The Gift of Music - Rockland Community College

The
Gift of Music
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COMPOSERS OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
Wednesday, February 24, 2016 | 10:00am | 7:00pm
(snow date March 2, 2016)
Rockland Community College
Cultural Arts Theater
1.
5.
6.
4.
3.
Clockwise From Top:
1. Mary Lou Williams LC-GLB13-0925DLC, Library of Congress
2. Coleman Hawkins LC-GLB23-0399 DLC, Library of Congress
3. Nina Simone
4. John Coltrane
5. Louis Armstrong LC-USZ62-127235, Library of Congress
6. Noble Sissle
Cover Image: James Reese Europe Clef Club Band, New York Public Library, Image ID1693569
2.
The
Gift of Music:
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COMPOSERS OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
Proudly presented by
African American Historical Society
of Rockland County
Rockland Community College
Performing Arts
Rockland Community College
African American History Month Committee
With generous funding from
Town of Ramapo
Arts Council of Rockland
New York State Council of the Arts
This grant is from the Arts Council of Rockland
through the DEC program of the New York State Council of the Arts.
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African American Historical
Society of Rockland County
The African American Historical Society of Rockland County: Linking/
Preserving the Cultures of the African Diaspora (AAHS), building on the
legacy of its predecessor group established by Dr. Jacqueline Holland, received
its Provisional Charter from the Regents on May 23, 2006 and its Extended
Provisional Charter in May 2011. Over the last several years, the Society, often
in collaboration with community partners, has spearheaded major programs
for the county, especially for schoolchildren. The AAHS is a nonprofit 501c3
organization. Please visit the AAHS website at www.aahsofrockland.org.
Jamila S. Brathwaite
Dr. Arlene Clinkscale
Bruce Delfini
Hon. Toney Earl
Dustin Hausner
Gerald McCarthy
Melissa Roy
Rev. Dr. Louis Sanders
Dr. Lisa Schachter
Willie Trotman
Margaret Tuitt
Co-Presidents
Wylene Branton Wood
Drusilla Kinzonzi
Vice President
Rose Holland
Co-Secretaries
Frank Matthew
James Johnson
Treasurer
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Dana Stilley
Rockland Community College
Performing Arts
Performing Arts at RCC is committed to a professional representation of the
performing arts. The program offers theater, dance and music, with degree or
non-degree status available. Many of our graduates continue their performing arts
studies at major colleges and universities, bringing with them self-confidence and an
enlightened appreciation of the arts. Performing Arts delivers several high quality
productions throughout the year and the summer Shakespeare production by our own
Rockland Shakespeare Company.
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Rockland Community College
African American History Month
Committee
The African American History Month Committee (AAHMC) was established
at Rockland Community College in the early 1980s to plan and celebrate the
contributions and achievements of African Americans in our society. Over the years,
the Committee has produced artistic, cultural, and scholarly programs created
especially for recognition and celebration of African American History Month.
Co-Chairs
Dr. Lisa Schachter
Kim Weston
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The Gift of
Music:
Composers of the African Diaspora
By Wylene Branton Wood
presentation styles have been borrowed by
individuals from other groups, and those
individuals have prospered while some Black
composers died penniless, were manipulated
by circumstance out of their copyrights, and/
or were not given the respect and praise they
deserved.
MUSIC IS A POWERFUL EXPRESSION
OF IDENTITY, OF BELONGING, OF
HISTORY AND CULTURE, OF VALUES
AND EXPERIENCE. IT HAS BEEN CALLED
“A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE,” BUT WHILE
ARGUABLY ALL CULTURES EXPRESS
SOMETHING THAT PASSES FOR MUSIC,
THIS MUSIC IS NOT UNIVERSALLY
UNDERSTOOD OR APPRECIATED. Within
However, there is so much to praise about
the music of Black peoples the world over,
for their diverse music can affect the heart,
the intellect, and bodily movement. Some
weep at the strains of a spiritual; some find
joy and power in a classical piece; others
stomp their feet, clap their hands, or sway
in response to a gospel; some feel connected
and identify with a blues song, and others
become nostalgic, hopeful or happy in the
rhythms of jazz and on and on. The music of
the African Diaspora is a music of the people
and for the people.
