In this week’s episode, the Theorizing African American Music series comes to a close with a poignant conversation between Phil Ewell, Louise Toppin, Teresa Reed, and Jewel Thompson, and a sneak peak at what the future holds for this conference.

NY Times article referenced in this episode: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/warnock-walker-runoff-georgia.html

This episode was produced by Megan Lyons.

SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu; Closing music "hnna" by David Voss. Undine Smith Moore's "Before I'd Be A Slave" is performed by Geoffrey Burleson. For supplementary materials on this episode and more information on our authors and composers, check out our website: https://smt-pod.org/episodes/season02/.

[SMT-Pod Theme Music Playing]

Welcome to SMT-Pod! The premiere audio publication of the Society for Music Theory. In this week’s episode, the Theorizing African American Music series comes to a close with a poignant conversation between Phil Ewell, Louise Toppin, Teresa Reed, and Jewel Thompson, and a sneak peek at what the future holds for this conference.

[Undine Smith Moore's "Before I'd Be A Slave" is performed by Geoffrey Burleson]

Hello. My name is Philip Ewell, and we have a great final episode of this Theorizing African American music conference podcast series at SMT Pod. Today, I have three icons of academic music and academic music theory with me. And they are Louise Toppin, University of Michigan, Teresa Reed, University of Louisville, and Jewel Thompson, my much-loved esteemed colleague at Hunter College. And on the final evening of Theorizing African American music, we had this wonderful keynote panel and I thought, it had Travis Jackson moderating and, in addition to Louise and Teresa, it had Trevor Weston, Tammy Kernodle, and A.D Carson, and I'd hoped to get the band back together.

But because schedules are so very busy, of course, it wasn't possible, but Louise and Teresa graciously agreed for this meeting here and that we found the time, of course, which is half the battle. And I thought to myself, well, wouldn't it be great to have my colleague, Jewel Thompson rounds out a conversation in which we discuss African American Women in academic music and music theory. And that's how we have our three-person panel today. So, I'm gonna jump right in with some questions and introductions and I think I'm gonna start with Teresa and I'm not gonna give a long bio. I'm just gonna say that Teresa is now the director or dean. You'll tell us of the School of Music, the dean.

Okay, there it is of the School of Music at the University of Louisville. She was in Tulsa for many years before that. She has a doctorate in music theory from Indiana University. I'd love to hear from you, Teresa, kind of just where you began in music. And when it was that you kind of decided that you wanted to actually go into music and music theory and maybe a couple of poignant moments in your path, Teresa. Thanks.

Thank you so much, Phil. And I'm really honored to be with our colleagues here today. I began in music in the Black Pentecostal Church. That really was where my love for music was born and nurtured. And I learned without seeing a single note of music for some years, learned to read music in high school. So I was a late bloomer, compared to the colleagues and peers I would encounter later. But I learned music in the tradition of the Black Pentecostal Church, the church of God and Christ. And I started out playing by ear and playing piano and saxophone and working with the choirs and the bands.

If anyone who knows that tradition recalls, you let everything that has breath, praise the Lord! And so walk in the door, learning by imitation, and through being mentored, and through crashing and burning in front of hundreds of people who are expecting you to do God's work and to do it well. So, I that was my musical birth. I decided I wanted to somehow do music for the rest of my life, I didn't have a clear picture of that, but when I was a music major at Valparaiso University in the early 80s, I was standing by the water cooler one day when my theory professor walked by and just said, Theresa, I think you could get a teaching assistantship. I had no idea what that was, but since he thought I could get one, I decided to pursue it. And so I did a teaching assistantship in music theory and went to Indiana and the rest is history.

Brilliant. That's great, Teresa. You know, when you said you got to start in the Pentecostal Church and that you didn't read music until a little bit later. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, you could actually make music by listening to other people and hearing things? Oh, goodness gracious!

Yeah, that's the only way in that context!

You know, because obviously music theory, we're well, kind of like cerebral and we, you know, it's all about intellectualizing and all that. So I sometimes joke about the actual making of music. Thank you. Louise, can I maybe go to you now and ask basically the same question because as an icon of coloratura sopranos, if I were to actually read a bio for Louise, that would take the rest of the episode. So we're not gonna do that just to say that she's you know, sung on some of the most prestigious concert stages on Planet Earth. And she was the Dean of the School or the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina for many years. And now she's at the University of Michigan, teaching voice. So I'm just going to turn it over to Louise and let her tell a little bit about her story too. Thanks.

Certainly. And at UNC they call it the chair, but it's the equivalent to a dean. My story is similar and yet dissimilar from Teresa's, in that improvisation played a great deal of my early life. I grew up on the campus of Virginia State University, so instead of, and I'm an Episcopalian, so our music traditions are a little different. I grew up in a Black Episcopal church which meant it spanned everything from light, light, light gospel. Andraé Crouch was about as far as you could go to spirituals, to Bach and everything in between. So my musical education from church was that.

