William Grant Still: Trailblazer from the South

Hello I'm Alex Haley and I'm standing here by this Arkansas River flows through the heart of downtown Little Rock on his way to join the Mississippi and the river lives much as it did at the turn of the century. About a mile from here and that direction is a neighborhood that also looks much like it did in the early 1900s between 1898 and 1911. A young man was going up in that neighborhood. His name was William Grant Still. His mother taught high school here in Little Rock while young William dreamed of music. He knew the rhythms of the South the Afro American folk music that was nurtured along rivers like this. But it is here he heard those rhythms interpreted on violins he heard them in 70s in chamber music and in opera. He set in at Little Rock home and he studied opera Verdi was his favorite composer and he dreamed of an American style of 70

and of opera that would put those rhythms of America into the concert hall and on the opera stage. When 1931 he would realize the dream with his first seven and later with his first opera presented by a New York City Opera. By the time he died in 1978 William Grant Still had composed about 200 works and he had heard many of them performed by the great orchestras of the world. He had put his stamp on the definition of American music. He had also blazed a trail both as an American composer and as a black composer. His road began here in the south. Still his

career reached its pinnacle here on West Fifty feel Street New York City the New York City Center was the first home of the New York City after night after night. History was made on the city's center stage March 31 1949 was one of those nights. The opera was a world premier. It was the first time the New York City Opera here was in any opera written about in America. The opera was William Grant Still troubled soft or very sincere you know. Then it came to the performance of he stopped that he wanted a success not only for himself he sapa But the horrors of the organisation the artists. I can only tell you that all of this love to this day using of Steel's Ah protracted international attention after years of working with very little

recognition and even less money still was in the newspapers and on the radio. It is I who am happy for this opportunity to speak to friends overseas. I am proud and at the same time very humbled to be asked to represent American voters are more particular I mean negro composers for your listeners. Today he still is known as the dean of American black composers. He earned that title with a long list of firsts the first black man to conduct a major symphony orchestra the first black symphonic composer whose works were widely before the first black composer to write for a major ballet company. The first black composer in Hollywood and the first black composer of opera to have his work before I think one of the important things to remember is that William Grant Still was born just about the time that American music was beginning.

Up until about the 1870s or the 1880s American music and then dominated by Europeans. But we began to come into our own at the end of the 19th century. Of course I think William Grant Still is most definitely a major American composer a very significant American composer. I think we need to remember that all composers of any stature live under a constant judging that they and their works are judged prior to the performances. There is something of a gauntlet that composers have to work to go through as to whether their works are chosen for performance or not chosen for publication chosen to be recorded and by whom it has worked. Or so it's impossible. But I have believed at the time would come when a production would be possible and I've waited 37 years for the

troubled islands premia did come 37 years after still left home. But those years were crowded with achievements. His arrangements had been heard by millions on radio shows starring Paul Whiteman Artie show Dawn void hees and others his music had been played by some of the world's great orchestras under some of history's legendary conductors by the time he'd completed Troubled Island steel had also written seven his chamber pieces and vocal works. He had crossed the color line into classical composition but he had always held on to a dream that he'd first had in the south. I

had always had the last of the days back in Little Rock Arkansas. All the photographic record even then I knew that I still was born on May 11 1895 in the little town I would feel Mississippi. His childhood was unusual for any child of a black boy. Both his parents were teachers and a musician. His father who was on the faculty of the agricultural and mechanical College of Alabama died when steel was three months old. Stills mother a graduate of the university to Little Rock where her mother had taken in a public school. It was

at the turn of this in the Arkansas capital it was an exciting center of trade and government even though its institutions were there in a segregated. Little Rock was considered one of the South's most enlightened cities. The family house stood here on Little Rock West 14th Street. A black man could do well into the Rock. One such man who did well was Charles B. Shepherdson whom still's mother married when William was still very young. Shepherdson was a railway clerk which meant the family's income was well above average. Jefferson loved it and he brought into the family home