a given culture or society, vocal and
instrumental as well as every day sounds used
in creative ways including clapping, stomping,
slapping of thighs, beating of bones and cans,
etc., can soothe, incite anger or fear, uplift,
entertain, educate, instill hope, and bring
joy. Music is deeply rooted in the past and is
expressed with creativity and imagination in
the present. This is the case with composers
of the African Diaspora, who, while many
times trained in European classical music,
reflected upon and utilized the features of
early African music to create many of the
various genres and songs we know today.
While historically prohibited from playing
the music or singing the songs of their past
in Africa due to their enslavement, these
inspired and creative people produced music
that has been variously admired, condemned,
imitated, performed, and manipulated and
stolen over the centuries.
The African American Historical Society of
Rockland County in collaboration with the
Performing Arts Department of Rockland
Community College and the RCC African
American History Month Committee is
proud to present works of composers of the
African Diaspora. We encourage you to try
to identify the music that is more influenced
by European classical traditions and those
works that hint of African influences. You
will be familiar with some of these composers
and others will be introduced to you. What
we present today is but a small sampling of
the richness and beauty of composers of
the African Diaspora, all in honor of African
American History Month 2016.
The music of the peoples of the African
Diaspora is rich and varied, and while
generally acknowledging their talent in
many instances to perform this music,
some fail to attest to their masterful skill in
composing these songs. History shows that
songs, techniques and rhythms as well as
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The Gift of Music:
Composers of the African Diaspora
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WELCOME/ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Emcee, Drusilla Kinzonzi
INTRODUCTION TO THE GIFT OF MUSIC. . . . . . . . . . . . RCC Performing Arts
DVD/MUSICIANS AND AFRICAN MUSIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter Fiore
ANTHEM
“LIFT EVERY VOICE” (the Negro National Anthem) by J. Rosamond and James
Weldon Johnson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ryan McNeill and Leighann Navarro
CLASSICAL
“DEEP RIVER”** (Spiritual) arranged by Carrie Lane Gruselle. . Nyack High School
Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Matt Lucero
“BROWN GIRL”
by William Grant Still . . . . . . . . . . . . Tara Hooker, Rockland Conservatory of Music
“SONATA IN E MINOR: SECOND MOVEMENT”
by Florence Price. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adam Gloc
WORK SONG
“JULIE ANN JOHNSON” by Lead Belly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RCC Performing Arts
SPIRITUALS
“WADE IN THE WATER” Traditional Spiritual . . . . . . . . . . . RCC Performing Arts
“JOSHUA FIT THE BATTLE OF JERICHO”
arranged by Margaret Bonds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adam Gloc & Gilian Maddux
BLUES
“I GOT MY MOJO WORKING” by Muddy Waters . . . . . . . . . . . . Amplified Heat
“SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING” by Howling Wolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Amplified Heat
“WASTED LIFE BLUES” by Bessie Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shirley Crabbe
“MOONLIGHT BLUES” by W.C. Handy . . . . . . . . . . Carl Burnett & Kris Carmello
“CATFISH” by Robert Petway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carl Burnett & Kris Carmello
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GOSPEL
“THE BLOOD WILL NEVER LOSE ITS POWER”
by Andraé Crouch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leighann Navarro
“PRECIOUS LORD, TAKE MY HAND”
by Thomas A. Dorsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RCC Performing Arts
“HOW I MADE IT OVER” by Clara Ward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RCC Performing Arts
RAGTIME
“MAPLE LEAF RAG” by Scott Joplin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adam Gloc
JAZZ
“ROCKIN ‘ IN RHYTHM” by Duke Ellington*. . . . Rockland Conservatory of Music
Jazz Group, Michael Smith, Conductor
“ZAMBIA” by Mario Bauza*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rockland Conservatory of Music
Jazz Group, Michael Smith,Conductor
“WHAT DID I DO TO BE SO BLACK AND BLUE?”
