured alongside other of Faulk’s recordings of African-American music on this CD collection entitled “Field Recordings Vol. 10-11; 1933-1941.” These CDs, released in 1998, contains interesting narratives and images along with the cover and descriptions, as it talks of how slavery was “a scathing indictment of human rapacity and greed,” while also featuring on the cover a slightly shocking image of an antiquated advertisement for buying slaves alongside large instances of the word “Negroes.” The narrative is clearly intended to be a condemnation of the evils of slavery and racism, but certain imagery as well as the fact that it is intended to advertise to people to buy the CD makes it a bit complicated. 

*While I was not able to find a insertable recording of the mentioned song, here is a link to a page containing a recording. Just press “Listen” on the top right of the page. http://kodaly.hnu.edu/song.cfm?id=616#analysis

Sources:

Field Recordings Vols. 10 & 11, 1933-1941. Web. 3 Oct. 2017. <http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cliner_notes%7C313399#page/null/mode/1>.

Lomax, Alan, photographer. [“Lightnin'” Washington, an African American prisoner, singing with his group in the woodyard at Darrington State Farm, Texas]. Apr. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/2007660013/>.

In her book entitled Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, Dena J. Epstein explores black folk music in the United States up til the civil war. The tunes analyzed are all slave songs that have been notated on musical staff paper, something that is inherently separate from the traditions that black folk musicians established in their practice. These songs were all sung by slaves, mostly in the fields where they worked. Sometimes these songs were used to communicate messages, making use of metaphors or other poetic techniques that disguised their meanings to the slave owners that may have heard them, but to other slaves, the message would be clear. Through this kind of code, a sort of secretive communication started to develop. I believe that this book would make an excellent contribution to the museum exhibit because it provides high-quality scholarly insight into the history of black folk music and makes use of artifacts leftover from that time period where some of these songs were recorded in our standard western musical notation. This book also makes use of images to provide a supplemental visual aid to the reader to be able to picture the events and the parts of history that are described within it. Furthermore, there are tons of scores contained within the book, so if one wanted to attempt to recreate these songs in the present day, it would be possible to do so to some extent. Obviously, like we’ve mentioned in class, there are lots of stylistic performance techniques that are lost in the process of notating these songs, but having the notes at least preserves it in some sense as to not let it die out.

Epstein, Dena J. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals : Black Folk Music to the Civil War. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1977.

Frederic Remington was a late 19^th century artist whose goal was to study the “Wild West.” Born into the Civil War and reconstructionist America, Remington’s age was one of “modernized” westward expansion including rail roads, telegraph, and other modernizing technology.  Consequentially, the “Old West” was starting to die out and Remington wanted to preserve it with “a romantic fascination” (Remington, F. (2010)).

In an attempt to chronicle the American West, Remington was assigned by newspapers and publishers to accompany cowboys, Indians and cavalrymen (Remington, F. (2010)). This resulted in extensive time spent with many different types of individuals on the frontier. The result? Beautifully sketched images of the grand “Old West” of American folklore. Below, is an image from an 1897 book titled Drawings by Frederic Remington. The caption below the image is “The Pony War-Dance” (Remington, F. (1897)).

This sketch shows an unidentified group of Native Americans riding their horses in a choreographed dance. These war-dances were often common of the Plateau region, the Plains region, and the Eastern nomadic region of Native Americans (Bruno Nettl, et al.). Often the war dances were accompanied by instruments like “rattles incorporating deer-hooves” (Bruno Nettl, et al., Plateau region) or “strips of rawhide to which deer-hooves were attached” (Bruno Nettl, et al., Plain region) for the purpose of imitating the sound of horses. Whereas Remington’s sketch shows a unique development of this tradition that includes the actual horses in a choreographed celebration. Such an act must have taken incredibly skill and control over the horses.

What is perhaps most surprising about Remington’s quest to chronical the “Old West” is his utter lack of descriptive documentation and context. There is no way to know which tribe is sketched in “The Pony War-Dance.” The description at the start of Remington’s Drawings indicates that the dance is a

“wild fury of religious, that splendor of savagery crashes down to us from the Stone Age. If you will open the Old Testament where Joshua delayed the course of the sun, or they blew down a city wall with a trumpet, you will come upon the same spirit… time and the present world have no part here!” (Remington, F. (1897)).

Stone Age savagery!? Are you kidding me? Horses were not introduced into the continent until 1519, at which point they had to escape from their owners and radiate up throughout the American Great Plains before the Native Americans could get to them (“Wild Horses and Native North American Wildlife”). This tribe is a group who has found, captured, tamed, and then mastered horses to the point of being able to choreograph them into a dance. It is surprising how Remington and his commenter can see this sketch as anything but advanced.

Of course, Remington’s audience in 1897 was one who wanted to picture the folklore of a west that was rough and wild. For them, “tales of the American frontier [began] to assume a haziness, an unreality, which makes them seem less history than folklore.” (Remington, F. (2010)). It is understandable, considering Remington’s goal and his audience’s attitudes to American Indians possessing western land, that they would be portrayed in a uncivilized light. Nevertheless, one would think that Remington, having spent enough time with Native Americans to be able to sketch beautiful images like the Pony War-Dance, would have grown to respect the beauty and adaptability of their culture.

