In 1955, Columbia Artists Management and Robert Shaw disinvited two Black soloists from the Robert Shaw Chorale's upcoming Southern tour. Margaret Bonds denounced their disinvitation in a press release -- and the soloists were reinvited.

March 17, 2025 Five years ago today, on St. Patrick’s Day in 2020, I set up my website , and the following day (March 18) I posted my...

With roots dating to the mid-1930s, Margaret Bonds's song "Note on Commercial Theater" has finally been published. Here is its story.

A free program note containing accurate, up-to-date information for those studying or planning to perform The Ballad of the Brown King.

Kamala Harris's housing initiative reflects the influence of Rev. Hamilton Boswell, nephew of Margaret Bonds & grandson of Dr. Monroe Majors

The story of the life, work, and legacy of Will H. Dixon may be the first major musical rediscovery of the 21st century.

(Prefatory note: I began this first of the twelve Black History months of 2024-25 down with simultaneous COVID and flu – and the lost...

In some ways, the year 2023 was a year of revanchism and regression in classical music. Just a few years earlier, many voices –...

Some Historical Errata, Corrigenda, and Addenda As December nears, so do more performances of one of Margaret Bonds’s most important and...

This post is an update to my post of March 26, 2023. As I noted there, in 1912, two years after the death of Dr. James H. Smith, father...

As a prefatory exercise for this post, consider the “rule of 4%”: less than four percent of the players in professional orchestras with...

In Parts 1 and 2 of this four-part post I attempted a systems-level analysis of the means and mechanisms (“linchpins”) by which racism...

In Part 1 of this series of systems-level commentaries on Racism in Romantic Music (RRM), I discussed how the pervasive racism of the...

Dear Constant Reader, I’ve been absent from this blog for a while, partly because I needed to recharge, partly because I’m currently...

The Mother of Florence B. Price The tombstone (a marker, really) is in Achor, Columbiana County, Ohio. On it is the name of Florence...

A Conspirare Premiere and a Gratuitous Youthful Photo Langston Hughes’s poem Joy was first published in the collection The Weary Blues...

The Margaret Bonds / W.E.B. Du Bois Credo Returns to Its Roots Margaret Bonds’s relationship with her father was complicated but rich –...

Margaret Bonds’s Montomery Variations and Credo on the Same Program with the Hartford Chorale and Hartford Symphony Orchestra Margaret...

Twenty Years Down the Road, a Great Composer Revisits an Early Work and Asks, “What’s in a Name?” There aren’t many students of...

Speaking Truth to Power In the late nineteenth century, the railroads were the primary means for shipping goods and materials quickly,...