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“Strange What Cosmopolites Music Makes of Us”: Classical Music, the Black Press, and Nora Douglas Holt's Black Feminist Audiotopia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2020

LUCY CAPLAN
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Abstract

This article examines the music criticism of Nora Douglas Holt, an African American woman who wrote a classical music column for the Chicago Defender (1917–1923) and published a monthly magazine, Music and Poetry (1921–1922). I make two claims regarding the force and impact of Holt's ideas. First, by writing about classical music in the black press, Holt advanced a model of embodied listening that rejected racist attempts to keep African Americans out of the concert hall and embraced a communal approach to knowledge production. Second, Holt was a black feminist intellectual who refuted dominant notions of classical music's putative race- and gender-transcending universalism; instead, she acknowledged the generative possibilities of racial difference in general and blackness in particular. I analyze Holt's intellectual commitments by situating her ideas within the context of early twentieth-century black feminist thought; analyzing the principal themes of her writing in the Chicago Defender and Music and Poetry; and assessing her engagement with a single musical work, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, op. 36. Ultimately, Holt's criticism offers new insight into how race, gender, and musical activity intersected in the Jim Crow era and invites a more nuanced and capacious understanding of black women's manifold contributions to US musical culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , August 2020 , pp. 308 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2020

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Footnotes

Thank you to the friends, colleagues, and mentors who offered feedback on earlier versions of this article, including Daphne Brooks, A. Kori Hill, Carol Oja, Caitlin Schmid, and Kristen M. Turner. Thank you, as well, to Zach Sheets for his transcription assistance, and to Samantha Ege for her invaluable recording of Holt's music. I also thank JSAM editor David Garcia and the journal's anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

