Minister Louis Farrakhan
Dominique-René de Lerma:
AN EVENING WITH MINISTER FARRAKHAN
During
my final days in Chicago (it must have been 1992), a bow-tied driver
picked me up from my residence on South Michigan. I was to be a dinner
guest of Minister Farrakhan. We drove down to his residence in Hyde
Park and before I was escorted into the main part of the house, I paused
in an anteroom to leave behind any superfluous items. Then I marvelled
at the living room: a grand piano was there along with a circular sofa.
It was a kind of indoor atrium, with Islamic decor that recalled the
home where I grew up.
Already there was my good friend of almost 40 years, pianist Sylvia
Olden Lee, who introduced me to my host. We chatted for a while, and
then Minister Farrakhan offered to play the violin. I knew he had a
background in music -- he had begun the violin when six years old and by
age 13 was a member of both the Boston College Orchestra and Boston
Civic Symphony. Later he had been known as Calypso Gene (his birth name
was Louis Eugene Wolcott), singing and recording music from his
parents' Caribbean roots. He converted to Islam, leaving the
Episcopalian church, in 1955. He said he had always loved music, but
that Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) felt this was extraneous to the
mission. Now he could return to music.
With Sylvia at the piano, he first played the Meditation from Thäis
and then the second movement of the Mendelssohn concerto. He told me
he was going to continue practicing this concerto and then schedule a
formal performance. By playing Mendelssohn with an orchestra, he said,
this would demonstrate he was not an anti-Semite, that this was possible
while still being pro-Arab (but not supporting Zionism). One of my
skeptic Jewish friends, on hearing this, said "Tell him he should play
with the Jerusalem Philharmonic!"
His
performance was quite acceptable. At that time, he could easily have
auditioned successfully for admission to almost any music school in the
country.
Following this, we went to dinner. It was a long banquet-size table.
At the far end were some women. I sat next to Farrakhan, along with
Sylvia and the widow of Elijah Muhammend. There was no preliminary
cocktail, of course, and the food was quite satisfactory, very bland
however for my Mediterranean taste. The conversation turned directly to
Beethoven's ancestry. I stated that I had never found any
justification for claims of an African heritage, while Sylvia was
certain Beethoven's mother was from the Caribbean. This was not the
time to argue the point, but she was wrong. Then the topic turned to
others, including Haydn. I felt we had a rich supply of giants without
resorting to idle speculation.
I left after a very cordial meeting, honored to have been a guest in the home of this soft spoken gentleman of such importance.
Not
too long after, a quite young violinist was soloist at Orchestra Hall
in a performance of an extant concerto by Saint-Georges' contemporary,
the chevalier Meude-Monpas (then thought to have been a Black composer)
-- the soloist was Rachel Barton, the conductor Michael Morgan. I had a
guest in my box, a high school violin student from Ohio that I had
invited to Chicago for this concert. She had been the subject of
criticism from her Black classmates for playing the violin; seriously
misinformed, they regarded the violin as an instrument Black people do
not play (see http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=3648
for a 17-page consideration of this). The visit had been approved only
if her mother and music teacher came along as chaperones. My guest was
impressed by Rachel and the concerto, but her primary concern was a
figure seated in a box on the other side of the hall. "Is that Minister
Farrakhan," she asked. I assured her it was and asked if she would
like to an introduction. Such was not to be -- the Farrakhan entourage
left at intermission. Alas, I never heard from the student again and
have no idea if she followed her intent to go into Black studies. It
was sadly ironic that she was from Oberlin, that her education had not
included the role the violin had played in Black history.
But
Farrakhan did play Mendelssohn in public. The start of the second
movement is on line at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Ei2XwrEnA,
taken from his 1993 concert in Winston-Salem, with Michael Morgan
conducting.
In
2014 he performed a benefit recital for Detroit's Charles H. Wright
Museum of African American History, an event available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c28ILwUvUJs, in which he recounts his
association with Sylvia (who died in 2004) and gives more than an
acceptable performance of the Thaïs Meditation and the double
concerto of Bach. Data on the concert is provided at
http://africlassical.blogspot.com/2014/05/detroitnewscom-farrakhan-will-perform.html.
In the years since I heard him, he had advanced significantly and
proven himself to be a most sensitive musician.
------------------------------------
Dominique-René de Lerma
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