But at Virginia State, we had people like Undine Smith Moore on the faculty. So she became a very close family friend, but also my parents reported that I was that child, I'm the youngest of their children, I was the child that would listen to the radio and go to the piano and play a reduction of whatever symphony, sonata, whatever they had on the radio that I could do that. And they called Undine Moore and said, should this one-- My sister was studying with Undine Moore already, piano. She said, should the youngest one be studying piano? And they said, Dr. Moore said, how old is she? And I was something like five. And she said, oh, she's much too young, but she can come to the lessons with her sister.

So I went with my sister to her piano lessons, and I can still see the house of Undine Moore all the sheets of music laying around in the living room, and I sat quietly with my mother, watched everything she said to my sister, and then I'm the one that went home and practiced. So in my improvisatory, my sister read a book, I mean, she didn't even have to pay me, I just went and practiced and my sister read a book-- She practiced enough to be able to sort of do her lesson. But I was the one diligently, hour after hour, sitting there trying to recreate what I'd heard. And from there I went to college to be a premed major actually, and enjoyed that. But along the way, as I had to make a choice, my father said, you know, God has given you an extraordinary gift as a musician, and I think you should finish as a pianist.

So I actually graduated with a bachelor's in piano from UNC Chapel Hill, went to Peabody in piano and accompanying someone heard me singing while I was there at age 25. I did a master's in voice just to become a better accompanist, that was my goal. But that person sent me to George Shirley who was teaching at the University of Maryland after I graduated as I'm accompanying around Baltimore and New York by that point. But they sent me to George Shirley and he said, you're a real singer, and that's what brought me to Michigan, which was such a wonderful environment for African American music. Willis Patterson was there as a mentor to me, and George Shirley even before I could accept my letter to University of Maryland, which I thought I was gonna do doctorate, he was in Michigan. So that's how I ended up in Black music particularly.

Wow, fascinating, thank you. You know, and Smith Moore looms very large. The bumper music to this pod series is Before I'd be a Slave played by my colleague and friend, and our colleague and friend Jewel, Jeff Burleson. So listen for that at the beginning of each episode. And a wonderful story that you have there, Louise because it just makes me immediately think of someone who had such a brilliant musical mind, as a music theorist. Let's just be very clear on Undine Smith Moore, of course, was a music theorist, and a fabulous composer, and then a pedagogue. But the idea that Undine Moore could have somehow been part of a musical mainstream, we all know that that was just not possible, right? Because of her blackness, and her womaness, and that's just a travesty. But it's still a fact and we shouldn't turn our heads away from that. We should acknowledge that and somehow fix these issues.

["Little David Play on Your Harp" from three Spirituals for Cello and Piano arr. Dolores White, performed by Khari Joyner (cello) and Dianna White-Gould (piano)]

Let me turn now to Jewel and essentially ask the same question, listen to your own path a little bit Jewel and by way of introduction, I said, Jewel is my dear colleague at Hunter College, also teaches music theory with me in our department of music. And it's just been a great honor getting to be your colleague and, and getting to know you, Jewel, maybe you can run us through a little bit of your own past too. I will mention right away to the listeners that Jewel's PhD in music theory is 1981 the Eastman School of Music. And she wrote on two volumes, by the way, I have it on interlibrary loan. Unfortunately, did not get here in time for today's conversation. But two volumes on the Black, English composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor, which I think is something we should also talk a little bit about, but maybe, Jewel, first a little bit about your own path.

I'm sitting here hardly, I can hardly sit in my seat because you mentioned Undine Smith Moore, and she was my major resource. I'm a country girl, I said I'm a country girl. A rural, I'm from a rural area in Virginia, Westmoreland County, Virginia, the county of the first president of the United States, George Washington's County. Anyway, my parents, my father was a Baptist pastor of three churches at one time until he combined them into one. And my mother was a elementary teacher with great emphasis in music and she would teach piano lessons in the home. And of course, in those days, we didn't get babysitters, so we had to sit around the room and be quiet as mice.

And, I would listen to, all of us, we would be listening to the piano students that came to her that she taught piano in the home. And after they left, I was about four years old, when my parents told me this happened, I went to the piano and start playing back the tunes that I heard and continued to do that. And my mother died when I was eight years old and she played for the churches that my father pastored. And there was no one to play the music, but I could play all the tunes, the hymns, and everything. So I became a church pianist at eight.

My father married again, and he married a lady who was high school teacher, I think in English, but she had been a great choir member in her college days and she knew how to conduct and put the choir together. And of course, she took over the choirs at the church, and she needed an accompanist and in that rural area, there are a few people who could do that. So I had to be the accompanist. So, I knew that, in order to play the pieces that she wanted to teach, we had to do some piano study. And so I was in high school when I started taking piano lessons.

I went to Virginia State University. I was a valedictorian of my high school class. So I got a full tuition scholarship to Virginia State. It was called Virginia State College at the time and a full tuition scholarship and of course I want to major in music and I auditioned, of course. And, of course, Dr. Moore was one of the auditioners as well as the other teachers you know, music teachers and part of it was sight reading. And I played this piece and she, Dr. Moore, have you seen this before? I said no! So, she said this is something, and she said I should major in music. And so I was in her theory class of course.