–Brock Carlson

Works Cited

Bruno Nettl, et al. “Amerindian music.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 26, 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/45405.

Remington, F. (1897). Drawings. R. H. Russell, New York.

Remington, F. (2010). Remington. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://awionline.org/content/wild-horses-native-north-american-wildlife

In this 1893 New York Herald article, Czech composer Antonin Dvorak discusses his 9th symphony, From the New World. Dvorak says that “since he has been in this country, I have been deeply interested in the national music of the negroes and Indians,” later concluding that the two styles of music were nearly identical as a national genre. Because of his interest in the national American style of music, he studied Indian melodies that a friend gave to him, becoming inspired by the spirit of their being, later composing this symphony on the basis of that spirit.

However, the manuscript that was given to Dvorak wouldn’t have been enough for him to authentically understand Indian music. As we have encountered in Richard Crawford’s America’s Musical Life, Europeans at the end of the Civil War found that the culture of Indian music was worth preserving, though their transcribing methods were fairly limited. Because there are several forms in which Indian music can exist and because those forms can be dependent on their purpose in the moment of a ritual, transcribing what one hears in a single performance then fixes the identity of that music. In addition, most of the documented Indian music was from the perspective of non-Indians and the Indian music that Dvorak studied followed this trend.

With that in mind, it’s evident that Dvorak’s attempt at composing in the “spirit of Indian music” is completely removed from Indian culture. Even though he studied a “certain number of Indian melodies,” his encounter is secondhand, failing to understand the circumstances in which that music would have been performed. In addition, we don’t have records of what music he was looking at, so the credibility of that source dwindles further. Had he experienced an Indian ritual in person, his compositional approach would have likely been more legitimate and true to its source.

Article sources

• [No known author], “Dvorak on His New Work,” New York Herald (New York City, NY), Dec. 15, 1893.
• Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001), 389.

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This is a firsthand account written by Moses K. Armstrong from a periodical titled The Youth’s Companion. Armstrong was a member of Congress from 1871-1875 for the Dakota Territory and spent time living in the area. Armstrong offers a brief, but comprehensive narrative of the Sioux Sun Dance that he witnessed somewhere in the Dakotas around the turn of the 20th century. The Sun Dance was an important ritual of song, dance, and self-mutilation.

By referring to the music as “the usual sorrowful Indian dirge” and  “monotonous Indian notes,” Armstrong references a preexistent concept of Indian music. The use of the word “usual” and the indication of “Indian notes” shows that Armstrong is recalling a common familiarity with Indian music that the readers would have had, even if the familiarity is with stereotypes of Indian music, and not from the musical source itself. By adding the descriptors “monotonous” and “sorrowful,” Armstrong is imparting his own opinions about the music onto the reader. There are also some more obvious negative word choices, like the use of “hideously” to describe the face paint of the Sioux women, which convey certain images and ideas that entail more than a simple observation.

While not all accounts have blatantly negative opinions embedded within them, a lot have underlying meanings. One account in Judith Tick’s book describes a “doleful manner of shrieking.” In some cases like this account that Tick included, it is hard to discern to what extent an observer’s bias is conveyed. Although, as Richard Crawford argues in America’s Musical Life, non-Natives’ perceptions are often based on their political and economic advantages. Whether or not accounts are obviously negative or not, many seem to share a similar motivation or effect for recording their encounters. I see the effect being the creation of a space for which non-Natives to contemplate the encounters they have.

When I looked at the first volume of The Youth’s Companion from 1827, I found that the purpose of the periodical was to provide education and entertainment for young people. It also clearly states that a lot of its content was to be religious. I think it is important to consider the religious goals of this periodical because it could parallel the lens through which Armstrong and other observers might have seen the Sioux Sun Dance. As someone like Armstrong writes about a Native American ceremony with specifically chosen words, he is actually contemplating it by relating it to his own experiences, and the readers are invited to compare it to their own sacred beliefs, rituals, and music.

Sources

Myers, Helen and Kay Edwards. “Sioux.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 26, 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2257292.

Rand, Willis. 1827. “Prospectus of the Youth’s Companion.” The Youth’s Companion (1827-1929), Apr 16, 1.

Ragsdale, Bruce A. and Kathryn Allamong Jacob. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-1989 : The Continental Congress, September 5, 1774, to October 21, 1788, and the Congress of the United States, from the First through the One Hundredth Congresses, March 4, 1789, to January 3, 1989, Inclusive.Washington D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1989. 100-34.

Tick, Judith, and Paul Beaudoin. Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

“The Sioux Sun-Dance.” 1901. The Youth’s Companion (1827-1929), Sep 12, 1.

