The Boston Symphony Orchestra is in the middle of a festival titled “Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope” that started March 3 and will run until March 18. The festival features a wide array of guest composers, conductors, speakers and performers, and explores themes of legal inequities, racism and the equal rights of women. In addition to regularly scheduled paid concerts, the BSO is also offering a host of free performances and lectures for the festival. One of these free lectures featured Tufts professors Dr. Kerri Greenidge and Dr. Kendra Taira Field alongside Northeastern professor Dr. Kabria Baumgartner as panelists on a discussion about African American musicians in Boston’s classical music history.
The discussion gave an overview of the history of classical music in Boston by focusing on African American classical communities. In doing so, the panelists argued that African Americans have always been an integral part of Boston’s classical music history, rather than being a footnote or tangential community worth only a brief acknowledgement.
The contradiction of Boston being simultaneously racially progressive and regressive marked a key theme of the night. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black Boston nurtured a vibrant musical culture, and Black musicians could be legally admitted to elite classical institutions such as the New England Conservatory, the Boston Conservatory and the BSO, but still, Black music faced significant barriers. In the late 19th century, composer Antonín Dvořák’s now canonized and ubiquitous “Symphony No. 9” (you might be familiar with the “Goin’ Home” melody) was deemed by the BSO board of trustees as “too negroid” for the general public due to its inclusion of African spiritual songs.
Even today, according to the panelists, liberal Boston still has a trend of viewing Black people as tangential to Boston musical history — worthy of a footnote, but not the main points of the city’s musical history. But, as the panelists pointed out, looking at the history tells us that Black people were always an intertwined part of Boston’s musical history.
This festival is clearly an attempt by the historic and dominant classical music institution in Boston, the BSO, to recenter the discussion on these marginalized voices. To allow such candid criticism of their own institution by hosting this discussion was commendable by the BSO. That being said, placing this programming as a separate festival, advertised separately from the regular concert schedule, runs the same risk of tangentializing the contributions of Black Bostonians. It is not about incorporating Black Bostonians as a natural part of performance practice, but rather highlighting them in a separate program. Naturally, highlighting marginalized musicians is a praiseworthy start, but whether it is a token gesture or an effort for real change depends on if future season programming for the BSO will incorporate these marginalized voices.