on West 14th Street. The music of the Genie and on his treasured collection of records so you're a good student. Steele was elected valedictorian of his high school players. There was no question that he would do well in the world and in his mother's mind that meant a career in medicine. Wilberforce University in Ohio was a most respectable institution in which to begin study for a medical career. That's where the young man went and that's where he also strayed music began the center of his life still wrote later. It was after I had enrolled in Wilberforce University that I decided I must become a composer. Still worked as a musician for the legendary composer and bandleader W.C. Handy. After he had saved some money he was able to afford his first formal instruction in composition at Oberlin College

following a brief stint in the Navy during World War One. Still did what many young men did. He went to New York City. Once again he worked for WC Handy this time in the office of the composers publishing firm but soon he was in the orchestra pit playing for the first musical said to be written and danced and sound entirely by black people. The enormously popular show was called shuffle along. There was more formal study of composition this time at the New England Conservatory of Music and then still became recording director of the Black Swan Phonograph Company and enterprise specializing in the music of black composers and performers. It was a prestigious position but when the company failed Steele was left with no job and a young family to support.

The hot new medium of the 20s and the 30s was radio and New York was the home of the most popular musical radio program. Paul White one of the most famed band leaders of the ERA was credited with the marriage of Jay-Z with symphonic music. For white men the stars of his show were the arrangements and still was one of the Rangers who helped to make white men famous as the decade indeed still grew as an arranger and a composer. He began his most famous work the Afro American Symphony and as he watched the Great Depression arrive he kept his diaries. Thanks to Bender I can say.

But the kiddies December 1930 was still here but the new year was to bring his greatest triumph in 1931 still set before the world is Afro-American so well the other black the host would know what it js. Steele's work was becoming popular with majors 70 Leopold's the council conducted the work in New York. Howard heads in Rochester and Berlin his symphony was played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic by the Chicago Symphony by the New York for the Mark William Grant Still. Ed to come on American music for the record.

Well my basic musical training camps are like right next to the European music but this failed to satisfy me completely at the basis of an idiom for expressing myself. Therefore I sought to create an idiom unmistakably American most Americans and indeed most people in the world were not aware of the fact that black musicians are writing selfishness. The Associated black composers with Baghdad here in the US and DAs still received commissions from the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony end in 1933. Ruth commissioned Steele to write the score for Goodling brother William Grant Steele was chosen to write the theme music for the show plays of the future the 1939 New York World's Fair in 1939 were good to see you.

He became. The first black man to conduct a major symphony orchestra when he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 1936 and his recognition included two Guggenheim greats which allowed him to pursue his first love. He moved to California and he wrote his music still in his first wife were divorced in 1937. For several years he had collaborated with a writer and pianist. Their professional relationship developed into a person. And in 1939 they were married. The marriage didn't meet with universal approval. It was white. My mother was a marvelous concert pianist. Oh good a very good journalist could have had her fine career in both of those fields but decided to give them

up for my father. The steel family was at home all summer on every new and last years. They had two children. His day would begin early in the morning about 7:00 or 8:00. My mother would make the coffee. He would make toast and cut the melon. After breakfast or until meal later on my mother would come in and play over on the things that he had composed so that he could hear how they sounded because he was not a pianist. It was almost an idyllic life. The music was so much a part of family life that we weren't aware most of the time that this was a famous composer The only time when a concert put on a

crowd such a famous family and I would say I guess it is. I didn't know we were famous. My parents had so many friends that sometimes I wonder my father got any composing done because his diaries attest to the fact that almost every day we would someone would drop in to say hello. I remember W.C. Handy came to our house several times and Leopold Stokowski. I remember the gifts these people gave us you know I remembered hand he gave me $25 I remember Stokowski gave my brother some building blocks. That's that's how a child remembers Paypal what it was given William Grant Still selected the University of Arkansas and Fayetteville as the home for his manuscript letters and other personal items. And it was in free a bow as part of a celebration of the Life and Work of steel that his third symphony was some

