scholarly journals  African Past, American Future: Uplift Ideology in Early 20th Century Opera

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Hujsa
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
American Music ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
American Composers ◽  
African American Music ◽  
High Esteem ◽  
African American Composers

         This paper explores how two African American composers, Scott Joplin (c. 1868-1917) and Harry Lawrence Freeman (1869-1954), advocated for Black Advancement and uplift ideology through their syncretic operas in the early 1900s. What is presented here however is the introductory content of a larger work.         Joplin and Freeman were intimately conscious and supportive of national debates for Black Advancement, propelled especially by W.E.B. DuBois, and both employed rhetorical strategies paradigmatic of the movement. They were both interested in showing White and Black Americans alike that African American music, such as gospel, spiritual, and ragtime, could be held to the same high esteem as music of the Western canon, just as Black academics often endeavored to prove their intellectual prowess to their White counterparts. To this end, Joplin and Freeman combined “Black” music and classical styles in their operas to declare the equality and richness of an integrated sound.          The thematic content of these operas, Treemonisha and Voodoo, respectively, interact with the Black Advancement movement’s drive for progress and education as well. They present Black Americans’ struggle for modernity as a conflict between the “superstitious” West African religious customs still ingrained in emancipated communities and Christianity. However, Joplin and Freeman’s works diverge aesthetically and ideologically from this point forward. Joplin’s aesthetic considerations derived chiefly from ragtime, a modern African American musical form genre, while Freeman took inspiration not only from African ethnic music but Africa itself. Joplin’s form of uplift was found in the education of small Black communities, while Freeman framed his work in a nationalistic and pan-Africanist context. These distinct choices, though crafted with the same aim, help reveal subtle divergences in argumentation within the Black Advancement movement.    

Eileen Southern

Popular Music ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-379
Author(s):  
David Horn
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
American Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
College Administration ◽  
Music Department ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Congregational Singing ◽  
Renaissance Music

Eileen Southern, who died in Florida in October 2002, was widely recognised as a pre-eminent figure in the study of African-American music. Her seminal history, The Music of Black Americans, first published in New York in 1971, was the first academic study to give serious scholarly attention to the totality of African-American music – from the congregational singing of slaves to all-black Broadway musicals, from blues and jazz to experimental composers – and was hugely influential. Resolutely unpolemical and meticulously balanced, it did more to establish the validity of the subject in the academy than any other single book. It had its genesis in a course which Dr Southern (who had a Ph.D. in Renaissance music from Harvard) developed in the late 1960s at Brooklyn College. She herself later described how she was put under pressure to devise the course by a college administration somewhat desperate to find ways to meet the demands of black students for the inclusion of Black Studies in the curriculum. The idea met with disbelief among colleagues in the music department, and the particular scorn of an unnamed Englishman, holder of a Ph.D. in musicology from Oxford, who opined that a course in black music presented ‘nothing of substance to deal with’. Declaring ‘I'll show them’, a furious Eileen Southern was determined to design a course that demonstrated the range of black music. The result turned out to be so rich that a more sympathetic colleague suggested one day to Dr Southern that she turn the course into a book – and The Music of Black Americans was the result (Standifer, n.d.).

Tear down the walls: Jefferson Airplane, race, and revolutionary rhetoric in 1960s rock

Popular Music ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Burke
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Music ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Blackface Performance ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractWhile the notion of the ‘rock revolution’ of the 1960s has by now become commonplace, scholars have rarely addressed the racial implications of this purported revolution. This article examines a notorious 1968 blackface performance by Grace Slick, lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, to shed light on a significant tendency in 1960s rock: white musicians casting themselves as political revolutionaries by enacting an idealised vision of African American identity. Rock, a form dominated by white musicians and audiences but pervasively influenced by black music and style, conveyed deeply felt but inconsistent notions of black identity in which African Americans were simultaneously subjected to insensitive stereotypes and upheld as examples of moral authority and revolutionary authenticity. Jefferson Airplane's references to black culture and politics were multifaceted and involved both condescending or naïve radical posturing and sincere respect for African American music. The Airplane appear to have been engaged in a complex if imperfect attempt to create a contemporary musical form that reflected African American influences without asserting dominance over those influences. Their example suggests that closer attention to racial issues allows us to address the revolutionary ambitions of 1960s rock without romanticising or trivialising them.