And, one day, she was just testing the students, of course, I made good grades in class, but she was testing the students, playing this pitch and that pitch, to see if they recognized it. And she has played several pitches. What pitch is that? We were looking at the music. And I would tell her, and she said, young lady, you have, in that day and time they call it perfect pitch, you know, to recognize the pitches. And she followed me, of course, through the four years that I was there. And I think, and as it happened, I ended up being one of the valedictorians of the college class. And she said you should go on in music, and music theory, and you should go to the Eastman School of music.

And she knew Dr. McHose, who was a top theorist. And she had worked with him too in some research, and, she recommended me for, they had a strong foundation scholarship. And Virginia, the State of Virginia, gave you a scholarship, at that time, they didn't want any blacks in their universities. So they would pay, you pay your college, to go to another school, right? And she said you should go to the Eastman School of Music. So I did, went to get my master's there and, I was very successful. I had a good teachers, only Dr. McHose briefly, but there was a Dr. Robert Gauldin, and all the theory teachers, they seemed they took an interest in me and followed me along the way. And when it was time to write my master's thesis, I wrote it on technical practices.

At that time, we were moving from Negro, we said black composers in choral works for a cappella choir, and I did that and I did some teaching, and came back home, did some teaching. But that was still the burning issue. You should go further. So, I went back to Eastman, helped there, and Dr. Gauldin, said that your analytical ability is outstanding, and there is this Black composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and it would be a tremendous contribution if you selected him. I did, I got a ford foundation scholarship, and there was a fraternal order that gave me scholarship help. So I was able to do research and went abroad to England and studied at the Royal College of Music. And I even went to France too, following the, you know, Life of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in the libraries there. That's how I ended up! And now that book is one of the high reference books. And I was also asked to be a contributor to the book on Black composers. And I have a piece in that.

Jewel, that is a fascinating, fascinating story. I think we're gonna get you back on a pod, Just just you and me or, you know, just to have a longer conversation about some of these things because it's so very interesting. I really, really want to hear from, Jewel but also from everyone here about some of the issues that you had to contend with as you were making your path through academic music because we all know that the farther you go back in time in our country, the harder it was for Black people, and especially Black women, to be part of the official, officialdom, right, of academic music. You go back far enough and it was impossible, in the 19th century, for example.

Or frankly, in the early to mid 20th century as well, as we all know. I'm gonna come back to Jewel, absolutely because I want to hear a little bit more about Eastman and also just about, you know, official music theory channels and how your interaction has been with that. But let me come back to Teresa first and ask a very similar question which is, what were some of the moments that you brushed up against that were difficult? I think, it would be very interesting for listeners to hear about some of the things that we, Black people, and you, Black women, have to deal with as we make our way, try to make our way in the academic study of music in the United States. Theresa?

Yes. Thank you, Phil. And, I too want to sit at the feet of Jewel and hear so much more of your story, ma'am. Thank you so very much. My challenge, throughout undergrad in particular, was having this keen awareness of the virtuosity, and my own background. My Black Pentecostal background, and having that is something that I treasured, and that I cut my teeth on, and that I held up as the model for, you know, how one improvises and collaborates. Having that so deeply entrenched in my whole being as a musician, and then to come to the academy and find out that that was completely dismissed. It was very difficult but you know, we do what we have to do, right? It was very difficult to live in both worlds.

But I, and many people did it. I would navigate between my Black Pentecostal world and my academic world because I was at Valparaiso university, which was less than an hour from my home in Gary, Indiana. So I would go back home to, to Gary and have the Black Pentecostal experience, and play my music there, and be in the world there. But then I would have to tuck all that away when I went to Valparaiso in that environment, which was very, very overwhelmingly white. I was the only African American music major in my class when I started that fall. I was joined by another friend from my city this spring semester. But I was, the only one for many of the classes that I took.

And I won't go into all of the racism that I experienced, except to say that it was difficult for me to know the value of my own musical upbringing, my own cultural self. It was difficult for me to know that value, to treasure that, and to come into an environment where people, who were completely ignorant, and who had no way to approximate the kind of skill that I saw from my church background. They were completely tied to the page, they were completely dependent on notation. For them, music was notation, and notation was music, and the two were synonymous, and there was no treatment at all of all of the other things and in both classical, and other musics. All the other things that make a musical experience, apart from the page, none of that was, was treated.

Of course, I came through the academy at the time when everybody studied the grout and there was nothing in the grout. Absolutely nothing in the grout about the music of people of color. And so I lived in this world, as many of us who have this experience did, getting the credential, doing what I had to do to get the credential and, and keeping my other self hidden, so as to not expose that part of myself to a critique that I knew would be grounded in ignorance and racism. And that was tough. I kept looking for myself in the music that I studied. My dissertation was on a Sonata by Florence Price because, I was on this continual quest to find Black people in music theory. I loved music theory, it came easy for me because all I did was listen for the first few years of my life.

