Exclusive: New York school bans Debussy works

RVS Lee says:

Norman – For whatever difference it makes, the Special Music School is a K – 12 (primary and secondary) school, not a college (in either US or British usage of the word.)

RW2013 says:

Does that also mean no DarkieComicOperas by Will Marion Cook, no Arthur Pryor’s “A coon band contest” or any other such gems? 🙁

Marfisa says:

It is sad and ironic that, while all sorts of efforts are being made to uncover historical Black presence in Europe, evidence of Black musical influence on important European composers is being air-brushed away like this, instead of being put into its contemporary context. Was Debussy racist? Discuss.
There is a riveting BBC radio series by Clarke Peters on Black musicians in 20th century Europe, quite recently broadcast on the World Service on some NPR stations: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kg57l. This should be compulsory listening in American music schools.

SMH says:

https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/golliwog/

“The claim that Golliwogs are racist is supported by literary depictions by writers such as Enid Blyton. Unlike Florence Upton’s, Blyton’s Golliwogs were often rude, mischievous, elfin villains. In Blyton’s book, Here Comes Noddy Again (1951), a Golliwog asks the hero for help, then steals his car. Blyton, one of the most prolific European writers, included the Golliwogs in many stories, but she only wrote three books primarily about Golliwogs: The Three Golliwogs (1944), The Proud Golliwog (1951), and The Golliwog Grumbled (1955). Her depictions of Golliwogs are, by contemporary standards, racially insensitive. An excerpt from The Three Golliwogs is illustrative:

Once the three bold golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and Nigger, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn’t quite ready so Woggie and Nigger said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woogie and Nigger, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song — which, as you may guess, was Ten Little Nigger Boys.(p. 51)

Agatha Christie novel 10 Little Niggers
Ten Little Niggers is the name of a children’s poem, sometimes set to music, which celebrates the deaths of ten Black children, one-by-one. The Three Golliwogs was reprinted as recently as 1968, and it still contained the above passage. Ten Little Niggers5 was also the name of a 1939 Agatha Christie novel, whose cover showed a Golliwog lynched, hanging from a noose.”

La plus belle voix says:

It is interesting to read what the Debussy scholar and performer, Paul Roberts has to say about the two pieces referred to here. (Sorry for long post.)

Paul Roberts. Images: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy. Amadeus Press, Portland OR, 1996, pp. 214-ff.

“The origins of the cake-walk are complex. It appears to have originated as a slow, high-kicking dance by black workers on the American cotton plantations – imitating and parodying the polite elegance of white dancers. […] By the time the american band leader John Philip Sousa began popularizing the cake-walk in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, the genre had become mixed up with ragtime (of equally obscure origin) and indeed with any music based on dance rhythms and syncopated marches and thought to convey the flavor of black America. […]

“According to most authorities, the cake-walk was danced to slow ragtime. Ragtime itself was a form of syncopated piano music, close in style to the march, that originated in saloon bars and bordellos and became hugely popular through printed sheet music. Yet there were instrumental rags and even vocal rags, as well as a host of upbeat and jazzy dance pieces entitled ‘rag’ or ‘cake-walk’ emanating from New York’s Tin Pan Alley publishers. The first published rags appeared in American in 1897. Debussy, like Stravinsky, might have known ragtime from these publications, which soon began to proliferate in Europe […]

“The time signature of ragtime was usually two-four. In its least sophisticated style, the music was characterized by a strongly syncopated right-hand rhythm set against the left hand’s march-like beat. This is the style Debussy reproduced so unerringly in ‘Golliwogg’s Cake-walk,’ onto which he grafted his humorous sense of Chouchou’s doll enacting the dance. (It is also the style of his tiny piano piece ‘The Little Nigar,’ written in 1909 for a child’s piano method.) Whether a true reflection of ragtime or not, this justly celebrated piece captures the irrepressible life of popular entertainment, of music hall and vaudeville, to which Deubssy returned in the preludes ‘Minstrels’ and ‘General Lavine.’ […]

“By one of those strange quirks of history, American minstrel troupes were then reintroduced to Europe and it was one such, busking in the streets of Eastbourne in the south of England during Debussy’s summer vacation of 1905, that was supposed to have inspired ‘Minstrels.’