by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shirley Crabbe
excerpt from “ENGRAMS”
by Arthur Cunningham. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adam Gloc
“TAKE IT SLOW”
by Suzzanne Douglas* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suzzanne Douglas & Can Olgun
“IN THE LAND OF OO-BLA-DEE” by Mary Lou Williams. . . . . . . . . Erica Kaplan
“FOUR WOMEN” by Nina Simone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sam Waymon & Friends
“BACKLASH BLUES” by Nina Simone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sam Waymon & Friends
*(EVENING ONLY)
**(MORNING ONLY)
James Weldon Johnson
Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-42498
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Credits
Program Co-Creator/Coordinator:
Wylene Branton Wood
Program Co-Creator/Historical/Photo Exhibit Curator:
Jamila S. Brathwaite
Consultants:
Patty Maloney-Titland, Christopher Plummer, Erica Kaplan,
Peter Fiore, Marigene Kettler, Helen Konrad
Dr. Lisa Schachter, Co-Chair, African
ROCKLAND COMMUNITY
COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION
American History Month Committee
Kim Weston, Bibliographer, Co-Chair,
Dr. Cliff L. Wood, President
African American History Month Committee
Dr. Susan Deer, Provost, Vice President
Peter Grady, Plant Facilities
of Academic and Student Affairs
Dr. Nayyer Hussain, Vice President
SPECIAL SUPPORT
of Finance and Administration
Wylene Branton Wood
Drusilla Kinzonzi
Tom Della Torre, Associate Vice President
of Academic and Community Partnerships
AAHS Co-Presidents
Dana Stilley, Associate Vice President,
Kathleen Naylor, PowerPoint
Enrollment Management
Peter Fiore, DVD,
Patty Maloney-Titland, Chair, Performing Arts
“Musicians and African Music”
Christopher Plummer, Director,
Kyla Brathwaite, AAHS Intern
Cultural Arts Theater
Guest Writers:
John Nichter, Lighting Designer/Technician
Dr. A.J. Williams-Myers,
Chris Kent, Stage Manager
Professor, SUNY New Paltz
Tom Artin, Artist, Writer and Photographer
Matthew Sherman, Asst. Stage Manager
Terrance McKnight, Radio Host, NPR’s WQXR
Matt Hill, House Manager
Gary Solomon, Sound Engineer
PERFORMERS
Tzipora Reitman and Maralin Roffino,
Emcee: Drusilla Kinzonzi
Campus Communications
RCC Performing Arts Students:
Brandon Ali, Vannah Crespo,
James Etienne, Christina Henry,
Robyn Mammato
Gale Latkovic, Graphics Services
Dennis Callinan, Director, Administrative Services
Janice Goldstein, Director,
Multi-Media Production Center
Ryan McNeill, Nathalie Menson,
Leighann Navarro, Parris Robinson,
Sophia Sarrubbo
Doreen Zarcone, Special Events Coordinator
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Credits
Rockland Conservatory of
Music Jazz Group
Nyack High School
Chamber Orchestra
Director: Matthew M.
Lucero
Director, Mike Smith
Sabreen Ahmed
Emma Anderson
Jayden Bowie-West
Sofia Brogno
Maria Camitan
Allison Carbone
Claire Coco
Hannah Curley
Anna de Carvalho
Jasmine Goley
Tyronne Gonzaga
Maeve Hanchrow
Brian Lovejoy
Elaine Marcorde
Amulya Marellapudi
Wilhelm McGinnis
Richard Muratore
Thomas Muratore
Luca Osborne
Duncan Panov
Carlos Perez-Ruiz
Emma Rabinowitz
Melissa Resurreccion
Matthew Suffern
Britney White
Alexus Williams
Krystal Yohannan
Amplified Heat
James Rubino, Guitar/Vocals;
Nick Telesca, Bass;
Rob Cosentino, Drums;
Adam Gloc, Piano/Keyboard
Carl Burnett
Kris Carmello
Shirley Crabbe, Vocals & Albert Ahlf, Piano
Suzzanne Douglas, Vocals & Can Olgun, Piano
Adam Gloc
Tara Hooker
Erica Kaplan
Helen Konrad
Gilian Maddux
Avi Nagin
Sam Waymon, Piano/Vocals and Friends:
Dan Anderson, Bass
Rich Bozak, Drums
Phyllis Kee, Vocals
Dylan Kelehan, Guitar
For a bibliography of articles on Black Composers, please visit this website:
http://libguides.sunyrockland.edu/sb.php.
