I Come for to Sing

2018 ◽  
pp. 96-114
Author(s):  
Kevin D. Greene
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Music ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
The Way

From 1930 to 1970, a second folk music revival took hold in the United States and Europe, determined to capture and preserve for posterity US and European vernacular music. Critical to this collection of folklorists, academics, political activists, and entrepreneurs was the history and impact of African American music on folklore and culture. Big Bill, quite familiar with the types of country and Delta blues the folk music revival craved stood happy to oblige. Soon, one of the most sophisticated and urbane performers of the age began performing alone accompanied by his guitar for folk audiences from New York to Chicago. Within this community, Broonzy found a culture and environment willing and able to support his transitioning career from black pop star to folk music darling. Along the way, he would meet more individuals who could aid in his career reinvention and he both accepted and rejected their expectations of him and his music.

The Fiery Debate

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Antonin Dvorak ◽  
Musical Identity ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Vernacular Music

About eight months after Antonín Dvořák became director of Jeannette Thurber’s National Conservatory of Music in New York, he weighed in publicly on the question of American musical identity and argued that African American vernacular music (or “negro melodies”) should become the foundation of a national classical style. The New York Herald, which first printed his remarks, stoked a months-long debate that exposed deep-seated anti-Black racism throughout the country’s classical music industry as many musicians rejected the Bohemian’s suggestions outright. Dvořák remained supportive of African American music and musicians but did not fully understand the political implications of his positions.

Africa in the Shuffle

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-23
Author(s):  
Immanuel Wallerstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
The U.S

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the study of Africa in the United States was a very rare and obscure practice, engaged in almost exclusively by African-American (then called Negro) intellectuals. They published scholarly articles primarily in quite specialized journals, notably Phylon, and their books were never reviewed in the New York Times. As a matter of fact, at this time (that is, before 1945) there weren't even very many books written about African-Americans in the U.S., although the library acquisitions were not quite as rare as those for books about Africa.

The Brewing Storm

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Composers ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Black Vernacular ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
Instrumental Works ◽  
Open Question

A small number of US-based composers began experimenting with the use of African American vernacular music as the basis for instrumental works around 1880, arguing that this music formed a truly American folk repertoire. Their works found public favor in the United States and, more importantly, in several European cities in the months leading up to Dvořák’s arrival as director of the National Conservatory. Dvořák’s own position in the debate about American national style was an open question until May 1893, when he revealed his belief in the authentic American identity of Black vernacular music, thus affirming the approach of earlier American composers.

Eileen Southern

Popular Music ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-379
Author(s):  
David Horn
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
American Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
College Administration ◽  
Music Department ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Congregational Singing ◽  
Renaissance Music

Eileen Southern, who died in Florida in October 2002, was widely recognised as a pre-eminent figure in the study of African-American music. Her seminal history, The Music of Black Americans, first published in New York in 1971, was the first academic study to give serious scholarly attention to the totality of African-American music – from the congregational singing of slaves to all-black Broadway musicals, from blues and jazz to experimental composers – and was hugely influential. Resolutely unpolemical and meticulously balanced, it did more to establish the validity of the subject in the academy than any other single book. It had its genesis in a course which Dr Southern (who had a Ph.D. in Renaissance music from Harvard) developed in the late 1960s at Brooklyn College. She herself later described how she was put under pressure to devise the course by a college administration somewhat desperate to find ways to meet the demands of black students for the inclusion of Black Studies in the curriculum. The idea met with disbelief among colleagues in the music department, and the particular scorn of an unnamed Englishman, holder of a Ph.D. in musicology from Oxford, who opined that a course in black music presented ‘nothing of substance to deal with’. Declaring ‘I'll show them’, a furious Eileen Southern was determined to design a course that demonstrated the range of black music. The result turned out to be so rich that a more sympathetic colleague suggested one day to Dr Southern that she turn the course into a book – and The Music of Black Americans was the result (Standifer, n.d.).

Introducing Antonín Dvořák to African American Music

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
New World ◽  
American Music ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Antonin Dvorak ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Second Year ◽  
Academic Year

This chapter focuses on how Harry T. Burleigh, during his study at the National Conservatory of Music, became Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's most direct link to the African American music traditions in which he was keenly interested. Burleigh's second year at the conservatory would be a momentous one not only for him but also for the conservatory and for American music when Dvořák was appointed director. By the end of the academic year, Dvořák would complete the composition of his most famous American work, Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, “From the New World.” Burleigh would be intimately involved in the process of its creation. Dvořák validated the artistic value of African Americans' folk music during his time at the conservatory.

scholarly journals Visions of Diversity: Cultural Pluralism and the Nation in the Folk Music Revival Movement of the United States and Canada, 1958–65

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
GILLIAN A. M. MITCHELL
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
The North ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
Revival Movement ◽  
Excellent Work ◽  
The 1960S

This article focusses on the concept of cultural pluralism in the North American folk music revival of the 1960s. Building on the excellent work of earlier folk revival scholars, the article looks in greater depth at the “vision of diversity” promoted by the folk revival in North America – at the ways in which this vision was constructed, at the reasons for its maintenance and at its ultimate decline and on the consequences of this for anglophone Canadian and American musicians and enthusiasts alike.

Learning Freedom: Education, Elevation, and New York's African-American Community, 1827–1829

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 618-645
Author(s):  
Michael Hines
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
African American ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
African American Community ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
American Citizenship ◽  
The Individual

Even though the black community of antebellum New York City lived in a society that marginalized them socially and economically, they were intent on pursuing the basic privileges of American citizenship. One tactic African Americans employed to this end was the tenacious pursuit of education, which leaders believed would act both as an aid in economic advancement and as a counterargument against the widely assumed social inferiority of their race. The weekly newspaper, Freedom's Journal, the first African American owned and operated newspaper in the United States, was an avid supporter of this strategy of social elevation through education. From 1827 to 1829, the paper's editors, John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish, used their platform to advertise for a range of schools, editorialize on the importance of learning, and draw connections between the enlightenment of the individual and the progress of the race.

Conclusion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Fanning
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Critical Time ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Haitian American ◽  
The Relationship

This concluding chapter argues that the 1820s was a critical time in the relationship between the United States and Haiti, a time when each exerted influence on the other that had the potential to change their respective histories even more radically. During this decade, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer concentrated on U.S. relations in his work to improve the standing of his nation and opened up the island to African American emigrants as a gambit to strengthen his case for diplomatic recognition from the United States. Boyer's emigration plan found support among a diverse group of Americans, from abolitionists to black-community leaders to hard-nosed businessmen who all saw profit in the enterprise for different reasons. Ultimately, the project had a lasting effect on thousands of emigrants; on the black communities of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; on Haitian-American relations; and on African American political discourse.

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