Justin Holland
(Trotter 1878)
Justin Holland (1819-1887) is featured at
July 22, 2016
By Matthew Guerrieri,
Globe Correspondent
July 26 is the birthday of Justin
Holland (1819-1887), entrepreneur, civil rights activist, classical
guitarist, and exemplar of African-American aspiration in 19th-century
America. Born to free black parents in Virginia, Holland relocated to
Massachusetts when he was 14, a move both ambitious and pragmatic. He
wanted a music career, and Boston was a music center; at the same time,
the atmosphere for even free blacks in Virginia was rapidly
deteriorating.
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Holland settled in Chelsea. (Historian Barbara
Clemenson, who sourced most of Holland's fragmentary biographical data,
noted that he was one of only 11 blacks living there.) He studied with
two Boston teachers, Simon Knaebel and William Schubert. But to further
his education, Holland was again compelled to move, enrolling at the
Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Ohio. He also spent two years in Mexico
mastering the Spanish language, the better to understand the literature
of guitar pedagogy at its source. By 1845, he was in Cleveland, teaching
guitar, publishing arrangements of popular and operatic airs, along
with a handful of original compositions. He worked hard and, eventually,
prospered.
But Holland exercised considerable discretion to attain and maintain
that success. Largely forgoing performing in favor of teaching, Holland
adopted (as he put it) “the most cautious and circumspect demeanor, considering the relation a
mere business one that gave me no claims upon my pupils' attention or
hospitality beyond what any ordinary business matter would give.” His
music-making showed similar decorum; Holland's “Comprehensive Method for
the Guitar,” which became a standard text, traced conservative European
lines.
James Monroe Trotter, in his 1878 book “Music and Some
Highly Musical People,” told of how Holland once went into a Cleveland
music shop and was denied service on account of his race; the same firm
unwittingly published several of his works.
Comment by email:
Comment by email:
Dear Bill, Thanks so much for alerting me to this article. I hope all is well with you. Barbara [Barbara Clemenson]
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