The Columbian Exposition—The Chicago World’s Fair

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
American Music ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
African American Music ◽  
World's Columbian Exposition ◽  
Columbian Exposition ◽  
Chicago World's Fair

This chapter focuses on Harry T. Burleigh's participation in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, as representative of African American music. The exposition was designed to celebrate four centuries of progress toward building a lively industrial nation, which Chicago seemed to symbolize. It drew Americans from across the country, in company with Europeans, royals as well as commoners, to see whether the Americans might very literally be able to outshine the Paris Exposition of 1889. Despite resistance by the fair commission, there was some official representation of African Americans. This chapter examines how the World's Fair gave Burleigh, together with Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells, the opportunity to address issues of representation and the ambiguous role that music and public performance could play in confronting discrimination and racist stereotyping.

Journey to Frederick Douglass’s Chicago Jubilee

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-56
Author(s):  
John Mccluskey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
General Public ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
World's Columbian Exposition ◽  
Columbian Exposition ◽  
American Vernacular

To the general public, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was a technological, visual, and cultural showcase in Chicago. For an aging Frederick Douglass, the months-long event presented a set of questions urgent at the dawn of the twentieth century: What does it mean to be civilized? How central for Douglass were seemingly foreign notions of achievements related from ancient Egypt and contemporary Haiti to answering this question? Closer to home, can and should an African American/American vernacular be admitted into any discussion of a national and “racial” identity? Though unresolved by Douglass’ generation, such questions—aesthetic, historical, and political-- would remain important to understanding the tensions and achievements of the Black urban renaissances of the twentieth century.

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.

The Symphony “From the New World”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
African American ◽  
New World ◽  
American Music ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
African American Music ◽  
School Of Music ◽  
Inclusive Approach ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses on Harry T. Burleigh's involvement in the creation of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, “From the New World.” After attending the Chicago World's Fair and visiting Erie, Burleigh returned to New York City in late September 1893 to continue his studies at the National Conservatory of Music. He was joined this time by his friend Will Marion Cook, who was impressed by Jeannette Thurber's genuinely inclusive approach in recruiting students. The two men relished opportunities to enjoy the abundance of fine music the city had to offer, pondering how African American music should find its place in such settings. Burleigh continued to spend evenings with the Dvořák family through the fall. This chapter also considers the controversy stirred by Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 in E Minor and his advocacy of an American school of music based on Negro music.

Slavery and Class in the American South

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Harriet Jacobs ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
William Wells Brown ◽  
The American South ◽  
Work Family

In this study of an entire generation of slave narrators, more than sixty mid-nineteenth-century narratives reveal how work, family, skills, and connections made for social and economic differences among the enslaved of the South. Slavery and Class in the American South explains why social and economic distinctions developed and how they functioned among the enslaved. Andrews also reveals how class awareness shaped the views and values of some of the most celebrated African Americans of the nineteenth century. Slave narrators discerned class-based reasons for violence between “impudent,” “gentleman,” and “lady” slaves and their resentful “mean masters.” Status and class played key roles in the lives and liberation of the most celebrated fugitives from US slavery, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, and William and Ellen Craft. By examining the lives of the most- and least-acclaimed heroes and heroines of the African American slave narrative, Andrews shows how the dividing edge of social class cut two ways, sometimes separating upper and lower strata of slaves to their enslavers’ advantage, but at other times fueling convictions among even the most privileged of the enslaved that they deserved nothing less than complete freedom.

Disposing of Modernity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca S. Graff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Waste Disposal ◽  
Mineral Water ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Frank Lloyd Wright ◽  
Historical Trends ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Urban America ◽  
World's Columbian Exposition ◽  
Columbian Exposition

Through archaeological and archival research from sites associated with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Disposing of Modernity explores the changing world of urban America at the turn of the twentieth century. Featuring excavations of trash deposited during the fair, Rebecca Graff’s first-of-its kind study reveals changing consumer patterns, notions of domesticity and progress, and anxieties about the modernization of society. Graff examines artifacts, architecture, and written records from the 1893 fair’s Ohio Building, which was used as a clubhouse for fairgoers in Jackson Park, and the Charnley-Persky House, an aesthetically modern city residence designed by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Many of the items she uncovers were products that first debuted at world’s fairs, and materials such as mineral water bottles, cheese containers, dentures, and dinnerware illustrate how fairs created markets for new goods and influenced consumer practices. Graff discusses how the fair’s ephemeral nature gave it transformative power in Chicago society, and she connects its accompanying “conspicuous disposal” habits to today’s waste disposal regimes. Reflecting on the planning of the Obama Presidential Center at the site of the Chicago World’s Fair, she draws attention to the ways the historical trends documented here continue in the present.

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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