The multifaceted nationalism of William Grant Still - African American Musician

American Music Teacher, August-Sept, 2002 by David Z. Kushner

To glean the essence of William Grant Still's contributions to American music, it will be useful to capture briefly the views expressed during the formative years of this country's nationhood about the creativity of African-Americans. Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote:

      But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the
   level of plain narration; never saw even an elementary trait of painting or
   sculpture. In music they are more generously gifted than the whites with
   accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of
   imagining a small catch. (The instrument proper to them is the Banjar,
   which they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the
   guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar.)
   Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run
   (melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. (1)

Let us fast forward to the early twentieth century and hear from another prominent Virginian, the composer and pianist John Powell, writing under his pseudonym, Richard Brockwell. He expressed the following thoughts:

      The negro [sic] is, au fond, in spite of the surface polish and
   restraints imposed by close contact with Caucasian civilization, a genuine
   primitive. His musical utterance, when really direct, not imitative, brings
   with it always the breath of the tropical jungle.... The negro is the child
   among the peoples, and his music shows the unconscious, unbounded gaiety of
   the child, as well as the child's humor, sometimes Aesopian, often
   Rabelaisian.... The negro, with all the lovable and simple heart of the
   child, has also the mentality of the child, the child's lack of inhibitions
   and restraints; but he has also the physical impulses of the adult human
   animal to a passionately poignant extent. (2)

That such attitudes--expressed by persons of position, power and "culture"--were prevalent in American society past and contemporaneous was a source of much consternation on the part of those who, like Still, believed that creation is an individual, not a class, enterprise, and that blanket stereotyping is the bane of modern society. In my view it still is.

William Grant Still ruminated for a while about the struggle for equality in this country, equality not only in terms of cultural attitudes. For too long, indulgence of the Negro was viewed as being supported by the establishment. William C. Handy put it well when he said that if he needed money, it was easily acquired if he pretended he wanted it to purchase liquor or to gamble, but not if its purpose was to buy books for his children. (3)

Still was neither a child of the ghetto nor a culturally or educationally deprived person. Although he was exposed to Negro hymns and spirituals sung to him by his maternal grandmother, who lived with the family during his formative years in Little Rock. only later in life did he fully realize their value and potential in terms of serious musical composition. When he was 11, his mother married Charles B. Shepperson. Still was exposed to the world of classical music: by attending concerts and operettas with his stepfather and listening to recordings of Italian operas such as Il Trovatore, Rigoletto and L'Elisir d'Amore.

Later, as a student at Wilberforce University in Ohio, he became acquainted with yet another stream in the music world--college band music. Before leaving college, without a degree, Still involved himself in the performance and arrangement of popular music through his associations with such white and black luminaries as W. C. Handy, Sophie Tucker, Donald Voorhies, Willard Robison and Paul Whiteman. When, in the summer of 1916, Still became an arranger for Handy's band, the "Father of the Blues" had already written his "Memphis Blues" as a campaign song for the mayor of Memphis, E. H. Chump. Still's travels with Handy's band drove home the realities of life in a segregated society and, at the same time, led him to a better understanding of Negro music. Describing his work with Handy, Still remarked,

      It brought me closer to Negro music, because... I didn't come in contact
   much with Negro music until I had become of age and had entered
   professional work. I had to go out and learn it.... Now, in the blues, I
   saw this: a unique musical creation of Negroes.... (The blues) were looked
   down upon.... They were considered to be connected with the dives.... I
   felt that there was something more in them than that.... I warned to
   dignify it through using it in major symphonic composition. (4)

It is one of the peculiarities, indeed ironies, regarding the use of Negro melodies in serious musical composition, that the Bohemian master, Antonin Dvorak, had suggested such a course for American composers much earlier (1895). The director of the National Conservatory often has been cited for his insights on this subject, but it is worthwhile to read Dvorak's words in context: