Category: Uncategorized

  • The Spread of Jazz

    Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five. Armstrong’s wife, pianist Lil Hardin, is at far right, next to Armstrong. The rise of recording and broadcasting technologies led to the spread of jazz from New Orleans to the urban centers of the North in the 1920s. Panel 1 of The Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), showing…

  • Origins of Jazz

    Content/Trigger warning: Racist imagery and lyrics. Among the origins of jazz are several overlapping musical genres that were popular at the end of the nineteenth century. Black musical theater, which, around the turn of the twentieth century, crossed color lines to become popular with white as well as black audiences. Marti Newland singing “Swing Along,”…

  • Classically Black, part IV: Postmodernism

    When we talk about postmodernism in music, we’re generally referring to the period after World War II. Some of the hallmarks of postmodernism are an experimental approach to form, structure, and instrumental/vocal techniques, a distrust of historically-informed musical styles, and an aesthetic that borrows from and refers to popular music styles. Postmodernist music has taken…

  • Classically Black, part III: Nationalism and Internationalism in the 20th Century

    In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some African-American composers working in classical music chose to compose in the standard forms of the European classical music traditions — i.e, an international style. William Grant Still, for instance, known as the “Dean of African-American Composers,” could be considered an “internationalist.” Among many other works, Still wrote five…

  • Classically Black, part II: The Songs of Black Volk Playlist

    W.E.B. Du Bois (above), who spent several years studying in Germany in the 1890s, greatly admired German classical music, and considered it a repertoire full of freedom and possibility for black performers. He especially loved the operas of Richard Wagner (1813-1883), and in 1936 he made a pilgrimage to Bayreuth, the opera house in Bavaria…

  • Black Opera

    Harry Lawrence Freeman (1869-1954). Harry Lawrence Freeman, known in his lifetime as “the black Wagner,” was the first African-American opera composer to have a staged work successfully produced. Born in Cleveland, Freeman eventually moved to Harlem, where he taught music and established the Negro Grand Opera Company. His opera 1914 Voodoo is about a love triangle…

  • Classically Black, part I

    A playlist of some of the earliest known music by African-American composers writing in the traditions of European classical music. Newport Gardner, 1746-1826. Francis Johnson (1792-1844). “The Wildflower Wreath” by Aaron J.R. Connor (d. 1850), sung by the great African-American tenor George Shirley: More Blind Tom Wiggins:

  • Rap Battles

    Antonio Delgado and John Faso in debate. One of the most contested races in the 2018 midterms is right here in New York State, in the 19th congressional district, where incumbent John Faso is using his Democratic opponent Antonio Delgado’s former career as a rap artist as a talking point. A radio ad taken out…

  • Schubertiades in a Police State

    Schubert’s room, as drawn by his friend Moritz von Schwind, 1821. Franz Schubert at age 16. Franz von Schober. The Austrian poet Franz von Schober (1796-1882) was evidently the driving force behind the Schubertiades, the semi-private salon gatherings at which Franz Schubert premiered many of his Lieder. Schober was in fact such a close friend of…

  • Authenticity, part V: Tribute or Appropriation?

    As John Lomax was the first to record Lead Belly, so Alan Lomax was the first to record Muddy Waters. Muddy Waters (1915-1983) was born McKinley Morganfield, the son of sharecroppers, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, also the homeplace of blues greats Son House and Robert Johnson. He moved to Chicago as part of the Great Migration in…