This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times newspaper on March 29^th of 1925. The author of the article is unknown. The article talks about an attraction on Hollywood Boulevard called Indian Village, which showcases, or rather exploits, Native American song and dance. Sid Grauman, the showman who is well known for creating the Egyptian and Chinese theaters in Hollywood, is responsible for bringing the tribe members from Wyoming to Los Angeles. They were brought to the theater by Sid as a form of promotion for a film that was playing at his Egyptian Theater, titled The Iron Horse. At the theater, the Natives played their traditional music and danced. The author explains that this music has attracted musicians and composers from the area to come and experience the music. In talking about the music, it appears that the author has very little knowledge of Native American music. By applying words like crescendo, tempo, baton, airs, and diminuendo to this music, the author’s classical western perspective becomes apparent. The author also shows his lack of respect for the music by describing it as “weird” and “uncanny”. The author goes even further in disrespecting the Native Americans by refereeing to them as “squaws” and “Indians”. The one part that the author gets right about the music is in their description of the importance of the aural tradition in Native cultures. The Indian Village is a clear example of exoticizing a marginalized group for commercial gain. This is something that happened frequently in the past, and still happens to this day. It is important to talk about these issues to prevent them from happening in the future. With the Chinese Theater, Egyptian Theater, and Indian Village, it seems as if Sid Grauman made a career out of exoticizing other people’s cultures.

“[The medicine man] gives no drugs, but he beats his tom-tom; he makes no prayers, but sings his incantation”

Found in a work titled “Our Wild Indians”, Colonel Richard Dodge recounts, to the best of his ability, his thirty-three years spent amongst Native American tribes. This chapter comes from his observations of the Nez Perce people. As seen in both Frances Densmore and Bruno Nettl’s works, the processes of codifying and immersion in a culture demand a high level of intent. Dodge’s recollections are more similar to the other primary sources we have seen of white settlers’ experiences with various Native American tribes.

The music of Native American people left many white settlers and anthropologists struggling to describe the sounds they heard, and led to inaccurate notations of the music. Attempts at notating non-Western music in a Western fashion have their own flaws, but it’s important to recognize that like most forms of music, Native American music exists beyond the realm of recitation and enjoyment. Therefore the notation of ceremonial music inaccurately relays the sounds, and strips the music of it’s greater purpose.

Colonel Dodge presents the music of a Nez Perce medicine man at work, and there are certain aesthetic parallels consistent with some of the sounds we have studied to be common in Native American music. One example is the constant beating of a drum. “All night long a tom-tom was beaten…”. Taken aurally out of context, the drums are no different from other drums one might hear in music. Yet in this situation, the drums were part of a larger cure for a sick infant. “All night long a tom-tom was beaten immediately over the head of the poor baby; this music accompanied by the sing-song incantations of the priest and the mournful howls of half a dozen old women”. The medicine man’s music is highly functional. It can’t, and I would argue shouldn’t, be notated as a means for performance. From an ethnography perspective, any notation of this music could be one facet of preserving the Nez Perce culture. However, beyond preservation, notation serves only to Westernize the Nez Perce.

Dodge’s full chapter from which excerpts where quoted can be found here:
Medicine Man Music

Works Cited:
Dodge, Richard Irving. 1882. Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three years’ personal experience among the Red Men of the great west. Hartford: A. D. Worthington and Company. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American West, http://www.americanwest.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Graff_1114 [Accessed September 23, 2017].

In Charles Wakefield Cadman’s 1909 work, “Four American Indian Songs,” he attempts to create a “purely American” music by setting original Native American melodies, as transcribed by Alice Fletcher, in a traditional Western harmonic idiom.  This musical effort, sometimes described as “Indianism,” may appear at first to be a laudable one.  By adding English words and Western harmonies, Cadman ensures that these Native American melodies will be heard by a wide variety of people.  If he could bring these Native American folk melodies into the mainstream of American song, they could be preserved and celebrated for years to come.

Artwork from the First Edition of “Four American Indian Songs”

Surely enough, Cadman purports to have a certain amount of respect for Native American culture, and his methods do strive for a sort of “authenticity.”  In his article “The ‘Idealization’ of Indian Music,” Cadman cites the importance of understanding the Native cultures that he borrows from.  He recommends that an Indianist composer should learn about Native American legends and rituals, attend powwows, and even spend time living on a Reservation if possible, before attempting “idealize” (read: Westernize) Native music.

Despite his lofty aspirations of sympathy and understanding, however, Cadman ultimately falls short of the mark.  Throughout his article, he consistently describes Native American people as “primitive,” and makes the claim that “only one-fifth of all Indian thematic material is valuable in the hands of a composer.”  Cadman does not view Native American musical traditions as inherently valuable and worthy of study, but rather as a quarry of raw materials that he can mine for his own profit.  His musical project, which initially appeared to be a beautiful marriage of two disparate traditions, instead smacks of exploitation and imperialism. . . is it possible, then, that perhaps he has succeeded in writing “purely American” music after all?

Sources

Blim, Dan.  “MacDowell’s Vanishing Indians.”  AMS 2016, Vancouver.

Cadman, Charles Wakefield. “Idealization of Indian Music.” Musical Quarterly, vol. 1, July 1915, pp. 387-396. EBSCOhost, accessed 24 Sept. 2017.

Cadman, et al. Four American Indian Songs : Op. 45, for Voice and Piano. Boca Raton, Fla., Masters Music Publications, 1989.

Garrett, Charles Hiroshi. The Grove Dictionary of American music. Second ed., vol. 2, New York, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Levy, Beth E.  Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West. University of California Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, accessed 24 Sept. 2017.

