[Black
Manhattan: Theater and Dance Music of James Reese Europe, Will Marion
Cook, and Members off the Legendary 'Clef Club'; The Paragon
Ragtime Orchestra; Rick Benjamin, Conductor; New World Records
800611-2 (2003) (67:41)]
The
Paragon Ragtime Orchestra (PRO), conducted by Rick Benjamin, came to
our attention with its release of Scott
Joplin Treemonisha;
New World Records 80720 (2011). That recording has been acclaimed by
print and online publications large and small, in the U.S. and
abroad. This month Rick Benjamin informed us Volume 2 of Black
Manhattan
is planned:
“We are now in preproduction of a new audio
recording - volume
two
of our 2003 album Black
Manhattan: Music of the Legendary Clef Club.”
He
added that the release is scheduled for November 2012 on the New
World Records label. He also said: “The producer is Judith
Sherman, who is this year's Grammy Award winning 'Classical Producer
of the Year.'"
We had not reviewed the first Black
Manhattan
disc, so we arranged for a review copy. This recording presents an
enjoyable collection of authentic songs which were popular before, during and
shortly after World War I. We were happy to be introduced to James
Reese Europe, Will Marion Cook and a number of other African American
composers and performers who helped lay the groundwork for the music
of the Harlem Renaissance. The works are light and mostly brief, but
some of the composers wrote classical or vocal art music as well.
The arranger of the spiritual Deep
River, Track
4, is the composer and baritone Henry T. Burleigh (1866-1949), whose
works have been compiled by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma and are featured
on his page at AfriClassical.com.
Victor
Carr, Jr. reviewed Black
Manhattan
for Classics Today, which rated both its Artistic Quality and
Sound Quality at the highest possible level, “10.” Carr
writes:
“This album collects ragtime and jazz classics of
composer/conductor James Reese Europe and his contemporaries. The
performances recreate the style of the legendary Clef Club, a ragtime
orchestra composed of African American musicians that operated from
1910 to 1930. Europe was a prominent figure on the black music scene
during this time, as was Will Marion Cook, whose In Dahomey was the
first all-black musical, and its full-scale overture is this
collection’s most substantial offering.”
The
liner notes by Rick Benjamin tell us:
“James Reese Europe
was, along with Will Marion Cook, perhaps the most famous
African-American musician of the early twentieth century. His
careers as a conductor, composer, organizer, and eloquent advocate of
Negro music were closely followed and reported by the major
newspapers and magazines. Europe was a tireless man and a gifted
promoter. As a conductor and recording artist, he was not only an
important figure in the transition from ragtime to jazz, but also a
vital ambassador of authentic black music to millions of whites in
the United States and overseas. James Reese Europe was born on
February 22, 1880 in Mobile, Alabama. He grew up in musical
surroundings.”
James Reese Europe
co-wrote The
Castle Perfect Trot (1914)
with Ford T. Dabney. Europe also wrote Castle
House Rag (1914).
He and Chris Smith co-wrote Ballin'
the Jack & What It Takes To Make Me Love You (medley
fox trot (1914). Jame Reese Europe also wrote Hey
There! (Hi There!)
(one step, 1915), Congratulations
(the Castles' Lame Duck Waltz, 1914)
and The
Clef Club March (1910). The
liner notes introduce Will Marion Cook:
“Will Marion Cook
achieved nationwide fame and recognition during his career as a
composer both for his musical comedy scores and for his serious works
based on Negro folk materials. He became something of a living
legend in New York music circles. Although extremely temperamental,
combative, and abrasive, Cook's talent eventually made him, in Eileen
Southern's words, 'the chief music advisor, teacher, coach, and
patron to black musicians in New York, among them...Duke Ellington –
who said of 'Dad' Cook, 'he was master of us all.'
“Will
Mercer Cook (he later changed his middle name to 'Marion') was born
in Washington, D.C. on January 27, 1869, to advantages enjoyed by few
African Americans of his time. Both his parents were college
graduates; his father was a lawyer and owned a comfortable home in
the District of Columbia. In this refined setting, young Will first
demonstrated his outstanding musical abilities. He took voice
lessons as a boy, but in 1878 began his love affair with the violin.
At age sixteen, it was decided Cook needed more advanced musical
instruction, and he enrolled in the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio.
After two years there, his violin teacher advised him to go to Europe
for further study. Cook had no way to afford such an undertaking,
but the great black leader Frederick Douglass organized a benefit
concert which raised the necessary funds. In the fall of 1888, Will
Cook went to Germany and attended the Hochschule für Musik in
Berlin. Then he studied violin with the world-renowned virtuoso
Joseph Joachim (1831-1907). Unfortunately, after two years at the
conservatory, ill health forced his return home.
“Back
in Washington in 1890, Will Cook was asked to conduct a new Negro
chamber orchestra organized in Washington by C.A. Fleetwood and
Frederick Douglass; under Cook's baton this ensemble made two tours
of the mid-Atlantic states, venturing as far North as Boston. It was
his first conducting experience.
“In
1893 while involved with musical events at the Chicago World's Fair,
Cook met baritone Harry T. Burleigh. The young classical musicians
struck up a conversation, and Burleigh, who was then a student of
Antonin Dvořák
at the National Conservatory in New York, recommended the school as
a place where Cook might wish to go to continue his studies. Cook
was convinced, and in 1894 moved to New York to attend the
conservatory. Unfortunately, once there he took an almost instant
dislike of Dvořák,
and his relationship with Burleigh withered as well. He dropped out
after a year.
