NEGRO MUSIC

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 121, 23 May 1914, Page 13

NEGRO MUSIC

MR. EUROPE'S SYMPHONY "COLOURED MAN MUST ORIGINATE. "- In some ways, Mr. James Reese Europe is one of the most remarkable men, not only o£ his race, but in the music world of America. He conducts a coloured orchestra of over one hundred performers, who play the works of negro composers. The coloured musicians are not all American negroes. Mr. Europe is a composer of some note, and his dance music is known wherever the Tango or Turkey Trot is danced. He is the head of an organisation which practically controls the furnishing of music for the new dances, and at the same time he is able to 1 expend considerable energy upon tho development of his Negro Symphony Orchestra. Unaided, he has been able to accomplish what white musicians said was impossible ; tho adaptation of negro music and musicians to symphonic purposes And tho reason that he has made a success of his musical enterprises, according to Mr. Europe, ie that he has recognised the principle that the negro should stick to his own specialities and not try to imitate the white man's work. His attitude is that in his own musical field the negro is safe from all competition, so why should he go to the uselees _ task of attempting to interpret a music that is foreign to all the elements in his character? "You see, we coloured people have our own music that is part of us," he has explained. "It's us; it's the product of our souls; it's been created by the sufferings and miseries of our race. Some of the old melodies wo play are made up by slaves of ths old days, and others are handed down from the days before we left Africa. Our" symphony orchestra never tries to play white folks' music. We should bo foolish to attempt such a thing. We are no more fitted for that than a white orchestra is fitted to play our music. Whatever success 1 have had has come \ from a realisation of the advantages of sticking to the music of my own people. BRITISH NEGRO MUSICIANS. "Now, I have between 150 and 187 musicians I can call on for work in the symphony orchestra, and 1 am con tinually adding to their numbers and improving the constituent parts. For instance, I am just sending to South Africa for two French horn players, and to the Sudan for an oboe player. The British regiments in South Africa and the Sudan have remarkable bands, which receive musicians as young as twelve years and train them rigorously. That is the only way to fit a negro for orchestral work. Our people are not naturally painstaking; they want, as they put it, 'to knock a piece cold ' at the first reading. It takes a. lot of training to develop a sense of time and delicate harmony. ''Up to now we hav^e not had the facilities in America for developing negro symphonic players, but gradually we are finding the men and teaching them. You see, the negro is not able to ptey every instrument off-hand. And also, some instruments arc not oxactly suited for our music. "Our people have a monopoly of ragtime work, for the simple reason that the negro has an inimitable ear for time in dancing. As a matter of fact, this instinct for dancing time in our race is an awkward virtue when it comes to training a symphonic orchestra. You would laugh at some of our rehearsals when, in a moment of inadvertence, the players begin to transpose their parts into ragtime. We get some undesignedly funny effects that way. ALLEGED NEGRO MUSIC "In playing symphonic music we are careful to play only the work of our own composers. I know of no white man who has written negro music that rings true. Indeed, how could such a thing oe possible? How could a white man feel in his heart the music that a black man feels? There is a great deal of alleged negro music by white composers, but it is not real. Even the negro rag time music of white composers falls far' short of the genuine dance compositions of negro musicians. NOT RIVALS OF WHITE MEN. "But aside from the fact that negro music by white men is not real negro music, I would not permit my orchestra to play the compositions of white men, because I know my musicians could not begin to rival white men at interpreting the creations of white composers. For example, how could we hope to interpret the works of MacDowell. simple as they are ? It is not in us. MacDowell was a white man ; his simplicity was the simplicity of a white man ,- he wrote from the soul of a white man. COLERIDGE-TAYLOR "TOO WHITE." Coleridge-Taylor was probably the best known of the musicians and composers of > our race. But the fact of the j matter is, that Coleridge-Taylor, while the greatest musician we have produced, is surpassed as a composer oi negro music by several others. Coleridge-Tay-lor lived too much wnong white men ; ho absorbed the spirit and feeling and technique of white men to such an extent that his Tace sympathy was partially destroyed. His work ib not real negro work. It partakes of the finish and feeling of the white man. To write real negro music, a negro must live v with negroes. Ho must think and feel ac they do. "No, the great improvements in higher education ior the negro have not developed music as you might think. The schools and colleges for the negro are all of an industrial character. The artistic side has naturally been neglected as of lees importance. That is our great difficulty. Tho people of my race who love music must tram themselves. "The great task ahead of us, as I see it, is to teach the negro to bo careful, to make him understand tho importance of painstaking effort in playing, and especially to develop hi 6 Benee of orchestral unity."