     The text I am sharing today is a paper published in The Journal of American Folklore  in 1895, written by music educator and studier of Indian music John Comfort Fillmore, entitled “What Do Indians Mean to Do When They Sing, and How Far Do They Succeed?”. John Comfort Fillmore was originally a teacher and textbook writer, though was asked by Harvard’s Peabody Museum in 1888 to examine a collection of Omaha Indian songs, which lead to a long exploration of Indian music of various tribes. This extensive ethnographic research informed many articles he published after 1888, many containing theories about universal harmonic sense and placing Western music tradition onto unrelated cultures’ musics. (McNutt, 62)

    This particular article similarly seems to work under an assumption that Western music theory and harmony have a certain objective truth. The title itself shows a certain amount of cultural superiority as it seems to assume that American Indian singing has to follow Western music rules and if it doesn’t, then it must not be successful music. There seems to be a lack of understanding that the way the American Indians’ music is sung could possibly be correct within its own standards, or that there is no conscious intention to be correct at all. He makes the claim that “the Indian always intends to sing precisely the same harmonic intervals which are a staple of our own music, and that all aberrations from harmonic pitch are mere accidents” (Fillmore, 138), again showing an attempt to extend Western music theory onto a musical tradition that evolved independently from it. He further makes the point that these “accidents” are due to “imperfect training, or rather to the total lack of it” (Fillmore, 138). This claim seems to function under the belief that only those trained in Western practice are “correct” and that an American Indian training within their own cultural practice still is not viewed as having training.

    In this article, Fillmore does not appear to be a very trustworthy author. Though he makes frequent mention to having worked with Indian singers and transcribed and studied Indian music, he spends mostly all of his focus on his perception that Indian singers are not able to sing consistently in tune within the Western scale. Instead of leaving his own cultural background to the side in order to focus on Indian music and singing in its own respective context, he attempts to apply his understanding of Western practice onto it, which leads to his focus upon pitch accuracy. A possibly more open-minded conclusion that could be reached from his findings of inconsistency in pitch value would be that perhaps precise pitch accuracy is not much of a focus in certain Indian singing. These biases shown by Fillmore perhaps represent much of the academic world’s view on Indian music during the 19th century, one not jaded enough to ignore the importance of studying and preserving Indian music, but still bearing the belief that it is culturally inferior, primitive, or unevolved in comparison to Western practice.

Link to the article

Sources:

Fillmore, John Comfort. “What Do Indians Mean to Do When They Sing, and How Far Do They Succeed?” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 8 no. 29, pp. 138-142. April 1895. Web.

McNutt, James C. “John Comfort Fillmore: A Student of Indian Music Reconsidered.” American Music, vol. 2 no. 1, pp. 61-70. Spring 1984. Web.

The Nookta Native American tribe has its origins in modern day British Columbia. The Nootka Farewell Song performed by George Clutesi is not only a fine example of a conscious effort to preserve the Native cultures of the region but also it is an example of traditional Native American music being given some light in the mainstream culture of today. Clutesi was the first Tseshaht mainstream celebrity in Canada. He was a multitalented artist who acted, wrote, and was an expert on native cultures. As a child, Clutesi was forced into participating in an educational system where one’s native heritage and culture was seen as a negative attribute and whose goal was to erase it. Fortunately, even as a young child Clutesi knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with this ideology and rejected it completely through his artistic talents. The song I’ve linked below is a representation of what Nootka music sounded like during the 20th century. Notable features of the song include an ad libbed introduction sung as a solo, then when the main tune kicks in the drum beat starts pounding a steady beat that continues until the ad lib outro. At the same time, as the drum beat beings we hear a choir singing in unison quietly in the background. If it weren’t for Clutesi and his activist contributions to the preservation of Native societies’ cultures there would be many songs such as this one which would be lost in the universe, never to be heard again.

“Rise and Shine”

St. Olaf student, Laura Anderson, wrote in 1972 about that she met with a group of young fellows living and performing in Minneapolis. The group, previously knows as “Debb Johnson,” added several members to the group and renamed themselves “Rise and Shine.” This group had performed at St. Olaf previously. Unfortunately, Laura does not mention what music genre the group performs. However, the groups sees a future for music.

Laura reports, when she sat down with “Rise and Shine,” they arrived on the topic what is music. Laura quotes one of the band members: “The days of stoned-out boogie bands (and audiences), destruction on stage, and sloppy music are gone. People are tired of obnoxious music and egotistic performers — it’s not showmanship, it’s insanity.” Laura believes that music should consist of good musicianship. She finds loud music and quickly produced music to be disgusting. “Rise and Shine” lives to together and is constant writing and performing their own music. Their favorite groups are Shawn Phillips, the Beach Boys, and Joni Mitchell. All these uniques sounds contribute to their creative sound.

Laura’s articles shows that music, especially in the popular world, has been constantly  changing, as people get bored and look for something new to entertain them. As we have seen since the 50s, music has evolved from Rock ‘n’ Roll to disco, to boy bands. Even today music seems to be evolving as people strive to create new music.

Olaf Carl Seltzer was a painter well known for his landscape paintings. At a young age, Seltzer showed talent in painting and enrolled in Danish Art School and Polytechnic Institute. However, a couple years after enrolling, his father died, and the family moved to Great Falls, Montana. Here he worked as a cowboy, painting and sketches the whole time.