And so when everybody else was freaking out over ear training and aural skills, it was like a piece of cake to me. But I had no doorway to say, you know, what there is a lot of us like that. There's a lot of Black folk who could come into this class and who could just ace aural skills with, you know, just like it was, you know, eating ice cream where everyone else found it to be the most difficult thing in the world. And although I knew that there was this value in my skill set that came from my Black background, not seeing a pathway to bring that forward safely was difficult and not something that I fully reckoned with for many years. In fact, there are parts of that experience, that particular experience, that I never voiced, never gave voice to until I was in my, well, into my fifties.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Teresa. You know, and it's something that so much echoes with me too. That it's hard to even give voice to these things, it's hard to even understand it, it's something, frankly, that I myself, if I could just speak personally, will be trying to unpack for the rest of my life. I just, there are things that I that I still, I'm like, wow, that was so strange what happened 30 years ago, you know, and the way you speak very beautifully about how we had to compartmentalize love of black music because it just, it would have completely upset the racial order of things in the late 20th century, early 21st century, and frankly, today. To even suggest that we should be mentioning Margaret Bonds in the same breath as Franz Schubert. No, no, no, you can't do that. That's not what we do here in music theory. And it's, it's of course, to our great detriment, to everyone's detriment.

["Little David Play on Your Harp" from three Spirituals for Cello and Piano arr. Dolores White, performed by Khari Joyner (cello) and Dianna White-Gould (piano)]

Louise, could I bring you in essentially kind of the same thing talking along the same lines that Teresa just so beautifully spoke about.

Absolutely, for me it was partially the feeling of isolation. Having grown up on a HBCU, as I said that, at Virginia State, was such a rich musical environment. That you know the piano lessons I had, I had played Margaret Bonds “Troubled Water” and so what troubled me as I went to college and did become a music major was UNC was, at that time, very heavy with music history and theory courses. We had 5 histories and 5 theories and I didn’t know anybody who had parallel theory courses with it. So I loved theory and loved history. But it was the same sense of – “where are the people that I just spent my first 18 years hearing about, watching.”

I’ve watched Undine Moore play her suite with Antoinette Handy and Bill Terry, so I actually was sitting there as a child in the audience, and yet none of these names are coming to the fore in my education. So that was a feeling of puzzlement and of isolation. So I didn’t mention that I knew that there was this rich heritage that was running along parallel in my brain. But I just learned my Milhaud, my Beethoven and everybody else. I was the only African American in my undergrad the whole four years. And so I did, I had to put aside that part of me that was a rich heritage. The other piece say quickly is that my father was a historian of Civil War and Reconstruction. He’s one of the country’s best-known historians in that area.

So I grew up with a sense of there’s this pride, there’s this legacy, there’s this excellence. I knew it was there and I’m not seeing it reflected. So that lack of continuity between what I grew up with and what I’m seeing in the academy, stuck with me very much through my undergrad, my grad program, until I get to Michigan, and there’s Rae Linda Brown. Teaching a course, the first time I’m hearing someone teach a course in the “Music of African Americans,” and she’s talking about all the music, but she did put a heavy emphasis on the concert tradition. There’s Patterson. I arrived in the 80's. He’d already published his anthology in ‘77 of art songs, so I’m for the first time, in a community where I can speak about the very experiences that I’d had. And they’re the ones the 1985 symposium, including Undine Moore and all these other wonderful composers.

So, when I went into the academy as a professor, I was back to being, I was the only graduate pianist at Peabody at the time that I was there, so again, I’m isolated again. But I had a huge community. Guy Ramsey, Bill Banfield, Kyra Gaunt. We were all there together as doctoral students. And then I go to my jobs, the first one at East Carolina University. I’m the first African American woman in the history of the program. They only had 2 of us. Nobody knew what I was talking about once again, when I talked about this music or when I tried to bring artists in. And I even had some attacks in that, the dean asked me to write for a minority initiative that was a university initiative.

And I’m looking around “Why me? If this initiative has been here all these years, just because I’ve just arrived, why have you all not written for it?” But I wrote for it. Wrote for about 10 years consecutively. And then I had colleagues begin to say, “Can we bring in white people?” You know, as I’m being asked to do this. I went to UNC, I’m there first permanent African American in music since 1795. And so I just thought that I was going back. I’m only the second African American in voice at Michigan. Charlie Varette was first, I’m second. But at least again I’m back in the same environment that let me talk about African American music and really made a point of making this a part of the curriculum, whereas most of my career, throughout my education, you couldn’t talk about this.

Yeah, it’s incredible the dismissiveness, I think. I don’t know if you know the ministries in Atlanta his name is Danté Stewart, young guy. He wrote a really beautiful piece for the NYT a month or so ago. And it opens with the following quote: “To be a victim of injustice hurts hard. To be a victim of indifference hurts deeper and longer.” And that sums up, in my opinion, the experiences of African American in academic music in the United States. We can all point to once instance when something was just horribly unjust from a racial standpoint. It just was wrong. Up to and including the lynching like George Floyd, right, these are moments that just meant to denigrate and hurt and, you know, to the most horrific tragedies you can possibly imagine.

But the everyday dismissal and even denigration is what actually, it’s the indifference. And he also talks about “White Ingratitude” in this article. This is Danté Stewart again in the NYT piece. We can link that in the program notes to this episode. But it’s the indifference over decades and indeed centuries that hurts deeper and longer. And we’ve really touched on that, I think, in this brief conversation. That we all realize that there’s this indifference towards what African Americans have offered musically to the country. Because it’s been pretty massive. Everybody knows that. Nobody could possibly deny the influence that African American people have had on the history of music in our country.