“But in ‘Minstrels’ we can see that Debussy, as so often, has gone beyond his original inspiration. he projects his experience of minstrels bands onto the more familiar terrain of the fairground, the circus, and the music hall, to create a collage of popular entertainment. The reference of ‘Minstrels’ are manifold. The music alludes unmistakably to the tones of a barrel organ, or perhaps a piano roll (measurers 28-31), complete with rapid repeated-note motif and the suggestion of a turning handle; the clowning, in the passage marked moqueur (mockingly), where the clown seems to be enacting some kind of spooks-behind-the-door scene, ending with a screech of fright and his hair standing upright (at measure 44); and to sentimental music-hall ballads, the kind of songs that encourage audience participation in the authentic music-hall manner (measures 63-74). This passage is also a reference to the crooning, wide-eyed songs of the minstrels. Notice, too, the imitation of a side-drum (quasi tamburo, measures 58-61), which alludes both to a military source of minstrelsy, and to a ubiquitous instrument of the circus ring.

“Allusions to elements of minstrelsy, yes; and inspiration from the music of minstrelsy, decidedly, but in the context of Debussy in the beginning years of the 20th century, I don’t think one should read racism into this music.”

That gainsaid, and on the one hand, the use of the ‘N word’ alone, even if mispelled and patently not meant as a racial slur, is hard to explain in context of a concert program, and any gloss would be too long. One could as a compromise and to avoid airbrushing history use a French title: ‘Le petit nègre’. On the other hand, we should educate children and explain things, not rewrite the past.

As for the Golliwog (originally spelled Golliwogg), it is the least known of the major anti-black caricatures in the United States. And we should maybe read various essays by Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology at Ferris State University. He maintains: Golliwogs are grotesque creatures, with very dark, often jet black skin, large white-rimmed eyes, red or white clown lips, and wild, frizzy hair. Typically, it’s a male dressed in a jacket, trousers, bow tie, and stand-up collar in a combination of red, white, blue, and occasionally yellow colors. The golliwog image, popular in England and other European countries, is found on a variety of items, including postcards, jam jars, paperweights, brooches, wallets, perfume bottles, wooden puzzles, sheet music, wall paper, pottery, jewelry, greeting cards, clocks, and dolls. For the past four decades Europeans have debated whether the Golliwog is a lovable icon or a racist symbol.

The Golliwog began life as a story book character created by Florence Kate Upton. Upton was born in 1873 in Flushing, New York, to English parents who had emigrated to the United States in 1870. She was the second of four children. When Upton was fourteen, her father died and, shortly thereafter, the family returned to England. For several years she honed her skills as an artist. Unable to afford art school, Upton illustrated her own children’s book in the hope of raising tuition money.

In 1895, her book, entitled “The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls”, was published in London. Upton drew the illustrations, and her mother, Bertha Upton, wrote the accompanying verse. The book’s main characters were two Dutch dolls, Peg and Sarah Jane, and the Golliwogg. The story begins with Peg and Sara Jane, on the loose in a toy shop, encountering “a horrid sight, the blackest gnome.” The little black “gnome” wore bright red trousers, a red bow tie on a high collared white shirt, and a blue swallow-tailed coat. He was a caricature of American black faced minstrels — in effect, the caricature of a caricature. She named him Golliwogg.

Basso Continuoso says:

Imagine having your teaching repertoire dictated to you by management. Unthinkable.

Miko says:

After a few days off, Lebrecht’s racist “happy hour” is back.
Some of the commentary on here is disgusting…and passes your (selective) censorship Mr Lebrecht. It speaks volumes.

Richard Zencker says:

Didn’t Erik Satie already do this joke? “Danse maigre (à la manière de ces messieurs)” from Croquis et agaceries d’un gros bonhomme en bois (1913)

Mike says:

Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an exhibition has a piece about two unsympathetic Jews. As far as I know, no one has objected to that