Weekend self-care open thread: Black symphonies

Western art music, also known as classical music, is the ne plus ultra of culture in the West. Yes, popular music, where Black artists dominate, is far more well-known to ordinary people. But classical music is what gets you into the smart parties. 

I've written about this before, but classical music, for much of its history, was supremely racist. For example, the travails that one of America's greatest sopranos, Marian Anderson, went through.

But no less than a luminary than Antonin Dvorak, while he was in the US, stated that American music is Black music. And that applied no less to classical music than to popular music. We see this most evident in George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, which was built on a carapace of Black music, as Gershwin himself unabashedly said.

However, Black composers don't have to be transmuted through the genius of a composer like Gershwin. They have their own genius, however unacknowledged. And the pinnacle of Western art music is the symphony, ever since Ludwig van Beethoven took that musical form into the central genre of classical music.

For this final weekend of Black History Month, Black composers turn a European art form into their own idiom.

As always, dear friends, be ever kind to yourselves and those around you. And never give into the power.

***

Like what you're reading? Never miss another post! Get notified via email here.

Donate at the link below to keep us going.