Black Music USA: From African to African American Music

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Robert Sacré
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black People ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Deep South ◽  
African American Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primitive Forms ◽  
Work Songs

This chapter discusses the history of African American Music. Many of the roots of black American music lie in Africa more than four hundred years ago at the start of the slave trade. It is essential to realize that the importance given to music and dance in Africa was reflected among black people in America in the songs they sang, in their dancing, and at their folk gatherings. As such, every aspect of jazz, blues, and gospel music is African to some degree. Work songs and the related prison songs are precursors of the blues. One can assume that primitive forms of pre-blues appeared around 1885, mostly in the Deep South and predominantly in the state of Mississippi. However, it was several more years before the famous AAB twelve-bar structure appeared, and when it did, one of its leading practitioners was Charley Patton.

scholarly journals The (Mis)Representation of African American Music: The Role of the Fiddle

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
JACQUELINE COGDELL DJEDJE
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Black People ◽  
American Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Black Musicians ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Musical Traditions

AbstractDuring the early twentieth century, research on African American music focused primarily on spirituals and jazz. Investigations on the secular music of blacks living in rural areas were nonexistent except for the work of folklorists researching blues. Researchers and record companies avoided black fiddling because many viewed it not only as a relic of the past, but also a tradition identified with whites. In the second half of the twentieth century, rural-based musical traditions continued to be ignored because researchers tended to be music historians who relied almost exclusively on print or sound materials for analyses. Because rural black musicians who performed secular music rarely had an opportunity to record and few print data were available, sources were lacking. Thus, much of what we know about twentieth-century black secular music is based on styles created and performed by African Americans living in urban areas. And it is these styles that are often represented as the musical creations for all black people, in spite of the fact that other traditions were preferred and performed. This article explores how the (mis)representation of African American music has affected our understanding of black music generally and the development of black fiddling specifically.

The Impact of a Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Cardiac Failure ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
American Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Undue Influence ◽  
African American Music ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Made In

This chapter examines Harry T. Burleigh's legacy in African American music. Burleigh retired in 1946 from his position as baritone soloist at St. George's Protestant Episcopal Church, marking the end of an exceptional public career. He died of cardiac failure on September 12, 1949. All too soon after the influx of laudatory obituaries, the press got wind of the conflict over Burleigh's estate. This chapter first considers the trial involving Burleigh's two wills, both of which were challenged by Louise Alston Burleigh and their son Alston because they suspected his longtime housekeeper, Thelma Hall—a recipient of the second will together with her son James—of exerting undue influence on Burleigh. It also looks at various tributes made in Burleigh's honor, including one from Will Marion Cook, and concludes with an emphasis on the importance of black music to the Harlem Renaissance, Burleigh's mastery in arranging African American spirituals, and the newfound respect for his art songs.

Bringing Spirituals to the Concert Stage

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Art Song ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
American Music ◽  
American Composers ◽  
Black Composers ◽  
White American ◽  
African American Music

This chapter focuses on the popularity of Harry T. Burleigh's spirituals in recitals and other concerts. Burleigh published his first solo arrangement of spirituals from 1911 to 1916, at a time when the tide of interest in African American folk music, especially spirituals, was gathering momentum. At least nineteen white American composers joined the stream. Black composers also produced compositions reflecting their folk heritage during these years. From the 1916–1917 concert season, when his solo arrangement of “Deep River” became the hit of the recital season, Burleigh's role as pioneer arranger and interpreter of spirituals began to eclipse his role as recital singer and art song composer. This chapter explores how the recurring controversy over the origins of African American music made Burleigh a spokesman for the uniquely expressive gifts of African Americans who, he argued, had created America's first genuine folk music. In particular, it considers Burleigh's view that the spirituals were the primary artistic contribution of African Americans. It also discusses the influence of Edward MacDowell on Burleigh's movement toward arranging spirituals as art songs.

scholarly journals Stanley Péan et l’interculturalité en diaspora

Il Tolomeo ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiana Fianco
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
American Music ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Intercultural Exchange ◽  
Young Writer

In spite of being viewed as a young writer until the ’90s, Stanley Péan is now known as one of the most distinctive and established voices in the Haitian-Canadian literary scene. The pivotal moment in his career happened in 1996, when Zombi Blues was published. This novel displays a cultural space in which Haitian traditions and Canadian modernity converge and allow intercultural exchange to take place. Drawing from this perspective, the following article aims to analyse how Péan creates a fictional universe through the blending of cultural elements. Using the collection of myths and beliefs that permeate the Haitian and African cultural panorama as a reference point, we will investigate the ways in which Péan adapted and transposed these traditions to the Haitian diasporic context. Particular attention will be given to the use of jazz and African American music, as well as to the reinterpretation of mythological creatures such as the zombie and the marasa twins. Hence, the article tries to show how Péan’s cultural crossroad contributes to the foundation of a new literary interpretation of Haitianity.

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