| Black Orchestras Part 2 |
| Sunday, 29 April 2007 | |
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Nineteenth century Black musicians were limited to a certain media promotion– basically whoever felt compelled to write about them. If the ensemble was quality, or did something unusual, they got press coverage. Just existing was/is not enough; there must be some news-worthy product that merits publication. However, many Whites were not interested in promoting the positive goings-on of Blacks. Therefore, many musicians promoted themselves by composing new songs based on familiar themes, and hiring (oftentimes training as contemporary jazz musicians do today) musicians for their larger orchestras. This task of being a professional musician translated to producing, manipulating, and distributing music as a cultural product and as a means of survival; besides a love for the sound, survival was the impetus behind the music. Many contemporary Black orchestras function similarly finding and often training other musicians to perform with them. Although the musicians are currently formally trained in conservatories and other music institutions, it is not uncommon to find a pupil seated next to his teacher for a gig giving the neophyte performance experience. It’s what arts integrationists call “teaching artists.” The cycle may be seen as ideological: underprivileged people helping one another achieve a similar socioeconomic status, or helping themselves through stronger numbers. Yes there were and still are duos, trios and the like which garner attention, but more often larger ensembles and orchestras get more media coverage. The public acclaim received by entrepreneurial musicians and their ensembles during our lives of social inequality merits attention and prompts discussion. This series began with a quote from Black political thinker W.E.B. Du Bois in order to set up the dichotomy in the lives of 19th century Black Americans, the experience of being Black in 19th century society and how it relates to us now. More specifically, Du Bois’s statement illustrates the pain of enduring racial oppression in terms of the affliction of being Black during the 19th century. Du Bois believed in Black emancipation and argued that economic success would help to alleviate the White hegemonic hold on Black Americans. Du Bois conceded that the struggle for Blacks existed in their dual oppression by race and class. For argument’s sake, I will leave out other ideologies, such as gender, since, in this paper at least, all of the instrumentalists are male. As the musicians were most likely affected mainly by those two –isms, I will only discuss the race and class perspectives. Therefore, the quote, to me, exemplifies the distinction between human rights and civil rights as seen through the eyes of an educated Black American male in the 19th century. At the time, Blacks felt oppressed by both racism and classicism as America transitioned from slave society forward. Du Bois defined this difficulty with duality as double-consciousness. Although Du Bois was not speaking specifically of musicians in his text, one can be made. Ethnomusicologist Philip Bohlman makes the connection between Du Bois’s theory and musicians: “Double consciousness is anything but historically schizophrenic, for a crucial element of consciousness remains anchored in shared traditions derived from notions of what is crucial to the diasporic experience.” Diaspora “is a condition of placelessness, and as such it has become one of the places most articulated by world music.” Here, I interpret the phrase “shared traditions” as the musical traditions of the musicians’ native homeland, even if a vague memory, coupled with musical traditions of their new home, the result of which is “Black music” in America. The Grove Online Dictionary defines African American (Black) music: “African American musics consist of individual and group, and oral and written forms of expression. The various genres that comprise this tradition are associated with specific historical periods, social contexts and functions. They also share a common core of aesthetic qualities of African origin that positions black American music within an African cultural continuum” (Accessed February 22, 2006). Popular thought alleges that “black music” is mostly produced and consumed by and for people of color. However, Samuel A. Floyd and Eileen Southern have also written on Black composers and musicians in the early to mid-19th century that performed an American music not usually attributed to their race: Western art music. If you’re on this site, you’ll recognize that art music is concert music is classical music is the reason for this site. (*wink*). Bohlman explains that the diasporic experience: describes the conditions of being displaced from a homeland, and it inscribes the history and geography that connect a displaced culture to that homeland, or at the very least to a place claimed as home. The music of diaspora is about places of being and places of becoming, or connecting the present with its absence of place to the past and the future, where place can be imaged as real. The process of imagining a sense of place to supplant the condition of placelessness necessarily produces hybridity and fusion formed from juxtaposing repertories gathered along the path defining diaspora (2002: 115).
Most likely, some Blacks in the 19th century searched for a way to dissolve the restrictions or discriminations, namely Du Bois’s race and class issues, which kept them from being socially accepted. Some Blacks found the opportunity for advancement in music, specifically concert music. Nineteenth century Black musicians, band leaders, and composers produced “hybridity and fusion” in their musical endeavors. That is, they took advantage of the opportunity to perform respected European music, but also added to the repertoire by rearranging familiar pieces with their new ideas. Doesn’t that sound like what Blacks do with music in general? They take something familiar and change it, add to it, make something new out of it. Today, we think that only popular music (jazz, R&B, etc.) fuses together different elements, but you have you ever heard a piece by Michael Abels? Black musicians may have performed this fusion of “past and future to remedy their feelings of “placelessness.” But where was there place and where is ours now in the field of classical music? Today, few Black concert musicians appear as popular public figures. Do we really need a superstar? Another Leontyne Price? Another Clarence Cameron White? Musicologist Eileen Southern claims that White America created a place for Black musicians to develop and sustain their craft: First, slave musicians had established the tradition of providing dance music for White America, and it was to be some time before Black America was seriously challenged in the field. Second, there was a tremendous demand for other kinds of music from the steadily expanding and increasingly prosperous population, which could afford to pay for the things it demanded (1997:99).
Blacks were encouraged to enter the role of professional musician and to dominate the field in two ways: White America needed musicians for their most popular pastime: dances; and, White America wanted new songs to prolong their pastime. Blacks were thus persuaded to compose concert, dance, and theater music. That is, affluent White Americans demanded a product (now called Western art, classical, or concert music) which Black musicians could provide. Sullivan explains: “To call the music ‘classical,’ as is now sometimes done, is misleading because it suggests a separation between popular and art music that was certainly less evident then than now. So, given the invitation to nurture their innate musical talents, Black musicians seized the opportunity for musical scholarship, which was based on the accumulated experience of having provided instrumental dance music under previous compulsion. But could it also be true that Black musicians composed and performed concert music partially on account of social and political resistance? Although they may have appeared to assimilate into popular culture through their acceptance, furtherance and recreation of European-derived concert music, Black musicians inserted their own cultural identity into the music for acceptance and distribution to their own community. With this, Black musicians made a conscious effort to forge an identity through the medium of racially acceptable music and to forge a means of earning a living on a national scale.
Stay tuned for Part 3 when I introduce you to one of the first Black orchestras in America lead by a remarkable man, Francis (“Frank”) Johnson. |
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