Special Thanks and Appreciation to the Town of Ramapo, The Arts Council of Rockland & the NY
State Council of the Arts for generous funding that supported this educational and cultural initiative.
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Program
Notes on Jazz
By Tom Artin, jazz musician, writer and photographer
was the New Orleans pianist Ferdinand “Jelly-Roll” Morton.
Aside from writing numerous individual songs, he composed
jazz pieces, or routines for his band, the Red Hot Peppers.
Many of them were modeled on the multi-part ragtime
form. His most famous composition for this band was “Black
Bottom Stomp.”
W. C. Handy, from Memphis, Tennessee, was known as
“Father of the Blues.” The blues form has been one of the
most important and seminal elements of the jazz repertoire
throughout the history of jazz, right up to the present day. A
blues in its strict form consists of twelve musical measures, or
bars, with a more or less fixed progression of chords. Handy
published dozens of blues songs—some he collected from
blues singers, and some, like his most famous song, “St.
Louis Blues,” he composed himself.
Chick Webb
THE AFRICAN AMERICAN INVENTION OF JAZZ
IS OUR COUNTRY’S GREATEST CONTRIBUTION
TO WORLD MUSIC. Throughout the 20th century, jazz
provided the major inspiration for popular and dance music,
and it remains a vibrant, continuously evolving art form in
the 21st.
James P. Johnson was a piano virtuoso in the style known
as “stride.” It got this name from the driving left hand
supplying the bass that reminded listeners of a powerful
man walking or “striding.” But Johnson was also a gifted
and ambitious composer, who wrote not only jazz songs, but
numerous symphonic works, and an opera.
People often confuse ragtime with jazz. Though jazz
followed ragtime historically, and was influenced by it,
these are fundamentally distinct musical forms. Ragtime
was a primarily composed and written music, patterned
after European classical multi-part forms, akin to the
marches of bands like John Philip Sousa’s. The major
ragtime composers and performers such as Scott Joplin
were African American, although—as would later be true of
jazz—whites also wrote and performed ragtime in the style
pioneered by black composers.
Though not strictly speaking a composer, Louis Armstrong
must be mentioned here. He did write a number of jazz
standards. More important, in his playing, Louis Armstrong
brought to fulfillment the basic element of jazz, its rhythmic
feel, which we call swing. With his revolutionary swing feel,
and the soaring inventiveness of his improvising, he is easily
the most universally influential American musician of any
category.
Jazz differs from ragtime notably in its essentially
improvisatory nature. A jazz musician who is improvising
is not reading notes written down by a composer. The
jazz player composes original music spontaneously in the
act of playing; each time a number is performed, what is
improvised is new and distinct.
Unquestionably, the greatest African American jazz
composer was Duke Ellington. It is said that his entire band
was his instrument. In addition to countless arrangements
of popular songs, often so complex and inventive as to be
considered original compositions in their own right, Duke
wrote many extended suites, as well as devotional works
in separate movements he called “Sacred Concerts.” In
later years, he collaborated with the brilliant young Billy
Strayhorn, his compositional “alter-ego.”
A jazz performance comprises ensemble and solo sections.