“At
loose ends and probably desperate for a job, Will Cook found work as
a staff composer for Bob Cole's All Star Stock Company. This was
very likely his first professional encounter with the world of
popular stage entertainment. But he soon clashed with Cole and quit
the company. Cook returned to Washington to live with his widowed
mother.
“Throughout
1896 and '97 Will Cook made regular visits to New York's Black
Bohemia. There, sometime in 1898, he encountered Williams &
Walker, and this meeting inspired Cook to try his hand at composing a
musical show. He returned to Washington and summoned the poet Paul
Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) – then a government clerk – to write
the libretto and lyrics. Literally overnight the two young men
finished their work, a 'musical sketch' they dubbed Clorindy,
or the Origin of the Cakewalk."
“From
opening night on it was a rip-roaring success. Although not the
first black musical in New York (the Bob Cole/Billy Johnson A
Trip to Coontown had
opened the previous April), it was the first time such a production
had been presented in a major white venue and had received such
unanimous acclaim by both the press and the public. Not a
full-length work, it nevertheless incorporated snappy songs, comedy,
and a new dance sensation known as the 'cakewalk.' Clorindy
also boasted a chorus that sang and danced simultaneously
–
apparently the first time this had been attempted on any New York
stage. And it also marked the first time a black man – Cook –
had conducted a white New York theater orchestra.
“In
the wake of his success, Will Marion Cook became associated with the
Williams & Walker Company as the conductor for their 1899 show
The
Policy Players. The
team obviously liked his work, and for the next nine years Cook was
their resident composer and musical director. His scores for them
included the Sons
of Ham (1900)
and the 'in' shows, In
Dahomey (1902),
In
Abyssinia (1906),
and In
Bandanna Land (1908).
“In
Dahomey
was undoubtedly the show most important to the advancement of
African-American musical theater. It was the first full-length
musical created and performed by blacks to appear in a leading
Broadway theater; it became the yardstick by which all subsequent
black shows were measured. In
Dahomey's
witty book was by Jesse Shipp and its lyrics by Paul Laurence Dunbar;
in its three acts Bert Williams starred as 'Shylock Homestead,' and
George Walker as 'Rareback Pinkerton.' With a cast of fifty, In
Dahomey
toured several months prior to its big opening at Times Square's New
York Theatre on February 18, 1903. The production was given good
notices, and was well attended by a racially mixed audience. Will
Cook's score, and especially his choral numbers (Including “Swing
Along!”) were especially impressive and commented upon. As the
Boston Evening
Transcript put
it, 'Musical comedies with real music are rarities, but this is
one...The composer has succeeded in lifting Negro music above the
plane of the so-called “Coon Song” without destroying the
characteristics of the melodies, and he has provided a score which is
likewise unusually diversified.'”
Disclosure:
A review copy of this CD was provided by the record label.
Essay
on Will Marion Cook
In our evaluation of
a work, there are two basic considerations: one is to view the work
objectively within a historical flow; the other is a question of
artistic substance. We try to be objective in the later instance
when our intuitive judgment is questioned, more validly when
examining purely musical factors -- melodic structure and treatment,
for example. From that viewpoint we might signal the clarinet
quintet of Coleridge-Taylor as a work which in our mind (subjectivity
becomes inevitable) has fresh melodic material that is interestingly
treated as the work progresses. In the former approach, we would
readily accept that his 24
Negro melodies have
historical significance because they represent most probably the
first instance of the spirituals serving as the basis for new
treatment, anticipating what the future would hold in the instances
soon after of Burleigh and Dett. That avoids the question of
aesthetics totally.
The presentation of
Cook's Clorindy,
or the origin of the cakewalk is
unquestionably of great historical importance. With this work (and
the more elaborate and extended In
Dahomey
soon after) opened the doors for Black music on Broadway. Cook
realized this immediately when, after the great reception on opening
night, he joined the cast after midnight to rejoice in what they had
done and to wait for the morning newspaper reviews. "Ï was so
delirious that I drank a glass of water, thought it wine and got
gloriously drunk. Negroes at last were on Broadway and here to stay.
We were artists and we were going a long way. We had the world on a
string tied to a runnin' red-reared wagon on a downhill pull.
Nothing could stop us, and nothing would for a decade!"
His mother saw the
music in a quite different light. "I've sent you all over the
world to study and become a great musician and you return such a
n_____!" Hers was a stance that exceeded most of those in the
forthcoming Harlem Renaissance, when one looked for symphonies and
operas that "elevated" the productions, tastes, and
reception of the New Negro -- no more coon songs.
It was true that
Cook lamented the public's expectations of the Black composer, who
should provide a continuation of music that was far from sober. Had
Cook complied, we might be totally unaware of his existence today.
Obviously in his mind, he had elevated matters to some extent,
offering an enriched harmonic and melodic vocabulary with at least a
degree -- and an acceptable one -- that reflected his education at
Oberlin and in Berlin. It has been commented that we might not ever
see a true revival of Clorindy
or In
Dahomey
apart from their captivating contents, that these works are too
dated. If we were to look retrospectively at these milestones, that
would be a valid point, but a faulty evaluation of history; it
evolves progressively, not backwards. There has been, in fact, an
effort to revive In
Dahomey
just over ten years ago, at Cleveland's Karamu House. I was present
in the company of Dr. Thomas Riis, the leading authority on the
entire subject area. We were delighted.
The outstanding
artistic importance of Cook must not be denied, and his
accomplishments acknowledged within a history so seriously socially
blemished, but no longer ignored or euphemicised.
Dominique-René
de Lerma
No comments:
Post a Comment