His early compositions are in that style, reflecting the ragtime and dance music popular at the time. His early musical experiences were mostly with the light salon music of the day, now mostly forgotten, mixed with a scattering of classics. He was exposed to the piano at a very young age.
He grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario and later moved to the U.S. Even after being awarded honorary doctorates of music from Howard University in 1924 and Oberlin in 1926, he chose to enroll at the Eastman School of Music in 1931 to obtain a Master’s Degree. Whatever the reason for that particular blossoming of black women’s talent, one can only hope that performances of their works will inspire further listening and appreciation.ĭett was the first person of African descent to graduate from Oberlin College, with a double degree in piano and composition in 1908. All of these musical facets might be seen to represent the cumulative experience of black people through history.īonds is just one example of the rich culture of African-American classical music in Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where women in particular seem to have felt empowered to create to a degree not typical of the rest of America at that time. The perspective of The Ballad of the Brown King is introduced succinctly in the libretto’s opening line: “Of the three wise men who came to the king, one was a brown man, so they sing.” In the work’s nine movements, totaling about 24 minutes, Bonds intertwines stylistic elements of European Romantic orchestral writing, jazz harmonies, the energy and phrasing of American spirituals, Calypso syncopation, Christian hymn-singing, and even Arabian-inspired ornamentation.
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