Time: Thursday, 14/Nov/2024: 10:45am - 12:15pm Session Chair: Mark Burford, Reed College |
Location: Monroe 6th floor, Palmer House Hilton Hotel |
Recent Research on African American Music in the Nineteenth Century
Despite the pioneering work by Eileen Southern, much research on African American music in the nineteenth century remains hidden in the realms of shadow history (André 2020). Early works examining Black music history (Trotter 1881, Cuney-Hare 1936) remain essential given the dearth of contemporary documentation. Beginning in the 1970s, Samuel A. Floyd Jr., Charles Jones, Arthur LaBrew, Josephine Wright, and others laid a modern foundation that can facilitate new work on the topic by those scholars who find their work. Recently, musicological scholarship has begun to catch up to popular interest in the composer and bandleader Francis Johnson, arguably the most famous American musician of the early nineteenth century. Since 2020, there have been dissertations and theses written on his music (Ambrose 2020, Kramer 2022), a new Francis Johnson Fellowship (Library Company of Philadelphia 2022), and a complete works edition (Roust, forthcoming). In addition, African American music from throughout the nineteenth century is becoming increasingly accessible, thanks to resources such as Music by Black Composers, the Composer Diversity Database, and Expanding the Music Theory Canon (Maust 2023).
Beyond Johnson, the renewed academic interest in nineteenth-century Black music has not yet reached the general public. Currently, there is still minimal accessibility to recordings and sheet music of many African American composers during this time, even as canonic music is easily accessible via IMSLP and other resources. Expanding scholarly conversations, like those in this panel, are critical to expanding the accessibility of nineteenth-century African American music and the history intertwined within.
This session brings together scholars at various stages in their careers who are studying African American music across the full range of the nineteenth century. The first paper surveys Philadelphia’s Black musical community from 1800 through 1850. The second paper examines Francis Johnson’s grand American tour in 1842–43, when his band gave performances in locations ranging from the Mid-Atlantic to the Great Lakes and from Missouri to New England. The third paper looks to the end of the century, centering a conversation of the 1893 Columbian Exposition around the Black classical music representation at the World’s Fair.
Presentations of the Symposium
Philadelphia as a Black Musical Center from 1800-1850
Philadelphia’s early nineteenth-century Black music scene is a precursor to African American styles like ragtime, the blues, and jazz. The city’s first two Black-founded churches, African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, emphasized music as a core learning principle. A generation of Black musicians would develop because of this. The churches served as a starting point for many of these musicians, and, soon after, a frequent employer of their services.
From the 1820s-1840s, this collective grew to become popular bandleaders, innovative composers, and sacred concert leaders. At the center of this musical community was Francis Johnson (1792-1844), the most popular musician in Philadelphia whose eponymous band was well-known throughout the States and Europe. Many other musicians found success in part because of their connection to the Francis Johnson band. Composer and bandleader James Hemmenway (1800-1849) was first tabbed by Johnson in 1824 to lead the band during General Lafayette’s tour. Aaron J. R. Connor (1808-185?) conducted sacred concerts as early as 1833 in Boston and in 1846, his band rivaled the Johnson band and another successful group led by Isaac Hazzard (1804-c1864). William Appo (1808-1880), who also found success in New York, was part of a musical family taken in by Philadelphia’s Black elite. His older sister, Helen, married Johnson; their younger sister, Ann, was the first African American woman organist on record; their brother Joseph played in the orchestra at Walnut Street Theater. These and many other successful Black musicians in this circle were a product of social conditions in free Black Philadelphia life.
In this paper, I establish a well-rounded view of what was musically developing in Philadelphia’s Black Metropolis. Practices in nineteenth-century Black music research are emphasized by accentuating the primary sources used to rediscover this cohort. Concert programs and newspaper ads provide a timeline of musical engagements and the names of a plethora of musicians. Church and federal records combined with genealogical research are also critical. The resulting narrative shows Philadelphia’s Black musical community was not an outlier, rather, it was the center of a Black arts movement.
Francis Johnson’s Grand American Tour, 1842–43
In 1842, the Philadelphia-based composer and bandleader Francis Johnson was firmly established as one of the leading musical voices in the United States. His 35-year career had already included performances during the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1824–25 tour of America, the 1832 centenary celebrations for George Washington, and two presidential inaugurations. In addition, he began taking his band on tour during the 1820s and 1830s. In addition to performances in resort towns in New York, Virginia, and New Jersey, he and his band toured through New England, the Hudson Valley, and major port cities on Lake Erie. In 1842, however, he embarked on his most ambitious tour yet: an eight-month venture that included performances in at least ten states, the Wisconsin Territory, and the British colony of Upper Canada.
Press coverage of the tour confirms that the grand tour was a tremendous success. In Louisville, KY, for example, their planned three-concert run featured standing-room-only crowds, which encouraged them to extend their stay by a week in order to give more concerts. The tour also engendered controversy. In St. Louis, MO, Johnson and his band ran afoul of the law as “unlicensed free colored men,” and in Allegheny, PA, they were attacked by a mob as they returned to their hotel after playing a concert. In both cases, the widespread press coverage confirms the nationwide interest in Johnson—these stories were published in newspapers from New England to the Deep South, and from the Old Northwest to the Mid-Atlantic.
This talk chronicles Johnson’s Grand American Tour, both documenting where his band performed and how they were received. In addition, it examines the works that Johnson composed while on this tour, such as The American Girl, Boone Infantry Brass Band Quick Step, Monongahela Waltz, Planter’s House Assembly Waltz, and the St. Louis Fire Company’s Anniversary Parade March.
The Indifference of Difference: Sonic Representation of Blackness in Classical Music at the 1893 Chicago World Fair
To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, The Chicago's World Columbian Exchange of 1893 strived to display the innovations and progress of the modern world. There are extremely well-kept records of the Columbian World Fair, and a number of institutions and archives house the intricate plans, newspaper articles, and photographs of the momentous event. But in the "White City" archives, there is an essential element missing from The United States’s display of its glory and achievement—African Americans and the culture of Black America.
Taking matters into their own hands, the Black intelligentsia of the 19th century disrupted the white-washed narration, coordinating the "Colored People's Day," pleading for their racial uplift agenda, planting the seeds for the New Negro Movement of the 20th Century. One way the progress of the American Negro was displayed was through the music of Black composers and Black musicians with their grasp on European Classical music. Inside Colored People's Day and at large, Black Classical music was on display, marking the emergence of a new school of American composers crafting explicitly “American” music.
By piecing together multiple archives of composers such as Will Marion Cook, Scott Joplin, and H. Lawrence Freeman, and other Black intelligentsia in attendance, this paper acts as a storytelling of the Black classical participation at the Chicago World's Fair that has been largely overlooked or missing from official records. Furthermore, the cultural complexities of Black representation presented problems. Alongside this shadow history, I present a cultural critique of the fair, as Black people and people of color, in general, were largely viewed by visitors in dehumanizing tactics camouflaged as educational, ethnographic experiences, contradicting the Black intelligence's agenda.