Classically Black

A virtual space dedicated to sharing and compiling the works of black classical pianists and interrogating the intersections between race, class, classical music and resistance.

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A classic black bop.

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What is classicallyblack to you?

I wanted to open up the conversation around what is classic black music to my friends and family. Because who says we can’t redefine and interrogate what is classical” to each one of us. I had a conversation with Qua Saylés, an International Studies masters student at DePaul about what is classic black music to her and why in the conversation below.  Enjoy and many thanks to Qua!

X: What kinds of music did you listen to as a kid?

Q: As a kid, I recall my mom playing a lot of Gerald Levert. SHE LOVES HIM. I remember her getting pulled over for speeding. She was playing something by him and the officer goes “Oh, you jamming huh.” She didn’t get a ticket.

My gma listened to a lot of what my cousins and I used to call “nasty blues.” We called it “nasty blues” because of the sexually explicit lyrics. You know, the same kind Gma doesn’t like to hear coming from Young Thug. Some of her favorite artists are Johnny Taylor, J. Blackfoot, Denise Lasalle, Peggy Scott-Adams. They’re some of mine too.

But my choice of music as a kid was rangy and not classicallyblack: The Spice Girls, Britney Spears, NSYNC, TLC, Lil Bow Wow, Missy Elliot… Uncle Kracker’s ‘Follow Me’ is still a classic for me.

X: So start telling me about when you first heard their songs.When did you realize they were a bop!  For me, their songs really seem to encapsulate black joy. We use them at literally every black party.

Q: Today, I get into these moods where I listen to “old school” or my classicallyblack bops. Rick James’ Mary Jane, Curtis Mayfield’s Pusherman, Al Green’s Take Me to the River, Shirley Brown’s Woman to Woman, Johnnie Taylor’s Who’s Making Love, Peggy Scott-Adam’s Bill. I could go on and on. These are some of my favorite songs - and I know all of the lyrics. These are mostly the songs my gma would play with me, riding shotgun in her blue 1989 Oldsmobile 98. Super rangy, but classic in their style.

My absolute favorite classically black song is Frankie Beverly and Maze’s Before I Let Go.  I don’t know a song that is a bigger bop than this. I remember hearing, definitely not listening to it when I was kid. It was the music my mom would blast at ignorant levels on Saturday mornings to tell me that it was time for me to get up and help her clean the house. Because the music was often in relation to cutting my weekend sleep-ins short and cleaning, I didn’t like it - or at least I thought I didn’t. I think this song is special and powerful because it reminds me of this very moment. Today, it is my favorite song. I still clean to it. I get ready to it. I play it to kick off every party.  It’s soul. It’s funk. It’s r&b. It’s rock. Like, it just makes sense every time you hear it. The instrumental at the very beginning of Southern Girl.... Yoooooooo. I don’t have the words to describe how good this music feels. I just immediately know what it is and it’s a good time. Beverly’s voice and Maze’s incredible play… man, their music is black joy. For this reason, they are a fixture on every black family’s get-together or cook-out playlist. It transcends time because old folk and younger kids like it. I am one of their truest fans. You probably can’t find a 20-something year old a bigger fan than me.

Many thanks again to Qua! If you haven’t listened to this classic black bop, please do! https://open.spotify.com/track/7KFJ33pZ8E3yPT4yxde5aQ 

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Frances Walker-Slocum’s Brilliance and Advocacy: Bringing Black Classical Composers to the Forefront of Oberlin Conservatory

“Frances Walker was born on 6 March 1924 in Washington D. C. to George Theophilus Walker and Rosa King. Walker attended Dunbar High School, a Black institution known for its prominent alumni. She earned her Bachelor of Music at Oberlin Conservatory in 1945,  the only school to grant an undergraduate degree of music to a Black woman. Walker-Slocum recalled, “every black musician I knew in Washington studied in Oberlin. Oberlin was a vanguard in those days as far as blacks were concerned.”[1] She then taught for one year at Tougaloo College, a historically Black college, where she met Henry Chester Slocum, who would become her husband.[2] Slocum also attended Oberlin, but they never met there. In 1950 they married in New York City because Mississippi then prohibited intermarriage. In 1952, their son George Jeffrey, was born. Walker-Slocum earned an M. A. from Teachers College of Columbia University in 1952, and a professional diploma in 1972.”