His most famous works are of the Native Americans, ranchers, or wildlife depicted in the natural countryside of Montana. However, St. Olaf College Flaten Art Museum archives own a work by Olaf Carl Seltzer entitled Native American Portrait Study. This work, instead of portraying a whole landscape, only shows two Native American heads, one in the the foreground and one in the background. The head in the foreground is painted in shades of brown and the head in the background is in shades of grey.

Olaf Carl Seltzer, Native American Portray Study, watercolor on paper, 12 in x 9 in

Many of Olaf Carl Seltzer’s works containing Native Americans do not depict them in action, hunting or perhaps fishing. Usual the Native American people are riding on horses, pausing at a creek or thoughtfully looking ahead. The same goes for his Native American Portrait Study; the two men are looking off into the distance. I believe Seltzer thought of the Native American’s and poised, reverent people. Unfortunately, there is not date to this portrait, but around Seltzer’s lifetime, many thought of the Native American’s as savage people. However, I believe that Olaf Carl Seltzer’s background, moving from Copenhagen to Montana, had a significant effect on how Carl viewed these people.

* All historical background from https://www.wildlifeart.org/collection/artists/artist-olaf-carl-seltzer-330/

As evidenced by the artwork on the album cover and liner notes of this 1961 LP recording of Richard Strauss’s Salome,¹ the artists involved in making this recording aimed to create an atmosphere of exoticness, the East, and “Otherness.” On the cover, Birgit Nillson, who plays Salome, bears her teeth and pointed, red nails in a vicious, animalistic stance, and on the liner notes, the illustration focuses around the exotic peacock motif.

The opera aims to portray “Otherness” in more ways than just the visual. In terms of the libretto, as the liner notes state, “Its exotic language caresses an exposed nerve in the type of elegant audience for which it was written.” As for the music, the notes read, “Strauss enclosed Wilde’s drama in music that is . . . extraordinarily concise yet lavish in detail. Mood is everything: from the first clarinet notes one is plunged into the Byzantine night and the tension is never relaxed.” With Salome, Strauss aimed to create a comprehensive portrait of the “East” through which to portray a story of violence and immorality.

As I listened to the final scene of Salome on Halvorson Music Library’s own copy of this LP, I noticed several elements of auditory “Otherness” in the music. At the beginning of the scene, sudden crashes of brass and percussion are reminiscent of Classical era uses of the sublime to convey terrifying foreignness. Surprising keys and chromatic turns have a similar effect. Toward the end of the scene, Strauss conveys exoticism through the clarinet, whose chromatic motif evokes the Asian/North African street tradition of snake charming. As the opera ends, percussion reverberates like a gong (there may even be a gong in the second recording below) and a blaring trumpet enters unexpectedly to play the closing melody. I included a Youtube recording of the Vienna Philharmonic with Birgit Nillson² (similar to the LP recording I listened to) as well as a Youtube recording of Nillson at the Metropolitan Opera³ for an American comparison. I noticed that the closing trumpet in the Met version sounded even more raw, jazz-like, and surprising than its European counterpart. Perhaps this is because, for white Americans, jazz automatically signifies a racial “Other” as well as lowbrow music.

All of these “exotic” elements are so noticeable, however, because the basic auditory backdrop of Salome is Western. The orchestra consists of European instruments (like the clarinet) that play in an “Eastern” manner instead of actual instruments from ancient Judea (southern Israel) where the opera takes place. Too, the unexpected harmonies–while used in an Orientalist manner–are not uncommon for a piece of Modern music, so they would not have been scandalous to the ear when Salome first arrived.

So how does all of this relate to American music? Let us put the music of Salome in the context of its failed opening performance at the Met in 1907. As the audience watches a high art version of Salome portraying subversive female sexuality through dance, it also hears music that evokes the “East” but ultimately asks to be taken seriously as high art. The European fabric of Strauss’s music makes it difficult for audiences to dismiss it as inferior, but the “exotic” auditory decorations are frequent enough to cause discomfort. For this reason, the music of Salome contributed to the tensions over legitimate and non-legitimate art that caused the Met audience to reject the opera.

 Footnotes

1 Strauss, Richard. Strauss: Salome / Solti, Nillson, Vienna Philharmonic. Decca 000692102, 1961, LP.

2 “Richard Strauss: Salome (Solti),” Youtube video, posted by Scherzo Music, September 25, 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8lug09n1VQ.

3 “Birgit Nilsson “Salome’s final Scene” Salome,” Youtube video, posted by Addiobelpassato, November 9, 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU_xMlOCyqw.

Oklahoma! the musical opened on Broadway in 1943, the first written by the Rodgers and Hammerstein duo. The musical premiered during WWII when this show was needed to provide an escape for Americans from the horrors of war. It ran on people’s nostalgia for the great American West and a time of “no conflict.” The show, interestingly, leaves out Native Americans and any hints of conflicts that actually occurred in the Midwest.

Oklahoma! centers around a cowboy named Curly, his romance farm girl Laurey, and Jud the farm hand who Laurey develops feelings for later on. It’s set in the town of Calremore, OK in 1906. Laurey and Curly represent the “wholesome American” ideal that was common in mythic story around WWII. Cleanliness and a separation from “animal nature” in humans was a critical part of this image, and it was science and technology that were seen as essential to their achievement. For example, women during this time were discouraged from nursing their babies; bottles were considered more hygienic than human tissue. “Scientifically-concocted” formal was said to be more wholesome and nutritious than breast milk. Modern was equated with wholesome and good.