distance from which I would call Want still set. The most important thing for composers to be able to come up with is he said I know that composers have to write. And he was very careful for writing the kind of music that people would understand as well. And I think for that reason perhaps most of us always concerned. Who

likes to read as his definition is enough to read it. Still

rode past a relative for his friend Louis Kaufman who printed it with his wife and it in 1970. Woof woof. Ronald Harvey explained the composer's approach to his work in the 1975 radio interview. We wanted to be known as a composer but an American who happened to be unmoved and that was the only way to put it that way.

They were talking about being black and all that. Right. Yeah to you know not much but my own worth you know if you remember the brain I think still to what he had to do. He was a composer and he had to write. Yes but he also was a human being and he had to live. So in order to write music you had to do something that would enable him to live music. So he did things that made me an auditor in order to earn him a livelihood. But still the fact that he continued to compose it he never went over totally into the commercial field indicates that this was something that had to be done by him. Finally still that she does dream of May do operate it occurred here at the New York City Center.

I had founded a company in 1944 to provide opera at a price everyone could afford. He had appointed as music director for The New York City Opera Company. Well it was all or so the mayor's idea to the should. First that should really help the American not the American composer. American singer and needless to say the pious love for American compositions of ozone which came in and is they came in there was a pile of growing and I didn't. Sometimes I just realize that those that have the lowest on the pile is not the most important so I pointed out the boat on the and then he throws it all over that. And I played it through on the piano and I like that decided to

do it. Troubled Island had been completed 10 years earlier. Twice it had been rejected politely by New York's Metropolitan Opera the opera's libretto was credited to Langston Hughes but actually Byrne ave had written much of it. Troubled Island was set on the Caribbean island of Haiti in the 1790s. The actual centers around Jones jocks Dessalines the sleeve who made himself king. The opera was given a level above the belly scene. None of us enjoys Balaji Eugene Bryant staged the production incident I would like and let it go YES live with your destiny. And for the so much of what I could say about my Lambo when listening in the background and read Powers who view the

role of this means way I see it here. It interests me to watch her and hers. He was a very tense city in that you know you feel it. Even if you live here on earth you hers. March 31 1949 the New York City Opera Company was the first world premier. The company's first American opera and the critics paint I ordered. The books are historical proof for the audience reaction to get a sword out and it was excitedly accepted by the audience and seemingly the critics I just read to them after 35 years. I find the more treading on territory which they didn't really fully appreciated. I think the OP or suffered mostly from from being perhaps prejudged quite

frankly I don't think even the New Yorker scene was was ready for an opera written by a negro composer and almost unknown negro composer. As far as the New York setting went and then he came and I heard he was a nigger ruler and so what I didn't know it was a need to need to use the music. I don't consider it. Spirit niggles spiritual end of the story I think it's music Steele's career was far from over when he would turn to California while he worked for the studios. He also took a special interest in young people and their user direction to music. Five universities and colleges conferred honorary degrees on Will your brand still among them. Oberlin College where you had once stood and the University of Auckland so which at the time of his

youth in Arkansas was not open to blacks. My father was extremely religious. He always recognized the influence of God in his work and he continually you know that God was the source of his inspiration something that he wrote at the end of all of his compositions with thanks to the source of inspiration. Still his dedication to his art and craft never falter. This trailblazer from the south William Grant Still born in Mississippi raised in Arkansas had been heard in the world's great concert halls. He was proud that he was an American composer. Yet he was always aware of the special player he had traveled is the dean of Afro American composers.

He ended his final radio interview with the words of Paul Lawrence Dunbar which inspired to finale of his After all American symphony. Be proud Larry in my room right a name written on glorious girl in character's name to ground the plane right by Baroness Bruton Posner. Right then cool to live for Larry.