Nonfiction

MY BLOG

For this first post, I’d like to take you back to the mid-1940s.

During the World War II years, Richard Durham had earned a deferment from military service because of a long-standing medical condition. He stayed in Chicago, working as a reporter for the popular, black-owned and operated Chicago Defender newspaper. But like thousands of other Americans during that war, Durham regularly wrote to his friends and younger brothers stationed at army or naval bases around the world, updating them on events large and small at home.

And his writing – conversational and evocative – often bounced off the page, demonstrating Durham’s ability to transport his readers into his world.  His lyrical writing revealed his poetic roots.  Durham had fallen in love with poetry as a teenager and some of his early poems were published in local publications.

In an undated letter to his brother Earl, Durham reported on a concert he had recently attended featuring one of his favorite artists. The letter was probably written during a Christmas holiday season, since Dick told his sailor brother that he was glad Earl had received the fruitcake he’d sent. “They say the older fruitcakes get the better they taste. I wouldn’t know, though,” Durham added.  “Never kept one long enough.  Now for the main dish.”

Dick went on to describe a night in Chicago’s Civic Opera House where “people overflowed into the bandstand and many didn’t get in.” The sold out crowd was ready to party to the sounds of the Edward “Duke” Ellington Band. Duke and his long standing, hard playing band members divvied up portions of Ellington’s “Black and Tan Suite,” and they treated eager listeners to one of Ellington’s new compositions, A New World A ‘Comin. Durham thought that the long, beautiful piece was almost “otherworldly” with a “strange, subdued, joyful quality about it.” He missed however the swinging, danceable rhythms found in older Ellington hits like The Mooche or Echoes of the Jungle.

Durham wrote:

I kept waiting for an old-fashioned, round house, gut-bucket,
dirty-dozen, call-the-cops, pass-the-whiskey-quick type of jump
[tune] like Stompy Jones!
Many a jitt [jitterbug] was holding his breath waiting for it to come.
Many a cat was ready to jump into the bandstand and [dance a] Suzy-Q
where Tchaikovsky had been played the night before.
A mob of hep-chicks wanted to scream, Hallelujah!
But [Ellington] didn’t try for it.
He was shooting after different game.
He didn’t want to “bounce,” he wanted to be beautiful.
And he was.
But I wish…

Please come back for more Richard Durham gems next month.

Twenty-five years ago, a first-time collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and National Public Radio began airing on hundreds of NPR affiliate stations throughout America.

Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions  was an ambitious series of 26 hour-long documentary programs. It explored 200 years of black sacred music, including spirituals, ring shouts, lined hymns, jazz, and gospel.

The series also featured the insights of music creators, performers, listeners, and historians who could place African American sacred music traditions within the social, political, and cultural context of their times.

Mahalia Jackson and The Mighty Clouds of Joy. The Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. Paul Robeson and Mary Lou Williams. Kirk Franklin and Take 6 were just a few many artists featured in the series.

Conceived and hosted by Smithsonian Institution curator, artist, and MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellow Bernice Johnson Reagon, Wade required an intensive, five-year-long fundraising, research, and production journey of commitment. Wade eventually won a Peabody Award and other awards of distinction.

My article, “Wade in the Water: The Making of a Groundbreaking Radio Documentary Series,” was just published in the exciting inaugural edition of the Univerisity of California Press’, Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture.  This article describes Wade’s production journey from the vantage point of an insider – I served as the series’ associate producer. And this piece provides a personal reflection on the making of a series that would set the standard for future long-form, NPR-based music documentary productions.

So I invite you to read, listen to and enjoy these love letters to African American sacred music in all of its many forms!