Tuesday, March 10, 2015

John Jeremiah Sullivan and Joel Finsel, Authors of Oxford American Article on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Comment on AfriClassical Post

Young Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
(Oxford American)

is profiled at AfriClassical.comwhich 
features a comprehensive Works List and a 
Bibliography by Dr. Dominique- René de Lerma, 

www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com.


On March 7, 2015 AfriClassical posted

Oxford American Article on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Advocacy of Black American Music: "That was nice, but also a little patronizing"

John Jeremiah Sullivan and Joel Finsel are the authors of The Oxford American's article Though The Heavens Fall, Part 2.  They comment:

Thanks for this mention of "Though the Heavens Fall," AfriClassical (differences of opinion included). From our point of view, the interest lay less in the question of whether or not SCT was actually being patronizing--we'd need to have been there when he made the remarks, after all, to know for sure--than in the fact that the African-American critic Sylvester Russell believed that SCT was being patronizing. That's what we wanted to bring to light, that this attitude had developed among early black music journalists, who'd grown tired of hearing that their own music (African American folk and popular music ca. 1890–1910) could be used as the material for 'serious music' but couldn't be serious music. And it's true that such a hierarchy of genres or forms was implied in many of SCT's remarks. All good wishes, John Sullivan and Joel Finsel
March 9, 2015

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