That’s just a fact. And yet, in the academic study, we are coming back to this point like Louise was the first person, Jewell was the first person. I, myself, I’m 57 years old and I have been the first person in many different arenas in my career, either as cellist or as music theorist. I’d love to come back to Jewel now and hear a little bit more about your perspective on these issues. About this indifference or dismissiveness that we’ve all had to deal with. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that aspect first at Eastman and then also from kind official music theory channels- the society for music theory or regional societies or other aspects of music theory generally, Jewel.

Eastman was truly a wonderful experience and I did not experience racial injustice there.

That’s great.

Took me on the hand, I think. I don’t know, if it’s because I was Black or what. But anyway, I had no problems with the teachers. And even today, the one that was my advisor, still communicates with me. But in choosing and going through my studies, they noticed my contributions to the class, and the grades that I made and so on. And they were right there. My problem at Eastman was in the community where I lived. Going into the community, knows that’s snow country up there. And walking down the streets to school, and the snow would be so high, it would be higher than I. But anyway, in the community, kids would throw snowballs at me. And I would be so, of course, embarrassed with my other friends who were walking with me.

I’m trying to remember the name of the man who put together the big documentary on Blacks. Volumes covered us from the beginning to where we were at that time. His name will come back to me. But anyway, we had roommates, we didn’t have roommates, we had a room. But I had friends in the theory department as well as other friends. And they would invite me to their room to watch it on tv. And I had to sit there and watch them, you know how they treated us, and tried to keep a straight face. And I know that they were noticing too.

But they were kind and seemed supportive anyway. That kind of experience I had. But as far as the teaching goes. They recognized my scholarship and competence. But I did the thesis or dissertation on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. They watched it with you know, read every chapter, and they would learn things themselves. But anyway, it was suggested that it be published as a book. And they were companies that wrote to me, asking for that score. And finally, Scarecrow Press, it was called at the time, asked to see my thesis, uh dissertation. And they published it as a book. And today it’s considered top source. They felt that it was just that good.

That's excellent. What about, I’m really interested to hear about music theory the field, after Eastman. What were your experiences there, Jewel?

After graduating with my doctorate, no after getting my masters, I came to Hunter. After finishing my masters, I got married. I had taught in public school before going to grad school, taught music for a couple years, so. It wasn’t theory. It was just general music for the high school students. But anyway, I went to Eastman and finished my masters. There was a young man who then also went to Eastman and he is now a big, his name is Leon Thompson, who later, became the director of educational activities for the NY Philharmonic.

Anyway, married, and of course, he was a Fulbright scholar and all that. After the children were of some size, I wanted to start teaching again. And the pastor of our church was very instrumental in saying to the people at Hunter, and talking to the board, that there was someone who is truly qualified and should be considered. So, he wrote a letter of recommendation and I went to Hunter college as an adjunct. And I taught there for a couple years and decided to get my doctorate. That’s when I got my doctorate.

I see so the connection to Hunter started between your masters and your PhD then.

Yes.

Oh ok. And how about the officially, for instance, the society for music theory, or other MT channels after Eastman. Did anybody try to engage with you at that point later on in your career? And to interact with you?

That’s what I meant. When I went music theory society and of course you are having the discussions and so on. And I wanted to be a part of things, of course, raising my hand, they would recognize someone else to speak. And then when we’d take our breaks and socialize. I would go over to join a group and they would either talk louder to themselves around me or even walk away. And it got to be so uncomfortable going to those meetings to be shunned like that, you know? I stopped going.

That’s so unfortunate.

I continued to pay dues and then I said “now why am I paying dues and I can’t enjoy the meetings or be a part of anything?” One time I was asked to be on a panel about the topic that we were discussing, a contributor. And they took it lightly, you know, but they talked around me or found more to say than what I had said. So that it made it look like she didn’t say anything, you know?

And you know Jewel, we are all worse off for it, frankly. And that is something that is painful to hear, but I think it’s really important to hear. And thank you for that. I’m looking at our clock, and I realize that we probably should be wrapping up soon. I wonder if I could maybe just in 60 seconds or less ask you each- I don’t really much care for the “What do we do now? What do we do now?” questions. They’re so broad. They’re so difficult to answer. But maybe I could ask each one of you – in 60 seconds or less—just to say, what a piece of advice would be for a Black person, and maybe specifically, a Black woman, making her way through the academic study of music in 2023, because you all have such great experiences and perspectives. Theresa, can I start with you?

Yes, absolutely, thank you so much. I am just transfixed by Jewel, and I need more time with you, Jewel. I really do.

We all do!

I would say to celebrate your heritage. Don’t do what I did and wait 25, 30 years to feel affirmed in who you are. Feel affirmed right now. And if the field has a problem with that, that is the field’s problem. That is not your problem. Our music is beautiful. Our artists are genius. Our heritage is valuable, and we need to assist, if anything, the field in recognizing the value that has always been there. And if they do, great. if they don’t we really are autonomously wonderful. And that’s something I really appreciated about the conference in June- some space to celebrate who we are without apology without compromise and without hiding.