Read more here: http://americanfeminisms.org/frances-walker-slocums-brilliance-and-advocacy-bringing-black-classical-composers-to-the-forefront-of-oberlin-conservatory/ 

Thanks Caitlin for the share! 

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Rest in Peace to my wonderful grandfather (center). Thank you for igniting my love and passion for piano. 

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Happy Blackout day from pianists Hazel Scott, Natalie Hinderas, Patrice Rushen, Nina Simone and Philippa Schuyler!

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Black Composers Matter by Liane Curtis (Excerpt)

“In a season when major Boston institutions such as the BSO and Handel and Haydn Society continue to assert that women and minorities wrote no music worth hearing (with the BSO offering only occasional tokens as exceptions that prove the rule), it is important to notice the efforts being made by organizations that celebrate the works of usually marginalized groups. Castle of Our Skins is such an organization, offering both concerts and educational programming. On Saturday at the Boston Public Library (McKim Building), they offered an “edu-tainment” string quartet event of just over an hour that was mostly concert, but framed with insightful and lively remarks by violist Ashley Gordon (Artistic & Executive Director). The other musicians were Megumi Stohs Lewis and Mina Lavcheva, violins, and Michael Dahlberg, cello. COOS’s name is drawn from the 1972 “Poem (for Nina)” by Nikki Giovanni, that urges a celebration of black identity.”

Many thanks to Liane Curtis for this wonderful article on the work of Castle of Our Skins and their efforts to share and educate around black composers. Please read the full article for more information on the wonderful composers highlighted. This is a great resource for students, scholars and teachers when trying to incorporate more black composers into the classical cannon. 

Full Article: http://www.classical-scene.com/2016/10/03/black-composers-matter/

And for more information on Castle of Our Skins and their work: http://www.castleskins.org 

And thanks Dr. Dell’Antonio for the share! 

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In this clip, Nina Simone performs, Mississippi Goddam - one of her most famous songs. It was released on her album Nina Simone in Concert from her three concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1964. Musically, we find Nina Simone playing a piano line that you would find in earlier musical theatre. This is typical of Simone - contrasting light and playful compositional techniques with more serious subject matters. This is reminiscent of her earlier compositions where she uses an oom-pah pah baseline that is directly influenced by her early career performing show tunes. The piece, written in a major key, is a direct antithesis to the sombre and dark nature of Simone’s lyrics.

In this song, Simone speaks on the racial horrors of a few of the states that comprise the Deep South (Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi). Historically, these states have been viewed as some of the worst as far as their involvement in the institution of slavery, Jim Crow and their staunch resistance to desegregation. Although this begs the question: was slavery really better or worse anywhere if people were still enslaved? 

This song is easily interpreted as a form of covert resistance. Despite the clear justice-oriented subject matter, it is important to note that it is not more radical or powerful than Hazel Scott’s performance. Both Scott and Simone are subverting the narrow and monolithic forms of what it meant to be a black woman and classical pianist.  

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Here we find Hazel Scott in a audition scene for Columbia Pictures’ 1943 film The Heat is On. In this scene,  several things are happening. Scott is found performing on both pianos with a high level of virtuosity that we associate with classical piano. The pianos, black and white, are used to create an aesthetic that is both pleasing and intentional. Recall the visual elements of the piano. The stark black and white colors contrast can also be viewed through a lens of resistance and can challenge the audience to really think on race and classical music in this moment. I do not believe this was the intention of this moment, but it hard to ignore the overt and covert racial tones. This scene is indicative of a larger trend in Scott’s career, particularly, her refusal to play stereotypical roles or caricatures. For this reason, this is a clear form of Scott’s resistance.

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Natalie Hinderas. Public Domain.

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Nina Simone, as painted by Beth Consetta Rubel. Austin,Texas 2016.

Find more of Beth’s work at her website http://www.bethconsettarubel.com and on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethconsettarubel/.

