Black Music Month 2021: Looking back

I think the thing that really helped tie the disparate threads of my reading and listening and viewing together was the presentation on Early African-American Composers:

https://wccls.bibliocommons.com/events/60abd60c7b4a222500983acc

This was presented through the Aloha Community Library by Cherry & Jerry:

https://www.facebook.com/CherryAndJerryMusic 

https://www.reverbnation.com/cherryjerry 

Isaac Cherry and Jerry Rabushka are also members of The Ragged Blade Band, which will be reviewed tomorrow. 

Today will focus on their presentation, which charted a course from early minstrel shows through to ragtime to blues. There was an introduction to lesser known names like James Bland, Ernest Hogan, and Shelton Brooks, but they did not ignore more prominent names like Scott Joplin and W. C. Handy.

I appreciated that they did not shy away from the unsavory aspects of the minstrel shows. That should not be ignored, but the music should not be ignored either. As you hear the songs in their chronology, you can't help but hear the progression, and the influence of the previous music as new music develops.

They also made a point of how often the names that get remembered are not the earliest composers or players but the earliest transcribers; getting music jotted down allowed it to spread in a way that performing could not, at least back before recording and sharing audio became so easy.

Just a week after the performance, I watched an Oregon Symphony Storytime on Harlem's Little Blackbird, about Florence Mills:

https://www.orsymphony.org/discover/watch-listen/symphony-storytime/

There are no vocal recordings of Mills, and there is some tragedy in that. It is still possible to play songs that she sang, because the music is written down. Her specific sound is lost, but other things remain.

When Cherry & Jerry played Joplin's "The Entertainer", the listeners were surprised at its length and variation. We are used to a shorter, simpler version, largely because of its use in The Sting, over 70 years after it was first written.

When I was taking piano lessons, that was the version that I knew, not only because it was more common, but because I was not a particularly advanced student. However, I suddenly remembered that I had heard the extended version, on a collection of very old silent films.

There is always more out there; that is my constant takeaway. The "more" can enrich everything else.

Getting the foundation for blues enriched reading about blues influencing rock, and how it related to disco and then disco laying the groundwork for hip hop. It all connects.

It was a delight then, when reviewing singer Lady A, to find "Walking the Dog" as a bonus track on Bluez in the Key of Me. "Walking the Dog", by Rufus Thomas, was one in a category of songs where they tell you how to do the dance, like "Ballin' the Jack". A week earlier, it would have been just another song, but Cherry & Jerry gave it a context.

Cherry & Jerry will be at "Just a Taste Webb City" in Webb City, Missouri on July 24th, and at the "Oddities and Curiosities Festival" in Chicago, Illinois on August 28th, but you may find other streaming sessions on their Facebook page.

You can also find videos at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzKu1k40lBv0jfsTLZPZZgw.