[Edmond Dede; Hot Springs Music Festival; Richard Rosenberg, Conductor; Naxos 8.559038 (2000)]
Classically Trained
Monday, October 6, 2008
over the weekend i was at my granparents house and i was talkin about this blogger project with them, and told them how i was going to write about classical music and ballet and what not... so my family are originally from haiti...(cant speak french nor creole... i am in total ignorance of my heritage...) and my grandfather always emphasizes the thought that i dont know anything about my culture, and then he told me about a crazy story that haitians compose classical music, and i really dont know if he was telling the truth because he always tells us something crazy about what haitians did, and me being ignorant i was jus laughing at this old man, and was like ok grandpa...
Classically Trained
then i decided to go home and actually google black african american violinists, and the first thing that came up was a creole native violinist who family originated from the french west indies...haiti to my belief and he was a known prodigy and composer, his name was Edmond Dede. He actually learned his skill from a free black man, Constanin Debergue who conducted free creoles in the south. He began studying music with an italiam native Gabici, but it angered a lot of whites in the south that a black man was participating in the classical arts...so many haters... Dede was a typicial starving artist, working low income jobs just to keep his funds steady to participate in the art of violin such as making cigars, and playing an instrument is not a cheap thing to participate...from personal experience. During his cigar making time he composed a melody called "mon pauvre couer" (nope cant pronounce it...still very sad), and this is the oldest known sheet music composed from a black person. he later went to france and married a french woman and [had a] son, who also became a composer like his father. [Edmond Dede (1827-1903) is profiled at AfriClassical.com]
Haitian Classical MusicCreole Romantic
Edmond Dede
New Orleans
Paris Conservatory
Conductor in France
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