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Langston Hughes's "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"

“For racial culture the home of a self-styled "high-class" Negro has nothing better to offer. Instead there will perhaps be more aping of things white than in a less cultured or less wealthy home. The father is perhaps a doctor, lawyer, landowner, or politician. The mother may be a social worker, or a teacher, or she may do nothing and have a maid. Father is often dark but he has usually married the lightest woman he could find. The family attend a fashionable church where few really colored faces are to be found. And they themselves draw a color line. In the North they go to white theaters and white movies. And in the South they have at least two cars and house "like white folks." Nordic manners, Nordic faces, Nordic hair, Nordic art (if any), and an Episcopal heaven. A very high mountain indeed for the would-be racial artist to climb in order to discover himself and his people.

But then there are the low-down folks, the so-called common element, and they are the majority---may the Lord be praised! The people who have their hip of gin on Saturday nights and are not too important to themselves or the community, or too well fed, or too learned to watch the lazy world go round. They live on Seventh Street in Washington or State Street in Chicago and they do not particularly care whether they are like white folks or anybody else. Their joy runs, bang! into ecstasy. Their religion soars to a shout. Work maybe a little today, rest a little tomorrow. Play awhile. Sing awhile. 0, let's dance! These common people are not afraid of spirituals, as for a long time their more intellectual brethren were, and jazz is their child. They furnish a wealth of colorful, distinctive material for any artist because they still hold their own individuality in the face of American standardizations. And perhaps these common people will give to the world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid to be himself. Whereas the better-class Negro would tell the artist what to do, the people at least let him alone when he does appear. And they are not ashamed of him--if they know he exists at all. And they accept what beauty is their own without question.”

This is an incredibly interesting piece from Hughes. Throughout the piece, we find Hughes making the argument that music art that is truly authentic to the black experience essentially is found within the working class or even “low-down” folks. And that middle class black folks, particularly in the north, have lost touch with the an authentic black experience. Reading this, I instantly thought about how dangerous it is to fetishize the working or poorer classes. And that assimilation is not as cut and dry as Hughes would like us to believe. I think it is paramount that we start asking the questions: what does resistance look like at different class levels and how can we make sure we are not looking at the black community as a monolith. More thoughts on this to come!

Full piece found here: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/mountain.htm 

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Undine Smith Moore Interview as published in the IAWM Journal, February 1997, pp. 9-15.

I think of the powerful social change in a work like Picasso's Guernica. I think of the refusal of Pablo Casals to play, though courted by dictators. And I think of Marian Anderson not marching and joining ordinary protest movements, but, nevertheless, opening up the doors of Constitution Hall. I think of a woman like Natalie Hinderas who by the very perfection of her playing is an agent of social change. And I think that a meeting such as this, and such as the activities which have gone before, these are tremendous forces for social change, and they should be kept in the minds of musicians

The Role and Position of the Black Artist

I was asked to comment on the role and the position of the Black artist. I would speak firstly of position, and this is not related just to Blacks, it's everybody:

The artist is not highly valued in American society. And from what I read in the newspapers from day to day, now, I don't think it's being advanced. Of this group, Blacks are at the bottom. The Black will have less time to write, to create. The Black will find greater difficulty getting his work printed, recorded, performed. The Black will be omitted from so-called serious texts of books and lists of music, will get comparatively little money, which means that while the position may be very slowly improving, in general, the lot is not very different from that of others of his kind in any comparative scale.

I may say that though I have stressed [the Black artist], because I was asked...to talk about Blacks, I think that for certain reasons for a while it will continue to be true of women. With regard to the role of the artist, I had written:

The primary function of any artist in any period is to convey as honestly and as sincerely as he can his personal vision of life. Since the artist belongs to the most sensitive segment of any society, a Black composer in contemporary America, aware of his own plight and that of his people, can scarcely avoid some expression reflecting these conditions. Without positing a social purpose as a requirement of art, he cannot really escape expressing his heritage somewhere in the body of his work. This expression in the hands of the gifted artist can be powerful. 

Full link to interview: http://iawm.org/stef/articles_html/Moore_undine_smith_my_life.html

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Rhapsody In Blue (1945) -- (Movie Clip) I've Got Rhythm (Hazel Scott)

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/221246/Rhapsody-In-Blue-Movie-Clip-I-ve-Got-Rhythm-Hazel-Scott-.html 

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This is a great and helpful resource when understanding what cultural appropriation is and how it can be harmful, beautifully articulated by Amandla Stenberg. 

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For this rainy day. A little tune that’s just lovely enough to accompany a nice book and some tea.