John Michael Cooper
BLACK REINSCRIPTION, WHITE REPRISAL: ELIZABETH KECKLEY AND MARGARET BONDS
(Prefatory note: I began this first of the twelve Black History months of 2024-25 down with simultaneous COVID and flu – and the lost...
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John Michael Cooper
Jul 15, 20239 min read
RIDDLED WITH MISTAKES
In the last few years, a music-publishing industry that historically has resolutely ignored compositions by composers of color and women...
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John Michael Cooper
Jun 24, 20233 min read
RACISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (2): SILENCING BY MUSIC PUBLISHERS
In Part 1 of this series of systems-level commentaries on Racism in Romantic Music (RRM), I discussed how the pervasive racism of the...
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John Michael Cooper
Mar 26, 20234 min read
THE TOMBSTONE’S TALE
The Mother of Florence B. Price The tombstone (a marker, really) is in Achor, Columbiana County, Ohio. On it is the name of Florence...
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John Michael Cooper
Dec 20, 20223 min read
FLORENCE PRICE’S MOTHER AND FATHER SUED THE RAILROAD FOR DISCRIMINATION
Speaking Truth to Power In the late nineteenth century, the railroads were the primary means for shipping goods and materials quickly,...
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John Michael Cooper
Jun 3, 20222 min read
FLORENCE PRICE’S SCENES OF TENEMENT LIFE
Today witnesses the release of 2022’s second[1] milestone in the recorded legacy of Florence B. Price: the world-premiere recording of...
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John Michael Cooper
Apr 30, 20224 min read
“UNIVERSITIES, UNIVERSITIES, UNIVERSITIES!” (1)
The Conservatory of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Brings Margaret Bonds’s Civil-Rights Credo to the Home of Dred Scott’s...
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John Michael Cooper
Feb 18, 20224 min read
THE CREDO SOUNDS AGAIN
W.E.B. Du Bois’s bold and brilliant civil-rights manifesto Credo was first published in 1904 and republished with revisions at the head...
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John Michael Cooper
Jan 22, 20224 min read
LAMENT AND BENEDICTION
The Last Two Movements of Margaret Bonds’s Montgomery Variations and the 2022 Defeat of Voting Rights Legislation This past week, Senate...
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John Michael Cooper
Apr 6, 20219 min read
THE PROBLEM WITH PROGRAMS (Part 2)
Florence Price’s First Symphony, the 1933-34 World’s Fair, and Three Tribbles In the first part of this post I talked about the context...
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John Michael Cooper
Apr 1, 20217 min read
THE PROBLEM WITH PROGRAMS (Part 1)
Florence Price’s First Symphony, the 1933-34 World’s Fair, and Three Tribbles Never in my career of writing did I expect that one day I...
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John Michael Cooper
Feb 11, 20215 min read
RACIAL JUSTICE AND AMERICAN PATRIOTISM
Resurrecting a Blacklisted Musical Affirmation of Freedom from 1976 in 2021 [Update (March 8, 2021): The June 13, 2009 revival of...
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John Michael Cooper
Jan 13, 20216 min read
COMPOSING FREEDOM:
On Performers’ and Listeners’ Rediscovery of Florence Price’s Clouds (ca. 1947) LIKE ABOUT THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY of the more than three...
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John Michael Cooper
Sep 5, 20205 min read
CHALLENGING A "SONIC REFUGE OF WHITENESS" IN UNDERGRAD MUSIC HISTORY COURSES
A small Liberal Arts college music-history sequence to abandon its "sonic refuge of Whiteness" and teach more inclusively.
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John Michael Cooper
Jul 20, 20202 min read
TESTIMONY: A #BLACKLIVESMATTER MANIFESTO
41 readers ages 5-81 voice their support for #BlackLivesMatter in a collaborative reading of a Civil Rights manifesto by W.E.B. Du Bois.
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John Michael Cooper
Jun 10, 20206 min read
WALK WITH ME
The global #BlackLivesMatter marches and Florence Price's spirituals give voice to the power of the cosmos in mandating racial justice.
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