Jazz solos are always improvised. Ensemble sections,
in which everyone in the band plays together, may be
improvised, and in early jazz, they almost always were. But as
jazz grew more musically complex, ensemble sections were
arranged beforehand, often written down, and performed
from sheet music. Solo sections within a written score,
though, are always improvised.
Duke Ellington’s career as band-leader, song-writer, and
composer spanned over half the 20th century. In the modern
era, African American jazz composers have included such
names as John Lewis, Horace Silver, Oliver Nelson, Charles
Mingus, and most recently, Wynton Marsalis.
The most important early African American jazz composer
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European
Classical Music
A Black & White Affair
By Terrance McKnight
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson
CLASSICAL MUSIC IN WESTERN EUROPE WAS
BORN JUST OVER 500 YEARS AGO. And from the
outset, musicians of African descent were involved both in
Europe and in the “New World.” By law, African cultural
expressions were restricted, but some were integrated into
European Society. For example, their dances like the zarabanda
became the sarabande in France, the chacona became the
ciaccona in Italy and the zarambeque retained its identity in
Spain.
age Emidy was taken from Guinea, West Africa, by Portuguese
slave traders. His musical talents were recognized during his
captivity in Brazil and he was taken to London to study music.
By age 20, Emidy was second violinist in the Lisbon Opera
Orchestra before becoming director of the Orchestra at Truro. When the Atlantic Slave Trade was dismantled, peoples of
African descent were afforded opportunities for education.
Immediately, blacks began using classical forms to document
their own stories, ancestry and culture. In London, Samuel
One of the first celebrated black composers in Europe was
Joseph Boulogne, known as Le Chevalier de St. George. He was
a Senegalese-French violinist who composed and performed
for Marie Antoinette and Louis XV. In the summer of 1778,
Boulogne shared a residence with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
and Mozart’s Little Nothings was inspired by Boulogne’s violin
music. At Boulogne’s request, composer Joseph Haydn came
to Paris where Boulogne conducted premiere performances of
Haydn’s Six Paris symphonies. Coleridge Taylor composed 24 Negro Melodies and African
Romances. In America, Scott Joplin composed operas
about African religious practices and life on the Southern
plantation. Arkansas’s William Grant Still composed Afro
American Symphony, the first symphony by a black man
performed in the United States, and in 1933, Still’s neighbor,
Florence Price, became the first black woman to have a
symphony performed. Since then the lineage of African
American women such as Sissieretta Jones, Marian Anderson,
In Vienna, Joseph Haydn, who is considered the
father of classical style, gave music lessons to George
Bridgetower. Bridgetower’s father was West African, and
his mother was Polish. When he was 10, Bridgetower’s talent
stunned European audiences, particularly his improvised pieces
performed with Ludwig van Beethoven. The Journal Le
Mercure de France said of Bridgetower, “His talent is one
of the best replies one can give to philosophers who wish to
deprive people of his nation and his colour of the opportunity
to distinguish themselves in the arts.” Beethoven’s Violin Sonata
# 9 was composed for George Bridgetower.
Leontyne Price and Mattiwilda Dobbs, Kathleen Battle and
Jessye Norman among others became notable classical singers
in the 20th century along with Roland Hayes, William Warfield
and Robert McFerrin.
These days, African American composers such as T.J.
Anderson, Alvin Singleton and Hannibal Lokumbe are
composing for major American arts institutions while singers
Denyce Graves, Lawrence Brownlee and Eric Owens are
redefining who’s who in opera. The art form that grew up
in Europe 500 years ago and was nurtured by cross cultural
collaborations continues to chronicle history and continues to
In the U.K., the Guinean born Joseph Antonio Emidy became
conductor of the Truro Symphony Orchestra. At 12 years of
thrive as an outlet for creators and performers around the world.
11
The Might of
African Song
Lending Voice to the Embodiment of Slave Spirituals
Albert J. Williams-Myers
Black Studies Department – SUNY-New Paltz
IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE LAST CENTURY
IT WAS THE BELIEF AMONG A CORE OF
ACADEMICS THAT BECAUSE OF THE
TRAUMA OF CAPTURE, the grueling march
from the interior to the coast and the exposure to
deadly, in-humane conditions down below deck on
ships plying the Middle Passage, the African arrived
to be enslaved in the Americas shorn of any inkling
of his/her African culture. For example, the noted
Sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, in 1939, could write:
“Probably never in history has a people been so
completely stripped of its social heritage as Negroes
who were brought to America.”1 To an extent at
that end of the spectrum, one could see how Frazier
was comfortable with what he stated given that while
a student at the University of Chicago, his professor
of Sociology was Robert E. Parks. Back then in 1919,
Parks demonstrated his erudition on the so-called
“Negro Question” when he stated:
receptive to, is the very thing of which Lawrence W.
Levine lays out for scholars. He writes: “Scholars must
be receptive to the possibility that for Africans, as for
other people, the journey to the New World did not
inexorably sever all associations with the Old World.”5
Levine as well reminds us that African descendants in
what became the United States, were from a diversity
of ethnic groups in Africa, and as such “their traditional
cultures and world view,” though somewhat diverse,
confronted a Euro-American world view, into which
they were marginalized, enwrapped in a communal
persona of “toughness and resiliency [embodied with
an] ability to react creatively and responsively.”6 This
African world view, in terms of culture, was not one
totally of cultural survivals but as well transformations
– out of which evolved the sacred Negro Spiritual from
that of its ancestral more secular African Work Song.
In a succinct fashion, since it is very evident that
Africans, like other fellow “Earthlings”, who so-called
“migrated” either coerced or of their own free will,
“arrived with vestiges of their culture and worldview,”
among which was the African work song, the precursor
to the Spiritual. And succinctly as well, a few words
about the encounters of the two, distinct world views –
one European the other African. The initial encounter
of those two world views, African and European, was
not as one would think, totally combative – vocally or
non-vocally – but of give and take. Similar to what I
describe for Pinkster, a Dutch Annual Return-ofSpring festival, it can be said that communally, West
African ethnics, enslaved in America, “in the process
of acculturation used European forms to serve African
functions.”7 Over time, therefore, elements of West
African rituals were incorporated into the Pinkster
Festival. And probably in this fashion, the festival
developed, at least, initially, into a syncretism of their
“give and take” ritual.8 Thus, a similar process can
be concluded with African work songs and Negro
Spirituals, vis-à-vis the European world view. As
for the Negro spirituals, they “were/[are] an African
American creation in which syncretism played a strong
role but in which the foremost voice was that of the
My own impression is that the amount of
African tradition which the Negro brought
to the United States was very small. In fact,
there is every reason to believe, it seems to me,
that the Negro, when he landed in the United
States, left behind him almost everything
but his dark complexion and his tropical
temperament. It is very difficult to find…
anything that can be traced directly to Africa.2
If the two quotes point up anything as to the extent
of or the lack of African cultural survivals and/or
Africanisms in descendant Africans in lands to the
west of that magnificent continent, it is that they are
“a measure of the superficiality and the extent of the
a priorism of sociohistorical research into the Black
Perspective that prevailed during the early decades of
that century.”3 To date, as the Twenty-First Century
unfolds, and in response to that a priorism, there has
been a plethora of publications that rigorously counter
such superficially generalized, opinionated jargon.4
What the two noted scholars refused to see, through
their ethnocentric, academic lenses or be academically
12
heterogeneous African peoples carried into slavery and
there fused into one diverse but recognizable ‘nation’…
spirituals thoroughly naturalized as vehicles of the
Negro imagination.” 9
2.
Spiritual’s message: a) deliverance from
bondage; b) The return to a lost homeland;
and c) Reward for extreme persecution and
suffering.15
As for the African work song, the precursor of the
Spiritual, it permeated every aspect of the American
enslaved work regime. The enslaved “not only picked
cotton but planted rice, husked corn, rowed boats,
rocked babies, cooked food, indeed performed almost
every conceivable task to the ac-companiment of
song.”10 And as described in the words of one exenslaved: “I use to pick 150 pounds of cotton every day.