By tapping into this “modern” movement, Oklahoma! became a raging success. It ran on Broadway for over 5 years. According to the Manitou Messenger, even the St. Olaf Theater Dept. put on its own production of Oklahoma! in 1962.

Recently, Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre’s 2012 made waves with its production of Oklahoma! with its choice to reflect the historical presence of African Americans in the Oklahoma territory because it amplified “one of the ugliest stereotypes in our history: an imposing black man ravaging a petite white woman and the white hero.”¹ It made “clear references to lynching…the “Dream Ballet” had a sinister, sexual tone and ended with Jud dragging Laurey away to be raped.”

Jud appears to be keeping Laurey and Curly apart in the “Dream Sequence” in 5th Ave. Theatre’s 2012 production of Oklahoma!³

One critic wrote “Rothstein’s (the director) Oklahoma! is now the story of a crazy, sex obsessed black man … lusting violently after his white mistress, who ends up murdered at the hands of a white man, who gets off scot free after a mock trial.”²

So what’s worse? The original Oklahoma! blatantly leaves out all minority groups to try an create this sense of nostalgia for “simpler times.” But, the 2012 Seattle version obviously reinforces horrendous stereotypes in an attempt to include African Americans in the show. Should we try to include minority groups that were originally written out of the show or try and fit them in? It seems like neither is a great option…

1 Brodeur, Nicole. “Oklahoma Seen in a New Light.” The Seattle Times. Feb 20, 2012. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nicolebrodeur/2017557140_nicole21m.html

2 Strangeways, Michael. “Oklahoma at the 5th Avenue Is a Bit Problematic.” Seattle Gay Scene. Feb 10, 2012. http://www.seattlegayscene.com/2012/02/review-oklahoma-at-the-5th-avenue-is-a-bit-problematic.html

3 http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/61/81/61815e6423402c1fadfc2ce386832311.jpg?itok=9qmty_nQ

After Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Veils” hit the United States in 1907 in Strauss’s opera, an outbreak of “Salomania” occurred in which many songs and dances in the popular sphere took on a Salome theme. By 1908, vaudeville and burlesque shows were full of different Salomes, from “When Miss Patricia Salome Did Her Funny Little Oo La Palmoe” to “My Sunburned Salome” to “The Dusky Salome.” What all of these representations of Salome have in common is the fact that none of them are authentic to the opera’s portrayal of Salome and none of them try to be. The writers of such songs capitalized on inauthenticity, giving audiences exaggerated, drag-like performances of stock characters so far from reality that audiences could enjoy them.¹

One stock character used for Salome was the white, American girl-gone-wild, and another was the overly ambitious African American woman performer.² “The Dusky Salome” (lyrics below; listen here³) portrays the latter:

The fair Evaline was a ragtime queen
with a manner sentimental;
But she sighed for a chance at a classical dance
with a movement oriental.
When lovesick coons with ragtime tunes
sang, “Babe, you’ve got to show me,”
She’d answer, “Bill, you bet I will,
I’m going to dance Salome.
Oh, oh me, that’ll show me, For

CHORUS: [the music shifts to ragtime]
I want a coon who can spoon to the tune of Salome.
I’ll make him giggle with a brand new wiggle that’ll show me;
In a truly oriental style,
With a necklace and a dreamy smile
I’ll dance to the coon who can spoon to the tune of Salome.

One musical coon said tonight I’ll spoon
where the fair Salome lingers.
When she danced ’round the place he just covered his face
but he looked right thro’ his fingers.
He sighed “It’s grand my heart and hand
I’d give to see you do it,”
She only said: “Give me your head
I’ll dance Salome to it,”
I’ll woo it, that’ll do it. For⁴

“The Dusky Salome” parodies that idea that Salome could be used to bridge the gap from low art to high art and from blackness to whiteness. This idea is ironic because Salome’s dance in Strauss’s opera is not traditional high art–it contains the exoticized sexuality more typical of popular music and usually required of African American women. Ultimately, the song reinforces the idea that sexuality, foreignness, and blackness belong to low art, not high.

What’s more, the song’s mixing of musical genres, use of “oriental” sounding lower neighbors (m. 16), and use of stock-characters (including the pejorative c–n character popular in minstrelsy) verifies popular song as a place of cheap thrills and commodification. The cover of the sheet music for the book in which “The Dusky Salome” appears explains it all with a male actor playing Hamlet but holding the head of John the Baptist as Salome does when she kisses it. The intent of this odd melange is obviously humor based on inauthenticity, not edification, which was reserved for the classical sphere.

To conclude, songs like “The Dusky Salome” served to maintain the distinction between lowbrow music and highbrow music, perpetuating a binary system that kept sexuality and “otherness” at the bottom and edification and whiteness at the top.

Footnotes

1 Larry Hamberlin, “Visions of Salome: The Femme Fatale in American Popular Songs before 1920,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 59/3 Fall 2006, pp. 631-696.

