Category: W.E.B. Du Bois

  • 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…

  • Booker T. vs. W.E.B.

    (W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington) I subscribe to the Poem-A-Day email offered for free by the Academy of American Poets. It’s nice to wake up to a poem before you start dealing with your to-do lists and putting out the various fires of everyday life. During the week, the Academy sends out a…

  • The Sorrow Songs

    W.E.B. Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. It remains a classic in the fields of both sociology and African-American literature. Du Bois believed that there were ten “master songs” that defined the African diaspora in America, and, in a kind of meta-narrative, he prefaced each chapter of the book with a quotation…