Hear Hear. Theresa, well said! Thank you! Jewel, can I come to you? 60 seconds or less – a piece of advice as we Black people, and especially Black women, make their way through the academic study of music.

Well I cannot separate from what I tell my students every day. I’m way passed what they consider the retirement age but since they don’t have mandatory retirement, I keep teaching

Good for you. Good for you.

And I tell all my students, Black and white, I have mostly white students. Anyway, if this is your passion, go for it, don’t tell yourself you can’t do it. You can. We use positive statements only. Go forward as much as you can. Energy, feeling no… just carry with you “I can do this and I will do it.” And that’s what I tell them all.

Hear hear, Jewel, very nicely said. Thank you. Louise?

I would just add that I would say to them don’t let yourself be isolated. Reach out. There are so many women who have, at this stage, gone before you who are still around to be your mentors and help build you up. Encompassing what we’ve all said, don’t be in isolation, because that is not the way that we move the needle forward. So, that would be my advice.

Excellent. Excellent. Thank you all so much. My name is Phil Ewell, and I’ve been speaking with 3 very esteemed colleagues and friends Louise Toppin, University of Michigan, Jewel Thompson, my colleague at Hunter College, and Theresa Reed, of the University of Louisville. Thank you all so very much for this great recording and conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you, too. Thank you so much.

["Little David Play on Your Harp" from three Spirituals for Cello and Piano arr. Dolores White, performed by Khari Joyner (cello) and Dianna White-Gould (piano)]

I am going to give some thanks to everyone at SMT-Pod and elsewhere, but before I do that I'd just like to mention that at the end of my thanks I'm gonna invite Chris Jenkins back and we're gonna give some final thoughts for everything so please stay tuned for that. We have some fun announcements for the future and a really great testimony from one of the participants in the conference so please stay tuned after my brief message here of thanks. And yes, indeed, thank you to Louise Toppin, and Teresa Reed, and Jewel Thompson for that great conversation. Thank you for everything that you do. You are icons, you are OGs to the field.

And thanks also, of course, to everybody at SMT-Pod for allowing us to do this five-part series, especially Jennifer Beavers, Megan Lyons, and Lydia Bangura. And thanks also to the Society for Music Theory for providing support for this podcast, generally, and just generally supporting this idea. I think it's very important. A special thanks to Mark Pottinger for his great peer review of today's episode. I'm gonna tap the brakes here a little bit because Mark made two comments that I would like to emphasize and comment on a little bit if I could. Mark is a Black man, he was on the steering committee for Theorizing African American Music. And did great work there and thanks to Mark for that. He's a professor of musicology, has his PhD from the Graduate Center, the CUNY Graduate Center. And he's the chair of music at Manhattan College in the Bronx. He made two great points that I'm gonna highlight here in his peer review for this episode.

The first one is that all three panelists have strong ties to the Black church which is wroth pointing out -- Pentecostal Church, Episcopalian Church, and the Baptist Church -- and that often provided provided for Black people in the history of this country, really. Right? Of course during slavery it was not allowed to be, to form churches and go to churches, it was discouraged to even have group meetings about religion but then in the postbellum American the church became quite a strong force for many things. My own father was raised in the Baptist church in Louisiana, and that's very likely where he found his love of music. He left the church, he was not a religious person - I, myself, am not a religious. But I do think my dad, my African American father, found his own love for music, for classical music, in the Black church.

So that's a really great point that Mark made that I would like to underscore here. And the second point was about the indifference that the three panelists today talked about, and I of course talk about that myself often. This indifference, this white indifference, that is something that we must all face and confront and talk about and resolve because it is not something that is acceptance. I quoted from an article by Donté Stuart, he's a young 31-years-old Atlanta grad student at Emory and he's a minister. He had a great piece in the New York Times that we'll link in the program notes. And I quoted from it the opening of that article: "To be a victim of injustice hurts hard. To be a victim of indifference hurts deeper and longer." And later he talks about white ingratitude.

And I'm gonna share one more quote from that very same New York Times piece back in December of 2022. And Donté Stuart writes "White ingratitude is very real, and it is the heart of white power and white supremacy. If you are ungrateful for another person's humanity and freedom, then you will do all types of things to de-value and disrupt it. Many white people are ungrateful for what Black people mean to America - What we have been, what we have done, what we have given them, and what we have endured." And that is a very poignant quote, it is a striking quote, and frankly it is exactly true about the academic studied music in the United States. It is very true about American music theory. I think we all know that we really should not try to dispute that.

That would be disingenuous. In Mark's peer review he wrote a sentence that I would like to quote, and I have his permission to do so. This is an open peer review process that you know anyway, but I emailed him just to make sure. Mark wrote specifically: "Putting aside the recent efforts by the Society for Music Theory to articulate diversity statements, the reality is that Black music academics often feel that they need to prove their ability to exist in White spaces and ones in which that often asks the Black music academic to be more urbane, more culturally sophisticated, more multi-language, more well-read, and more musically inclined in order to be seen less Black and hence more the ideal White universal."