2 Ibid.

3 Jerome, Benjamin, Edward Madden, and Maude Raymond. The Dusky Salome. Recorded August 2, 1909. Victor, 1909, Streaming Audio. Accessed April 14, 2015. http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/1586

4 Jerome, Benjamin and Edward Madden. “The Dusky Salome.” In Eddie Foy in Mr. Hamlet of Broadway. New York: Trebuhs, 1908.

On the week of her 100th birthday, Billie Holiday’s influence on American music is clear. Her style, tone, and storytelling abilities paved the way for a strong vocal jazz tradition. As the narrator in the Creative Arts Television’s 1959 documentary “Portrait of Billie” puts it: “Today, if you sing jazz and you’re a woman, you sing Billie Holiday. There’s no other way to do it. She wrote the text.” The way that women, or any performers, choose to interpret that text, is just as important as Holiday’s original recordings.

Cassandra Wilson has put considerable thought into interpretation. The jazz vocalist, who has been lauded for “embracing a wide range of American music,” has taken on the Billie Holiday songbook as her latest tribute project. She will perform the collection of rearrangements, entitled “Coming Forth by Day,” on April 8th at the Kennedy Center; the vocals will be accompanied by rocker Nick Cave’s rhythm section. When discussing the album in an NPR interview, she stressed that her goal was to avoid cliches and reinvent the songs. In her words, “I couldn’t wait…to do some wild and crazy things to it.”

When reading the NPR article, I was initially struck by Wilson’s desire to sing the music so differently. With some tribute projects (see most classic rock tribute acts, for example), the goal is often to mimic the original artist as much as possible. But with jazz, change is necessary. Wilson comments: “It’s beyond improper–it’s considered rude, in jazz, to imitate someone. So for me to do a tribute to Billie Holiday and imitate her style or her context would be almost insulting.”

I immediately thought about quoting, or using another artist’s melody in a piece. This is common practice in jazz, but in the context of another song, the quoted melody hardly ever has the same tone. Wilson will change the music, but her main focus is on changing the context. Her rendition of “Don’t Explain,” a song about a cheating lover, will have a more empowered perspective, as opposed to being told from a victim’s viewpoint. In today’s context, the song should sound fresh, free from cliches, and open to interpretation.

The latter half of “Portrait of Billie” does some quoting of its own. At the 19-minute mark, the documentary features a modern dance set to Holiday’s music. Carmen De Lavallade plays a woman who becomes an iteration of Holiday; she’s soon joined by John Butler, who represents Billie’s various struggles in life–her abusive relationships, her troubles with alcohol and drug abuse. The dance was choreographed the year of Billie’s death; at the time, she had recently passed away at the age of 44. While the dance is a fine artistic representation of her life, it does seem somewhat dated. I’d like to see what it would become in the hands of a modern-day choreographer. Would the dance be as allegorical? What songs would be used instead? Or would covers of Billie’s songs, like Wilson’s reinvented ones, replace the original recordings?

http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/394420

If listeners find all this requoting offensive, it’s important to remember that Holiday herself didn’t stick to the original material. According to the documentary, early publishers mistrusted Holiday’s tendency to play with the melodies and change the text–essentially, putting an improvisational spin on jazz that was as scandalous then as it is celebrated now. As a rising star, she claimed to be influenced by Bessie Smith’s voice and Louis Armstrong’s style of trumpet playing. She didn’t copy them exactly, but they served as her biggest inspirations. Quoting and changing the music in this context is not disrespectful–in fact, it’s the highest form of tribute a musician can pay.

Sources:

“Cassandra Wilson ‘Couldn’t Wait’ To Reinvent The Billie Holiday Songbook.” NPR. April 5, 2015. Accessed April 6, 2015. http://www.npr.org/2015/04/05/397321378/cassandra-wilson-couldnt-wait-to-reinvent-the-billie-holiday-songbook.

Portrait of Billie. Performed by Carmen De Lavvallade, John Butler. U.S.: Creative Arts Television, 1959. Film. Found on Alexander Street Press. http://search.alexanderstreet.com/jazz.

I’m certain that if I asked the class if they’d ever heard to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, not many would recognize the name. Tharpe grew up a gospel singer, both of her parents preachers, but what set Tharpe apart and probably what kept her from reaching the fame of the Arethas and the Ellas was her Rock ‘n Roll influence. Tharpe struggled to find a place as a successful musician while remaining a devout religious woman. Her inability to claim a single genre and run with it made Rosetta so remarkable, yet it is what kept her from reaching the top. Her unique guitar style along with her gospel like vocals made her a sensation, but her audience wasn’t one that could follow her as she wore too many hats. In an article in the New York Amsterdam News writes of Tharpe’s bounce back and forth between singer and church-goer.

The author, Jay J. Aye detailed her flip-flop between nightclubs and church and wrote, “Earlier this year after she [Tharpe] announced she was through with night clubs and would sing only in churches… Now, it looks as if the night club bug has stung Sister Tharpe again.” One wonders if Tharpe felt pressured by the music industry to go outside of the church, or whether her familial ties to the church held her back from truly reaching her full potentials as a Rock ‘n Roll singer with a gospel edge. Tharpe’s performing medium, while varied and inconsistent, was one she must’ve grappled with and one that music historians must take into account when studying her interesting and unique career.