[And what made that task so bearable] we would pick
cotton and sing, pick and sing all day.”11 In addition to
lightening the rigor of work tasks, enslaved work songs
and, later spirit--uals , had the “duel purpose of not only
preserving communal values and solidarity but also
providing occasions for the individual to transcend, at
least symbolically, the inevitable restrictions of his/[her]
en-vironment and his/[her] society by permitting him/
[her] to express deeply held feelings which ordinarily
could not be verbalized.”12 In line with this for the
enslaved in the United States, author Levine wrote:
“[The work song, and as with the spiritual, provided
important, functional outlets, one being expression
where the enslaved] could depict the foibles of whites
around them with a frankness that simply would not
have been allowed expression in any other form.”13
3.“…it is to the spirituals that historians must look
to comprehend the antebellum slaves’ world
view, for it was in the spirituals that slaves found
a medium which resembled in many crucial ways
the cosmology they had brought with them from
Africa and afforded them the possibility of both
adapting to and transcending their situation.”16
4.“The overriding antiphonal structure of the
spirituals – the call and response pattern which
Negroes brought with them from Africa and
which was reinforced in America…”17
5.The most persistent single image the slave songs
contain is that of the chosen people. The vast
majority of the spirituals identify the singers as
‘de people dat is born of God,’ ‘I really do believe
I’m a child of God.’”18
6.Examples of spirituals: “Nobody knows…” “My
Lord What…” ”Swing Low…”19
An appropriate ending for this Might of African Song,
is a quote from W.E.B. DuBois, author of the book that
is the embodiment of all African Descendants, The
Souls of Black Folk. He stated so eloquently: “The
music [, in song and instruments,] of Negro religion
is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its touching
minor cadencies…still remains the most original and
beautiful expression of human life and longing yet
born of American soil. Sprung from the African forest,
where its counterpart can still be heard, it was adapted,
changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the
slave, until, under stress of law and whip, it became the
one true expression of a people’s sorrow, despair, and
hope.”20
It is, therefore, out of the African secular work song
and/or African cultural survivals that the spiritual
evolved to mesh the temporal world of enslavement
with that of the African perennial sacred World View.
First, some key points that define the Spiritual, and
second, a concluding remark.
1.The sources for the Spirituals are African
(spiritual: “To Wake the Nations”)14
NOTES
1. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro
Family in the United States
(University of Chicago Press,
1939): 211
2. R. E. Park, “The Conflict and
Fusion of Cultures with Special
Reference to the Negro,” Journal
of Negro History 4 (1919): p. 116.
3. A. J. Williams-Myers, Long Hammering Essays on the Forging of
an African American Presence in
the Hudson River Valley to the
Early Twentieth Century (African
World Press, Inc., Trenton, New
Jersey, 1994): p. 85.
4. See: Melville J. Herskovits, The
Myth of the Negro Past (1969);
5.
6.
7.
8.
Lorenzo Turner, Africanisms in
the Gullah Dialect (1949); John
Blassingame, The Slave Community (1972); and my own “Pinkster Carnival: Africanisms in the
Hudson River Valley,” Chapter 5
in Long Hammering (1994), 4.
Lawrence W. Levine, Black
Culture and Black Consciousness
Afro-American Folk Thought
from Slavery to Freedom (Oxford
University Press, New York, 1977):
pp. 4-5.
Ibid., p. 5.
Long Hammering, op. cit., p. 88.
Ibid., p. 88.
13
9. S ee Eric J. Sundquist, To Make
the Nations Race in the Making
of American Literature (The
Belknap Press of Harvard U.
Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts,
1993): pp. 479-480.
10.Levine, op. cit., p. 6.
11.Ibid., p. 6.
12.Ibid., pp. 7-8.
13.Ibid., p. 8.
14.Sundquist, op. cit., p. 481.
15.Ibid., pp. 479-480.