So I thank Mark for point that out and prompting me to read a quote from Danté Stuart. This is, in fact, one of the main problems of academic music as I see it in the United States. This inability to view Blackness as the equal of Whiteness, and our collective inability, and this is to our collective shame, myself included, that we cannot see all of the things, all of the musical things, that Blackness has given American music. And this is not about simply going to see a conference paper on Johnny Lee Hooker, I can't tell you how often senior theorists tell me how great everything is because our conferences are so diverse. That is a smoke screen, that is just not something, I am not willing to brook. I will not tolerate that.

The epistemic core of what we do is very music centered on this mythological version of the West and we really need to come to terms with that. Theorizing African American Music very much tried to do that. I think we were very successful in many ways and I very hope that we can keep this momentum going and I very much am thankful for this platform with which to make these points and I very much thank everyone at the Society for Music Theory for allowing me, personally, but also everyone else to do so in highlighting Theorizing African American Music conference and now I am going to stop. Thank you all very much, and please stay tuned for my final comments with Chris Jenkins.

["Little David Play on Your Harp" from three Spirituals for Cello and Piano arr. Dolores White, performed by Khari Joyner (cello) and Dianna White-Gould (piano)]

Alright, Chris! It’s great to be back with you here for our final wrap-up of this five-part pod series on Theorizing African American Music. Woo! It’s been a long haul; it’s kind of bringing back all of this memory, all of these memories about what we did for last summer, it was really great. Maybe you could just go through some of your final thoughts about everything.

Sure, Phil, I would love to talk about it, just because, actually, the process of making the podcast has been really helpful in recalling the kind of energy that we had. That was the most impactful thing to me, the kind of energy in the room we had, all Black or majority Black spaces, talking about TAAM, talking about classical music from the perspective of Black musicologists and Black music theorists. I had never been in a space like that and I actually was proud, if nothing else, of the fact that we were able to convene spaces like that. That felt so meaningful to me. And so, I’m hoping that we can do so in the future too.

Yea, we’ll talk about that a little bit at the end of this wrap-up. For me, it’s - this conference in some ways was new, with its focus on the music theory aspect of it, because music theory has been so exclusivist in its past in this country. But of course, on the other hand, this conference was not new. There have been many conferences before featuring African American musicologists, musicians, composers, the music. They have happened in musicological spaces, ethnomusicological spaces, and other spaces as well, obviously. So it’s important to acknowledge that. I often say that Black musicologists go back to at least 1878 when James Monroe Trotter published his Music and Some Highly Musical People - all about African American, essentially classical and concert musicians, who had worked up until 1878.

So that’s a long time ago. But obviously there have been countless others who have been making these points and essentially theorizing African-American music as well, if not in a direct kind of music-theoretical fashion, which I think was very much part of this conference. So, it’s been really great and you’re right about bringing up all of the community in the special experiences we had at Case Western. We also should mention that one of the icons of the concert that you put together has passed actually, maybe you could say a couple words about that.

Yea, so the composer Dolores White passed away just recently at the age of 90, which is such an accomplishment in itself. I’m just very glad that I had the opportunity to meet her before her passing. I actually was first approached by her several years ago because she was working on a book about her husband, the cellist Donald White. He was one of the first African-American players in the Cleveland Orchestra, many many years ago. And actually, we did have some of the music she has written performed on our concert, I think a bit of it was used earlier in this episode.

And those pieces for cello and piano, she had actually written to perform with her husband Donald White, with herself on piano. So that was a very meaningful performance, and she was actually able to take part in that, and that was really amazing. And, you know, I just really appreciated her energy and her spirit, which is really captured in her music. If you haven’t heard it, I very much suggest that you go check it out. It has a lot of her personality and character everywhere. That was one thing that she always had in spades - lots of personality.

Yea, and it’s amazing that these African-American composers - they’re hiding in plain sight, right? They’re always there, they always have been there. And it’s just fascinating to me how little we collectively know in terms of mainstream, let’s call it, academic music. And it’s just wonderful to come across all of these composers and to see people actually finally engaging with them. And also her daughter was one of the pianists, right? Dianna White-Gould, she was playing her music and that was also very touching.

Yes that’s right, actually Dianna and I work together and perform quite a bit, music by Black composers (and Khari as well), so it was great to have them on the performance for sure.

Yea, so, one totally amazing thing that happened at the end of the conference, unprompted, we had this comment from a young Black bass player, his name is Drew Collins. And we are going to play his comments here for the listeners, with his permission of course, and then we can reflect on them because it was very powerful what Drew said.

[Live at TAAM 2021 Keynote Panel] Hey, this is more of a comment actually, but I really wanted to address everyone in this room. I’ve been the program assistant for this conference and I was hired to, it was some pretty good money, so I was pretty excited about it. So that’s mostly what I was here for, that’s initially what I thought I was coming for. And beyond my wildest dreams, I truly feel like I’ve been transformed. By the papers that have been written, the words that have been spoke, by the friendly faces that I’ve met, by the discussion that have been had. It’s been almost a violent shift in perspective in my life.