Bibliography

Aye, Jay J. “Claims Sister Tharpe Torn between Church, Cabaret.” New York Amsterdam News (1943-1961), Dec 28, 1946, City edition. http://search.proquest.com/docview/225952495?accountid=351.

According to some jazz scholars, a racialized barrier between the black, “authentic” extended jazz compositions of Duke Ellington and the white, “inauthentic” symphonic jazz of Gershwin has emerged in critical and scholarly accounts of these traditions. However, when Ellington rearranged Rhapsody in blue, these barriers were considered to become more complex and permeable.

“Whites Cannot Play Real Jazz”- this is not only the title of a newspaper article (Pittsburgh Courier) in 1923, but inclined the idea that “in Whites’ performance, there is little real substance to black art in itself, that it is mainly a figment of white people’s racially twisted imagination.(Gerard, 101)”

Bañagale, Ryan Raul. “Rewriting the Narrative One Arrangement at a Time: Duke Ellington and Rhapsody in Blue.” Jazz Perspectives 6.1-2 (2012): 5-27.

Duke Ellington’s arrangements performed in 1925 and 1932 tried to remove long-held assumptions that the Rhapsody in blue was the provenience of white bands and provide insight into Ellington’s own development of concertized jazz. With a belief that “a soloist should be given absolute freedom,” Ellington might be one of the “angry African-American avant-garde jazz artists” that tried to point out white composers who have made money out of spontaneity and primitiveness of African- American art fail to see the skill and calculation of the Black composers/performers(Gerard, 98). In his 1932 arrangement of Rhapsody, he increased the large saxophone section into four, instead of using clarinets, hoping to achieve more complex harmonies and timbral. He also wanted to recall a social dance tradition instead of letting audiences sit on concert hall chairs. Except of an improvised piano solo, his arrangement can be played with a steady, danceable tempo (Raul, 105).

Here is a reconding of Ellington’s latest arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue:

http://ezproxy.stolaf.edu/login?url=https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/be|recorded_track|li_isrc_884385543143USESK0602247

However, would it be possible that Duke Ellington misunderstood intentions of some White composers? Chick Corea once said:

Gerard, Charley. Jazz in Black and White: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Jazz Community. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print.

Thus some of White composers’ interests in jazz were primarily aesthetic, since their music does not play a part in establishing a group’s social cohesion, as African-American music does for Black culture. Whites have a strong interest in expanding the technical aspects of jazz by introducing elements from modern classical music. At the same time, it would be rigorous that a successful performance of music that has jazz elements requires that all of its traditional ingredients be present in order for it to be considered authentic. Thus I personally won’t agree that in transforming jazz into “fine art”, composers/performers sought to transform/affirm their racial status in order to “distant” blackness.

Works Cited:

Bañagale, Ryan R. Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American Icon. , 2014. Print.

Bañagale, Ryan Raul. “Rewriting the Narrative One Arrangement at a Time: Duke Ellington and Rhapsody in Blue.” Jazz Perspectives 6.1-2 (2012): 5-27.

Gerard, Charley. Jazz in Black and White: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Jazz Community. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print.

Copland’s Dance Symphony was written in 1925 during the height of the development of symphonic jazz.

The 1920’s in the United States welcomed a new type of distinctly American music that combined music created by African Americans and stylized it for white audiences. Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman and others can be credited with popularizing this new orchestral genre.

Distinct from New Orleans and Chicago styles of jazz, orchestral jazz included new style features like polyphony instead of homophony, the general expansion of instrumentation from big bands to orchestral instruments, and a shift to pre-arranged compositions rather than collective improvisation. Paul Whiteman commissoned several composers, including Gerswhin’s Rhapsody in Blue, to write music with the instrumentation and style features of jazz, but with the scale and structure of a symphony orchestra.

“In the twenties, most of those who listened at all regarded jazz as merely an energetic background for dancers; the few who sought more profound values in the music tended to accept Paul Whiteman’s concert productions… as the only jazz worth taking seriously.” – Paul Whiteman on symphonic jazz¹

Aaron Copland was a young composer during these “golden years” for American popular music and jazz. Determined to make it as a full time composer, Copland lived in a studio apartment near Carnegie Hall in New York. He created a group with several of his younger contemporaries, including Virgil Thomson, called the “commando unit” to help promote each other and their works, but also influence each other in what the American style would be in the 20th century.

Young Aaron Copland in New York²

The Dance Symphony is divided into three distinct sections, but there must not be any pause between movements. The first movement begins with a short slow introduction, followed by a light allegro. The tune is passed around in the woodwinds, starting in the bassoon, moving to the oboe and finally resting in the clarinet. Meanwhile, each time the tune is accompanied by soft plucked violins and harp. With each version of the tune, combos of instruments are used, like the jazz combos popular in the day.³

The second movement is more interesting in that it layers multiple melodies on top of each other. This is a technique popularized by Charles Ives around the same time.

The third movement is more interesting still because of its characterization of violence and syncopation. It begins with a jazzy motive using chords and blue notes popular in jazz. There is an extended development of all the material similar to the standard jazz form of numerous solos over a bass line ending with “all motives blazoned forth at once.”⁴