[The
Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist: America's Lost Musical Genius;
Deirdre O’Connell; Overlook Press (2009)]
This is
the second installment from The
Ballad of Blind Tom to be
featured on Africlassical.,
THUNDERSTRUCK
Thunderstorms were an
electric rite of spring in Georgia, the high drama of the skies: a
volatile, wild and utterly compelling climax after the oppressive
heat and humidity of the day. They assaulted the senses with such
power, it seared the memory and begged Blind Tom to channel it into
the keys of the piano.
The
minute the skies broke open, five-year-old Tom could be found in a
forgotten corner of the Bethune homestead. Here, a tin gutter ran
from the roof to within a foot of the ground. During a hard rain,
water trickled down in soothing
musical tones and Tom would arched over the drain, lying flat on his
back, locked into the gentle downstream gurgle as it mixed with the
sporadic tick tick tick of the drops. According to the 1868 concert
program, after one exceptionally severe thunderstorm, Tom listened to
the drain then “went to the piano and played what is now known as
his Rain
Storm and said it was what
the rain, the wind and the thunder said to him.”
And
thus, Tom’s first major composition was born, conceived at the
tender age of five. “Listen
to his own Rain
Storm,”
wrote a music critic in 1882, “and you shall hear first the
thunder’s reverberating peal, and anon the gentle patter of the
rain drops on the roof. Soon they fall thick and fast coming with a
rushing sound. Again is heard the thunder’s awful roar, while the
angry winds mingle in the tempestuous fray. After a while, the
tempest gradually ceases; all is calmness; and you will look with
wonder upon this musical musician, and marvel that the pianoforte can
imitate so closely the sounds made by the angry elements.”
But
is this truly a reflection of the child’s musical abilities? If so,
then it is a towering achievement. The problem is that until the
release of the sheet music in 1865 – ten years after the
inspirational thunderstorm - such praise was conspicuous in its
absence. Indeed until he was sixteen, this ‘masterpiece’ barely
rates a mention (as compared with the open mouthed flummox that
followed his performances of Yankee
Doodle on one hand, Dixie
on the other, while singing The
Fisher’s Hornpipe).
But throughout his early career,
Tom did perform a novelty
styled ‘musical feat’ named What
the Wind, Thunder and Rain said to Tom.
Loose and unformed, one pundit described the prodigy’s
‘ability to produce the sound of falling rain, the sounds of hail,
the sounds of wind blowing through the trees’ as ‘startling’.
And this seems to be the piece that Tom composed when he was five
years old.
[Thomas
“Blind Tom” Wiggins is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features
a complete Works List by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma,
http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com]
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