Classical Color

I was going to begin this entry by saying, "While everyone knows about Treemonisha", when it occurred to me that most people probably don't know about it. Still, Treemonisha is probably the most famous piece of Western art music done by a black person, in this case, Scott Joplin. It is his take on the opera. While WORT has a show devoted to women in classical music, it doesn't have one devoted to people of color in classical music. This isn't surprising, really, as even living white men have a hard time getting their works performed. Most listeners, it seems, only want to hear the music of white men who have been dead for ages.

Most people tend to think of whites taking the music of blacks and using it for their own ends. E.g. - Elvis and many others taking R&B and the blues and using them to create rock'n'roll; Kenny G and his ilk taking jazz and turning it into crap. Well, I found a webpage devoted to Afrocentric voices in classical music. It's still very much a work in progress but there's some good stuff up there as well as a ton of links.