With all strings attached: composer William C. Banfield notes the clash of artistry and commerce while weaving together a world of music

Black Issues in Higher Education, Dec 16, 2004 by Kendra Hamilton

But first Banfield recalls that Boston during the 1980s was a veritable mecca for Black performing talent. "You ever look at the Jay Leno show? All of those musicians? Well, all of us are in our 40s and, 20 years ago, we were all in Boston" at the New England Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music, he says.

"Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo Marsalis, Kevin Eubanks, Najee, Don Byron--all those guys were my partners. Then you had Tracy Chapman, Ricky Bell from Bell Biv DeVoe, the New Kids on the Block--there was a great stew and brew of about 30 musicians. I compare that movement in my book to the Harlem Renaissance."

The Banfield of the Boston years was a man with a vision. He'd begun teaching--illegally--in the Boston city schools at age 19 and discovered so much talent there--Ricky Bell was one of his students--that he founded B Magic Records in order to produce their work.

"This was in 1980--long before P. Diddy. I was 20 years old and I was producing demos. I had a distribution deal with a New York company. My first record had Najee on it, (and it charted on) the Billboard national lists. I very nearly chose a career path in the music business, and if I had, I guess I could be a millionaire now," he muses.

But commercial success wasn't the thing that motivated Banfield--the music was. He got grant funding that allowed him to branch out from recording into teaching. The new company, Young Artist Development Inc., both recorded young artists and trained them in the nuts and bolts of running a record company.

Banfield found he loved the teaching so much that, instead of pursuing funding to make the company really take off, he found himself applying to Boston University (BU) for admission to the master's program in theology and philosophy.

"I felt like I wanted to be able to imbue these kids with the social and spiritual meanings of the music that I was teaching," Banfield explains. But at BU, Banfield says, the blessing of his interdisciplinary training and imagination became a curse and posed a significant problem.

Banfield's dream was to write a thesis on the relation between African philosophy and African American music and culture. It's a common enough notion these days, but this was 1985 or 1986. His advisors balked--though they turned enthusiastic when Banfield suggested a European version of the very same idea, focusing on Wagner, Nietzsche and German culture.

He says now of the experience, "I'm glad I had the battle because it actually helped me to formulate my pedagogical ideas." But at the time, he admits he was soured, and he left BU with a master's under his belt and a single-minded focus on shaking the dust of academia off his graduation robes.

"I had no intention of doing anything but moving to New York and getting a record contract at Fox," he says.

But fate had other ideas.

During the BU years, Banfield had kept up his music studies--he had, in fact, come under the tutelage of Dr. T.J. Anderson, the world's leading Black classical composer and then-chairman of the music department at Tufts University.