Teaching Choral Music of the African Diaspora in the United States: Toward a “Living Black History”
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center 2-2021 Teaching Choral Music of the African Diaspora in the United States: Toward a “Living Black History” H. Roz Woll The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4225 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] TEACHING CHORAL MUSIC OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA IN THE UNITED STATES: TOWARD A “LIVING BLACK HISTORY” by H. ROZ WOLL A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts, The City University of New York 2021 © 2021 H. ROZ WOLL All Rights Reserved ii Teaching Choral Music of the African Diaspora in the United States: Toward a “Living Black History” by H. Roz Woll This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Music in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts. Date Vilna Bashi Treitler Chair of Examining Committee Date Norman Carey Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Norman Carey, Advisor Jane Sugarman, First Reader Vilna Bashi Treitler Anthony Leach THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Teaching Choral Music of the African Diaspora in the United States: Toward a “Living Black History” by H. Roz Woll Advisor: Norman Carey In higher education choral curricula, the opportunity to study breathtakingly rich scope of music rooted in Africa and the African diaspora with rigor and depth is often marginalized, neglected, or missing. If studied, it may be framed in the context of “other music” in contrast to music of the Western European canon, creating an oppositional framework rather than an interdependent one. Moreover, opportunities to study the political economy of this music in relationship to race, class, gender, and religion are lacking. This has multiple ramifications for music students’ preparedness to engage in global habits of citizenship in support of racial justice. Through an experimental design and case study of a college course, this qualitative research project explores the questions, “How are higher education choral curricula connected to racialized political and economic realities?” and “How do they perpetuate or undermine these realities?” Using Manning Marable’s Living Black History: How Reimagining the African- American Past Can Remake America’s Racial Future (Marable 2006) as a touchstone, the research is grounded in a combination of theories about race, history, music, and pedagogy applied to the design of a college course, “Choral Music of the African Diaspora in the United States.” The case study is an assessment of students’ reflective writing that analyzes shifts in perspective from views that are oppositional to ones that are interdependent and is located in an inquiry into habits of citizenship toward racial justice in a global context. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project was manifested in community, one key practice of which is negotiating the balance of agency in relationship, of listening, speaking, and taking action. I am indebted to those who participated in these conversations—these habits of citizenship—with me, through which I am profoundly enlivened. I wish to express deepest gratitude to my dissertation committee for their conscientious listening, patient reading, and generosity of time and wisdom. I am extraordinarily grateful to my advisor, Norman Carey, for granting the opportunity to pursue a doctorate, being an unwavering, trustworthy advocate throughout the entire process, and without whom this degree would not be finished. Jane Sugarman provided essential support in imagining the project, shepherding it into existence, and nurturing it along the way. Vilna Bashi Treitler’s foundational guidance helped me focus the research questions, develop a means of analysis, and secure a sense of agency with the material. Anthony Leach provided key suggestions for resources, gave of his expertise in the course itself, and remains a guide for curriculum development. Central to this research are those who contributed not only to the design of the course through conversations but also gave of their time and expertise in meeting with students. I cannot thank enough Charles Anthony Bryant, James Davis, Jr., Dawn Fraser, Deirdre Hollman, Roy Jennings, Evelyn Julmisse, Keith McCutchen, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and Charenée Wade. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Abyssinian Baptist Church both opened their doors to this project and remain institutions from which I gain lasting, significant inspiration. The Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, CUNY, was the generous host of this research. I am grateful to Sandra Babb for supporting the initial genesis of the project, to v Janice Smith, Richard Sang, and Edward Smaldone for administrative support, and to my colleagues there, particularly David Berkman, Susan Davis, Antonio Hart, James and Emily John, Joel Mandelbaum, Deepak Marwah, Kristin Mozeiko, Sidney Outlaw, Sherry Overholt, Karen Smaldone, and Eric Rubenstein. Most of all, I thank my students along the way and those enrolled in these classes for their energetic willingness to engage with this material, their patience with me, their questions, observations, and reflections, and from whom I learned more than they can know. The CUNY Graduate Center provided training and intellectual grounding and I am grateful to additional professors with whom I studied: Stephen Blum, Poundie Burstein, Raymond Erickson, Susan Gonzalez, Irving Leonard Markovitz, Charles Mills, Leith Mullings, Joseph Straus, Robert White, and, through the consortium with Columbia University, Manning Marable. Members of the larger Graduate Center community with whom I had important conversations are Juan Battle, Zee Dempster, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Adrienne Lotson, Jacqueline Martelle, Kristin Moriah, Robert Reid-Pharr, Anne Stone, Alan Takeall, Jerry Watts, and Emily Wilbourne. The Chicago Center for Urban Life and Culture has provided a life-long context for engaging in questions of community and political friendship, and I thank Scott Chesebro for his generosity in sharing resources and pedagogical models, as well as Sterling Plumpp, Arvis Averette, Tony Baker, Emily Nelson Newman, and Steve Saunders. I’m grateful for choral curricula inspiration from Patricia Caicedo, Adrian Dunn, Mary Goetze, Juan Tony Guzman, Nick Page, Doreen Rao, Marti Newland, and Shelby Webb, Jr. For deepening my thinking about musical praxis and citizenship in South Africa I thank Alain vi Barker, Renette Bouwer, Dina Cormick, Bradley Randal Daniels, Sarah Langa, Bowen Ndlovu, Betsy Oehrle, Mollie Stone, and Jabu Tugwana. Working with Jason Tougaw and Kevin Ferguson in support of Writing at Queens provided new pedagogical tools to use writing as a tool for thinking across disciplines. I am grateful for their generous support to attend the Bard Center for Writing and Thinking, and Erika Kaufman’s week-long workshop there was life-changing and began a more community-minded approach to writing that has since compounded. For support in normalizing my own writing process I am indebted to Erin Garrow, Meira Levinson, Kathryn Pendoley, Shiraz Biggie, Aaron Botwick, Karen Okigbo, Michelle Thompson, and Kathleen Ellis. For participating in companionable writing either in person or online, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, I am grateful to Dongmyung Ahn, Lidia Chang, Kristopher Matthias Eckelhoff, M. Elizabeth Fleming, Alexandra Joan, Adrienne Lotson, Bonnie McAlvin, Emiko Sato, Lynne Stillings, Samuel Teeple, Michelle Aeojin Yom, Charenée Wade, and Robert Wrigley. I am eternally grateful to loyal friends and colleagues who are a bedrock of community, laughter, understanding, and grace: Liza Baker, Dana Brown, Nadine Carey, Anita Haravon, Eva Jennings, Dave Meeting, Barbara Naess, Gladys Ross, Mollie Stone, Martha Swisher, Eva Tessza Udvarhelyi, Edwin Vega, and Valerie Wallace. I thank key members of my extended family: Martha and Alan Rice, for their gracious generosity, Jessica Rice for sending me the documentary, Race: Power of an Illusion and who has been a fierce source of personal dignity and renewal, Joanna Thomas, for being a co- conspirator in loving New York City with warmth, fun, and spirit, Susan Lee, who opened her home and provided the perfect writing space at the beginning of the pandemic, John and Sharon Woll for delicious east coast Thanksgivings, and John Franklin for gracious hospitality. vii I thank my mother, Ruth Woll, for her unquenchable spirit, my father, Bruce Woll, for his unbounded delight in wrestling questions, and their shared commitment to conscientious listening and life-long learning. I am indebted to them for generous love and support, and that of Arthur Woll, Laura Free, and Lucy Woll, who provided fierce, loyal cheering at exactly the right moments. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1—Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2—Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................. 13 Experimental Design ................................................................................................................