16.Levine, op. cit., p. 19
17.Ibid., p. 214.
18.. Ibid., p. 33.
19.Sundquist, op. cit., pp. 496-497.
20.Quoted in Sundquist, p. 480.
Arthur
Cunningham
By Jamila Brathwaite
and Wilson, Arthur learned about improvisation and
professional techniques. To earn money for lessons, he
did odd jobs near his home in Piermont. Learning of his
talents, these well-to-do Rockland residents introduced
young Arthur to composers Irving Berlin, Rodgers and
Hammerstein, Kurt Weill and the writer Langston Hughes.
Through these vital connections, Cunningham was whisked
into Broadway theaters, where he learned first hand about
the fundamentals of turning out musicals and plays by
spending time in orchestra pits and running errands for the
costumers. Impressed with the budding composer, this
influential group of artists created a fund to help Arthur
study music at Juilliard and later to attend Fisk University.
At Fisk, Arthur would be greatly influenced by his music
studies with the well-known composer and arranger, John
Work who endeavored to arrange spirituals as concert
pieces.
ARTHUR
CUNNINGHAM,
COMPOSER,
CONDUCTOR AND PIANIST WAS BORN IN
PIERMONT, NY, IN 1928.. His work is often described
as eclectic combining elements of classical, jazz and rock
music.
After graduating from Fisk, Arthur Cunningham continued
his studies at Juilliard and earned a Masters Degree
from Columbia Teachers College. His symphonic work
Concentrics premiered at the Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln
Center, NYC, in February 1969. Next, he composed a
rock opera, His Natural Grace, and works such as Engrams
and Harlem Suite that included the movements Apollo,
Sugar Hill, Lenox and Lullabye for a Jazz Baby, which
was performed regularly by the Alvin Ailey Dance
Company. Throughout his career, Cunningham composed
many orchestral works in addition to choral and instrumental
pieces.
“How do you stop the music?... five-year old Arthur
complained to his mother. He later explained that “I was
constantly hearing things in my head all the time…and it
was giving me a headache.” Arthur’s mother suggested
piano lessons, which provided him with a musical outlet and
relieved his symptoms. However, Arthur’s father was not
as understanding about his son’s need to to be a source of
music. He believed that Arthur’s spare time should have
been centered on more manly pursuits like football rather
than reading books and playing piano. His father also
worked hard at the local paper mill, and when Arthur’s
piano playing disturbed his rest on more than one occasion,
in frustration he chopped up Arthur’s piano and threw it out
of the house. Despite this, Arthur continued his lessons at
the Metropolitan Music School in New York City, but for
the next seven years, he would practice at the homes of
his neighbors. In later years, Cunningham said he grew to
understand his father, stating “I’m sure that the sounds I was
making were not too pleasant to hear.”
Arthur traveled to conduct his own works, played jazz piano
and toured internationally with his wife, Kate Davidson, a
cabaret singer. At home in Nyack, he continued working
as a vocal coach and taught composition in addition to
piano. Cunningham was highly regarded in Rockland and
as one local community leader stated, “He was quite a
big deal.” Arthur Cunningham was honored for his work
during a special concert organized by Rockland Community
College’s African American History Month Committee
shortly before his death in 1997.
Considered by his music teachers to be a child prodigy,
by age thirteen, Arthur had the unique opportunity of
working with professional jazz musicians Johnny Mehegan
and Teddy Wilson. This experience was invaluable to his
journey as a musician and composer. From both Mehegan
*Special thanks to Dana Stilley and Dr. John Ellis whose
dissertation regarding Arthur Cunningham is invaluable.
**Photo by George Ancona courtesy of the Estate of Arthur
Cunningham
14
Clockwise From Top:
1. Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake
2. Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges
3. Dizzy Gillespie
4. King Oliver
5.Margaret Bonds
Library of Congress LC-USZ62-105747
6.H. Lawrence Freeman
Courtesy of Holly Zuber Banks
7. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
15
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