Monday Musicale with the Maestro – June 28, 2021 – Juneteenth 2021 – A Spiritual Celebration
Juneteenth 2021—A Spiritual Celebration
On June 19, 1865, the last slaves in the United States (in the state of Texas) were finally informed that they were free. It was 296 years after the first African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, 79 years after this “all-men-are-created-equal” nation was established, 2 years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, two months after the death of Abraham Lincoln, and one month after the last battle of the Civil War.
Juneteenth is now a Federal Holiday by decree of President Biden. Press Release can be found here.
I am truly grateful that Governor Roy Cooper made this “Second Independence Day” into a state holiday. Read his announcement here.
On June 19, 2021, the Durham Symphony Orchestra organization was part of the Juneteenth celebration on Durham’s Main Street. It was here that we joined dozens of vendors and thousands of participants to show our solidarity with our community!
Below is a photo of me with Marianne Ward (former President of the DSO Board) with her husband, Richard, and one of the DSO’s most valued patrons, John Lambert. John will this week be retiring as Editor-in-Chief of CVNC.ORG, an online site of classical music reviews and articles.
This is a pic of Arvind Subramaniam and Tiffany Bell (daughter of Durham’s former mayor, Bill Bell) on Juneteenth. Tiffany is Sickle Cell Transition Educator and Social Worker for Duke University Sickle Cell Clinic. She and Arvind were there advocating for sickle cell funding and research and gaining interest in their clinic. Arvind is a brilliant young man (saxophonist, composer, med tech wizard), whom I have been mentoring for several years. His life’s work is to help sickle cell patients and find a cure for that disease. (See our June 14th Musicale here.)
It was a wonderfully festive occasion, and we were all proud to be part of it. I enjoyed watching hundreds of people promenading on Main Street, dressed in colorful garb and enjoying the pleasant weather and the theme of the occasion. It was a day spent celebrating our shared humanity and interests.
And what a treat it was to chat with the people who came up to our booth! Many had played instruments in high school and college and from that had gained some knowledge and interest in our repertoire, which extends from Bach to Jazz, from John Williams to John Legend. I have always resisted the notion that classical music is elitist. I believe that it belongs to everyone.
I felt very at home on this day where all were equal and all the arts were equal.
We, of the Durham Symphony, call ourselves “the People’s orchestra,” and it appears that we were the first orchestra in the history of this 16-year event to be represented there. The North Carolina Symphony, “the state orchestra,” was not represented at this official NC celebration of Juneteenth, and they were alone among the orchestras in this area in not referring to Juneteenth on their web site or on their Facebook page.
I believe that the Durham Symphony Orchestra’s consistent and sincere efforts in the area of diversity and inclusion could be used as a model for every American orchestra going forward into this thoughtful new age of re-evaluation and re-education. I invite you to confirm that by taking a minute to scan the titles of the 60+ Monday Musicales we’ve published in the last 14 months in our Conductor’s Corner here. You can glimpse our mission in action across 11 years of concert video and audio.
Our featured performance today is from March 3, 2019, at Durham’s Hayti Heritage Center. It was from a program titled Songs of the South. One of the highlights was Rozlyn Sorrell’s singing of the classic African American spiritual “Ride On, King Jesus.”
Rozlyn is a dear friend and a great artist whom I have conducted many times with the DSO and the North Carolina Symphony. Her superb presentation, her acting of a song, is something that has always impressed me and her audiences.
Though created from the miserable circumstances of the African American slave, spirituals still offer solace and point to a brighter future. Optimism and faith have been necessary tools for African Americans to survive, for example, the inhumane cruelty of 1619-1865, the criminal and heartless era called “Reconstruction,” and the disillusionment of African American soldiers who fought for this country but were even more strenuously reviled upon their return from war. One of my uncles fought the Nazis’ racism and fascism in Europe only to encounter those same demonic elements stirred up anew from the cultural fabric of America when he returned. And yet we prevailed.
There is a wonderful 1990 documentary about the drag ball culture of New York City in the 1980s titled Paris Is Burning. Almost all of the participants in this film are gay or transgender African Americans or Latinos. In this film, a young man says something so eloquent about the African American journey that I wrote it down on a post-it and see it every day on the side of my computer:
We as a people for the last 400 years have been the greatest example of behavior modification in the history of civilization. We had everything taken away from us. . . and yet we have all learned how to survive.
I, who can trace my ancestry to Georgian slaves, approve that message. The spiritual “Ride On, King Jesus” is also about strength and self-determination. Here is my arrangement of that song for soprano and string orchestra.
“Ride On, King Jesus”
William Henry Curry, arr & conductor
Rozlyn Sorrell, soprano
Durham Symphony Orchestra
‘Songs of the South’ 3/3/2019
William Henry Curry
Music Director
Durham Symphony Orchestra
Comprehensive Editor (Text): Suzanne Bolt
Copy Editor: Tina Biello
Digital Layout and Publication: Tina Biello & Marianne Ward
Recording Engineer: Mark Manring – www.manring.net
Celebrating Maestro Curry’s 50 years conducting & 11 years with the Durham Symphony!
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Funding is provided (in part) by the Durham Arts Council’s Annual Arts Fund, the N.C. Arts Council (a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources), and a grant from the Triangle Community Foundation.
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