We are promised a welcome review of "black" classical music on BBC4 shortly. That it is to be fronted by Suzy Klein, who was not afraid to go into the darker recesses of nationalistic music not so long ago, and Lenny Henry guarantees that the programme or programmes will not be bland. What concerns me is the amount of time that will be devoted to the subject. David Olusoga's history of the African novel was revelatory but an hour was not long enough. It was difficult to take in all the different authors and there was time for detail on only a few of them. Moreover, it was restricted to former British colonies. There was no mention of Francophone writers, or on novels from Egypt. And surely there must have been some non-white novelists in South Africa?
At least William Grant Still should get his due on BBC TV. He has been the subject of Radio 3's Composer of the Week - twice to my knowledge - but I cannot recall any TV exposure. In addition to his original compositions, Still - along with Ferdy Grofé - wrote arrangements for Paul Whiteman's big band. I would contend that they contributed as much to the "American sound" of movie sound-tracks as Aaron Copland did.
1 comment:
Mention of Copland reminds me of a story about one of his biggest "hits". At a fundamentalist church in the American Bible-belt, the pastor insisted that every week they start the service with the band playing something patriotically American -
the Fanfare for the Common Man. After several months, the band were getting tired of playing this.
Eventually, one band member said in a loud aside to a colleague, "Isn't
odd that we start each week with something written by a left-wing Jewish
homosexual." They never played it again.
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