References

References

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Higginbotham, Evelyn. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
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Karpf, Juanita. “‘As With Words of Fire’: Art Music and Nineteenth-Century African-American Feminist Discourse.” Signs 24, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 603–32.10.1086/495367CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kernodle, Tammy. “Black Women Working Together: Jazz, Gender, and the Politics of Validation.” Black Music Research Journal 34, no. 1 (2014): 27–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kun, Josh. Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Marek, Janyne. “Women Editors and Little Magazines in the Harlem Renaissance.” In Little Magazines & Modernism: New Approaches, ed. Churchill, Suzanne W. and McKible, Adam, 105–18. London: Routledge, 2007.Google Scholar
May, Vivian. Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2007.Google Scholar
McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.Google Scholar
McGinty, Doris Evans. “‘As Large as She Can Make It’: The Role of Black Women Activists in Music, 1880–1945.” In Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists Since 1860, ed. Locke, Ralph and Barr, Cyrilla, 214–30. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.Google Scholar
McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michaeli, Ethan. The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.Google Scholar
Morrison, Matthew D. “Race, Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse.” In “Special Issue on Music, Race, and Ethnicity,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, no. 3 (Fall 2019): 781–823.10.1525/jams.2019.72.3.781CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Gretchen. Shadowing the White Man's Burden: U.S. Imperialism and the Problem of the Color Line. New York: New York University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nash, Jennifer. Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, Willis. “A History of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM): The First Quarter Century, 1919–1943.” PhD diss., Wayne State University, 1993.Google Scholar
Perry, Imani. May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhodes, Jane. “Pedagogies of Respectability: Race, Media, and Black Womanhood in the Early 20th Century.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 18, nos. 2–4 (2016): 201–14.10.1080/10999949.2016.1230814CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schenbeck, Lawrence. Racial Uplift and American Music, 1878–1943. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Bricktop's Paris: African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars. Albany: SUNY Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971.Google Scholar
Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening. New York: New York University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stovall, Tyler. Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.Google Scholar
Taylor, Ula. “The Historical Evolution of Black Feminist Theory and Praxis.” Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 2 (1998): 234–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thurman, Kira. “Performing Lieder, Hearing Race: Debating Blackness, Whiteness, and German Identity in Interwar Central Europe.” In “Special Issue on Music, Race, and Ethnicity,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, no. 3 (Fall 2019): 825–65.Google Scholar
Walker-Hill, Helen, pianist. Kaleidoscope: Music by African-American Women. Leonarda #LE339, 1995, compact disc.Google Scholar
Walker-Hill, Helen. “Western University at Quindaro, Kansas (1865–1943) and Its Legacy of Pioneering Musical Women.” Black Music Research Journal 26, no. 1 (2006): 7–37.Google Scholar
Washburn, Patrick. The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Wright, Josephine. “Black Women and Classical Music.” Women's Studies Quarterly 12, no. 3 (1984): 18–21.Google Scholar
Chicago DefenderGoogle Scholar
Music and PoetryGoogle Scholar
New York Amsterdam NewsGoogle Scholar
Yale Collection of American Literature. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University, New Haven, CT.Google Scholar
Absher, Amy. The Black Musician and the White City: Race and Music in Chicago, 1900–1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Anderson, Paul Allen. Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.10.1215/9780822383048CrossRefGoogle Scholar
André, Naomi. Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Baldwin, Davarian. Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Baldwin, Davarian, and Makalani, Minkah, eds. Escape from New York: The New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.10.5749/minnesota/9780816677382.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barlow, William. Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Bay, Mia, Griffin, Farah J., Jones, Martha S., and Savage, Barbara D., eds. Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Bernard, Emily. Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Carby, Hazel. “It Jus Be's Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues.” Radical America 20, no. 4 (1986): 9–24.Google Scholar
Carby, Hazel. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Carew, Joy Gleason. Blacks, Reds, and Russians: Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990.Google Scholar
Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice from the South. Xenia, OH: Aldine Printing House, 1892.Google Scholar
Cooper, Brittney. Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Vintage, 1998.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B.The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1903.Google Scholar
Edwards, Brent Hayes. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Ege, Samantha. “Florence Price and the Politics of Her Existence.” Kapralova Society Journal 16, no. 1 (2018): 1–10.Google Scholar
Ege, Samantha, pianist. Nora Douglas Holt, “Negro Dance.” YouTube video, 2:13. Posted on February 19, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i1ORmC6EUY.Google Scholar
Ege, Samantha. “Composing a Symphonist: Florence Price and the Hand of Black Women's Fellowship.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 24 (forthcoming, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Floyd, Samuel. The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Gaines, Kevin. Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gatewood, Willard. Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000.10.2307/j.ctt1v2xt8dCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallon, Kim. “Silences Kept: The Absence of Gender and Sexuality in Black Press Historiography.” History Compass 10, no. 2 (2012): 207–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, Mark. Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music Criticism in America. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Griffin, Farah Jasmine. “When Malindy Sings: A Meditation on Black Women's Vocality.” In Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, ed. O'Meally, Robert, Edwards, Brent Hayes, and Griffin, Farah Jasmine, 102–25. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Harlan, Louis R., ed. The Booker T. Washington Papers. Vol. 3, 1889–95. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Haywood, D'Weston. Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higginbotham, Evelyn. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Karpf, Juanita. “The Early Years of African American Music Periodicals, 1886–1922: History, Ideology, Context.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 28, no. 2 (1997): 143–68.10.2307/3108447CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karpf, Juanita. “‘As With Words of Fire’: Art Music and Nineteenth-Century African-American Feminist Discourse.” Signs 24, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 603–32.10.1086/495367CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kernodle, Tammy. “Black Women Working Together: Jazz, Gender, and the Politics of Validation.” Black Music Research Journal 34, no. 1 (2014): 27–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kun, Josh. Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Marek, Janyne. “Women Editors and Little Magazines in the Harlem Renaissance.” In Little Magazines & Modernism: New Approaches, ed. Churchill, Suzanne W. and McKible, Adam, 105–18. London: Routledge, 2007.Google Scholar
May, Vivian. Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2007.Google Scholar
McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.Google Scholar
McGinty, Doris Evans. “‘As Large as She Can Make It’: The Role of Black Women Activists in Music, 1880–1945.” In Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists Since 1860, ed. Locke, Ralph and Barr, Cyrilla, 214–30. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.Google Scholar
McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michaeli, Ethan. The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.Google Scholar
Morrison, Matthew D. “Race, Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse.” In “Special Issue on Music, Race, and Ethnicity,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, no. 3 (Fall 2019): 781–823.10.1525/jams.2019.72.3.781CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Gretchen. Shadowing the White Man's Burden: U.S. Imperialism and the Problem of the Color Line. New York: New York University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nash, Jennifer. Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, Willis. “A History of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM): The First Quarter Century, 1919–1943.” PhD diss., Wayne State University, 1993.Google Scholar
Perry, Imani. May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhodes, Jane. “Pedagogies of Respectability: Race, Media, and Black Womanhood in the Early 20th Century.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 18, nos. 2–4 (2016): 201–14.10.1080/10999949.2016.1230814CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schenbeck, Lawrence. Racial Uplift and American Music, 1878–1943. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Bricktop's Paris: African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars. Albany: SUNY Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971.Google Scholar
Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening. New York: New York University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stovall, Tyler. Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.Google Scholar
Taylor, Ula. “The Historical Evolution of Black Feminist Theory and Praxis.” Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 2 (1998): 234–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thurman, Kira. “Performing Lieder, Hearing Race: Debating Blackness, Whiteness, and German Identity in Interwar Central Europe.” In “Special Issue on Music, Race, and Ethnicity,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, no. 3 (Fall 2019): 825–65.Google Scholar
Walker-Hill, Helen, pianist. Kaleidoscope: Music by African-American Women. Leonarda #LE339, 1995, compact disc.Google Scholar
Walker-Hill, Helen. “Western University at Quindaro, Kansas (1865–1943) and Its Legacy of Pioneering Musical Women.” Black Music Research Journal 26, no. 1 (2006): 7–37.Google Scholar
Washburn, Patrick. The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Wright, Josephine. “Black Women and Classical Music.” Women's Studies Quarterly 12, no. 3 (1984): 18–21.Google Scholar