And I have to thank every individual that has been here to speak, the people that have put this together, I - it is just mind blowing, the things that can be thought of when people really decide, you know, they’re a cause for good and they want a shift to happen, and they really dedicate their lives to it. And from somebody who just graduated from their undergrad degree, I’m a performance major, and this all has been so, I can - every word resonates so well and through my body, I can feel it coming out of every orifice. So I just really wanted to say: it really touches me in a very intense way, just thanking everybody here for the work that you’re doing. Yea, that’s all I have to say [begins to cry as the audience applauds].

So I just want to say, about those comments, especially as someone who works with students as my primary job at Oberlin where I am right now. Those comments, for me, were the most important part of the conference, because they demonstrated the potential that this has to transform, or rather this kind of project has, to transform the next generation of musicians. To transform their viewpoint. And also, it impacted me because I felt, in some kind of poignant way, it’s very difficult to realize that the next generation is encountering so many of the problems that we encountered and has not necessarily been given the tools to free themselves from some of those restrictions.

Yeah.. Those were such powerful comments from Drew Collins, and I of course thanked him after the conference for them. I think they were the most poignant for me as well. You and I worked very hard to get this conference off the ground, of course, and I thought I had some trepidation like “oh how’s it all going to play out?” Whether it was even going to work, or were people going to be disappointed. At that moment I said to myself “Ok, everything was worth it, I don’t care what anyone else says.” Because to see a young, undergraduate, black classical bass player, Drew, speak like that with such emotion and realizing that he had never been exposed to such spaces.

I had never been exposed to such places, certainly at that point in my life. I have had other opportunities since when I was younger to work in spaces like that on rare occasions. But it’s so hard in white spaces, and academic music is a white space, that is something that is just a fact - unless of course you’re at an HBCU, for example. But, in mainstream America, academic music is white. And it’s just so hard for Blackness to come together and have that sense of community. Because frankly, whiteness very much does not want to see that happen, to be blunt about it. And it’s something that we have to work at to see these spaces come together. And then to hear someone like Drew talk like he did was so very impactful. Thank you, Drew for those comments.

Since I’m thanking Drew, I think we should just get to our final thank yous. Chris and I just have a million names, but realizing that we have a million names we’d be here forever. So, we’re going to kind of broaden it a little bit and thank institutions and committees. There really really were so many people, so just a general shoutout to everyone who participated and who gave their time and who helped us to make this conference happen. Yes, Chris and I work very hard, but that doesn’t mean other people did not - many people worked very hard and we’re very grateful for that. First, I think Chris will start with some institutional thank yous.

Yea, so we’d very much like to thank and appreciate the work of schools that assisted us in actually producing this project, that would be the Cleveland Institute of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, Case Western Reserve University, and the Society for Music Theory. And particularly, Case Western and CIM, which hosted us. And, certainly, the School of Music at the University of Louisville. I actually made an error in an earlier episode and referred to it as the University of Kentucky - it is the University of Louisville! Of which, Teresa Reed is the dean of the School of Music there, and we really want to thank them for their generosity and their donations.

And so Theresa, you did get a shout out there! Thanks Teresa, who was also on this episode earlier. And, the committees: we had three committees working on this. The steering committee worked, we had many Zooms with an outstanding steering committee, we had a local arrangements committee for folks in Cleveland, and then a program committee that went over all of the conference proposals, and we also worked very hard. Everyone on those committees, thank you so much. Everyone in the participants in the actual conference itself: the concert that Chris spearheaded on the first night, Thursday night.

Many people: we mentioned Dolores White and her daughter Dianna White-Gould, and then we had many people, participants on the program: of course all the people who gave papers, all the people who came in to moderate sessions, and the keynote speakers on Friday and Saturday. Just everyone who was on stage was so very very inspiring. And, finally, another group here to acknowledge here of course is everyone at the Society for Music Theory Podcast series. What a great new initiative. All of the people behind the scenes there have been so very gracious in setting this up, spending their time putting out this series, and it’s been really great working with everyone at SMT-Pod so thank you all! Finally, Chris and I are going to mention a couple of future plans we have.

We’re going to get the band together again and do a pre-conference-conference this fall in Denver. This fall, the AMS and SMT will meet in Denver and on the Wednesday before, November 8, we’re planning a small pre-conference TAAM. So look for that call for papers, we hope to have a keynote speaker and some music performed, and that will be in Denver before the conference AMS-SMT, Wednesday November 8. And finally, we are in fact planning a TAAM 2, the sequel, and this would be in likely June of 2024, and we are in conversations with a couple places and that will hopefully happen. So we very much look forward to that. I will give Chris the final word, but I will sign off - this is Phil Ewell, thank you all so very much for listening - Chris.

Thank you all for listening. We really hope the spirit of the event has come through and been communicated in some of the talks that we’ve had and some of the music we’ve played. And we look forward to seeing any and all who have interest at future TAAM events.

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Visit our website smt-pod.org for supplemental materials related to this episode and to learn how to submit an episode proposal. Join in on the conversation by tweeting your questions and comments @SMT_Pod. SMT Pod's theme music was written by Zhangcheng Lu with closing music by David Voss. Thanks for listening!