The Trustees of
The Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute

REQUEST

of

A

The

ONTHE
OF

TUSK

A reply before Monday
addressed to the Secretary
is requested

## THE AMENIA CONFERENCE

### Its Purpose

Few today deny the national character of Negro problems. Few leaders of the race will differ as to the wisdom of the colored millions in America acting together as a unit in opposition to the prejudices and discriminations which hamper practically every colored man, woman, and child in the United States, and every force which is working to advance their status. At last the time has come for a frank and free discussion on the part of the leaders of every school of thought, in an endeavor to ascertain the most advanced position that all can agree upon and hold as vantage ground from which to work for new conquests by colored Americans. In this belief the Amenia Conference is called.

### Its Personnel

Fifty leaders of the colored race representing every school of thought and every form of activity—business, law, medicine, education, politics, scholarship, literature, art, social work, fraternal organizations, the church, the stage, music—have been invited to be the guests for three days of Dr. J. E. Spingarn, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, at his home, “Troutbeck.” Representative white men and women have also been invited to take part in the discussion from day to day.

### The Place

The Conference will be held at “Troutbeck,” two and a half miles from the village of Amenia, New York; which is eighty-five miles north of New York City, amid the hills and woodlands of Dutchess County.

### The Time

The Conference will begin with luncheon on Thursday, August 24, and will be continued until late Saturday afternoon, August 26.

### Transportation

The run from New York to Amenia is made in two hours and a half, trains leaving Grand Central Station over the New York Central Railroad daily at 8.50 A.M. and 3.20 P.M.; and returning, leave Amenia at 3.58 P.M. and 7.18 P.M. The round trip fare is $3.45. All those attending the full Conference are urged to take the morning train on the 24th.

### The Camp

The members of the Conference will be the guests of Dr. Spingarn from the time they arrive at Amenia station. A tent colony will be pitched on the shore of a three acre pond, equipped with cots and bedding, a commissariat, and a mess tent where the conferences can be held in case of rain. It will be camp accommodation and fare, but we believe the more enjoyable because made an informal gathering in the open air. Everyone is advised to bring a bathing suit.

### Publicity

The Conference will not be open to the public; no reporters will be present; and the name of no one present will be published without his consent.

## THE AMENIA CONFERENCE

["THE STAN", "CO", "THE NEGRO'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE MUS\nIC OF AMERICA: THE LARGER OPPOR-\NTUNITY OF THE COLORED MAN OF TODAY:\nBY NATALIE CURTIS", "NOTE: A recognition of the negro's part in the music of America finds appropriate em-\nphasis at this time when the fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation\npoints to the progress made by the colored race industrially, economically and spiritually\nsince the days of slavery.", "UR children dance, our people sing, even our soldiers\nmarch to \"rag-time,\" which is fast becoming a national\n\"Pied Piper\" to whose rhythm the whole country\nmoves. This bizarre and fascinating music with its\nhide-and-seek of accent has not only swept over the\nUnited States, but it has also captured Europe, where\nit is rightly known as \"American Music,\" and is taken\nquite seriously as typical of this country. In New York, where the\ncommercial and mechanical instinct pervades all things, popular\nsongs are regularly manufactured on stereotyped \"rag-time\" pattern\nand turned out on Broadway till the type is becoming so conven-\ntionalized that the refrain of a \"best-seller\" of a few years back might\naptly now be changed to \"All tunes sound alike to me.\" Yet rag-\ntime at its best has originality which at once attracts, and a rhythmic\nimpulse that compels response. I remember when the great Russian\nconductor Safonoff heard it for the first time. The band at the hotel\nwhere he was staying had been playing serious music in his honor,\nwhen something more popular was requested by one of the other\nguests. With the first bars of \"rag-time\" the musician, who had paid\nscant attention before, began to listen curiously, then attentively,\nthen enthusiastically. He rushed to the leader of the band. \"But\nwhat is this? It is wonderful! So original, so interesting.\" The\nleader smilingly explained that it was the \"real American music.\"\n\"I shall score it for orchestra and play it in St. Petersburg!\" declared\nthe Russian, with real appreciation behind the humor of the sugges-\ntion.", "Whence comes this music that now fairly runs in our veins?\nThough the origin of \"rag-time\" is a matter of discussion, no one can\ndeny the influence of Negro musical characteristics upon our popular\nsongs of the day. Of course the syncopation which is the predominant\nfeature of \"rag-time\" is to be found occasionally in all music. It\noccurs in Scotch and Irish folk-song, it is very prominent in Hungarian\nmelodies, and it is an absolutely essential element in the songs of our\nNorth American Indians of many tribes. It is frequently found in\nthe music of primitive people who associate song with bodily move-\nment and rely upon variety of rhythm for diversity of musical effect.", "660", "THE NEGRO'S CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN MUSIC", "Any one who has studied Negro music in its different phases—dance-\nsongs, cake-walks, laboring songs as well as the religious melodies—\nwill certainly find ground for the assertion that what we specifically call\n“rag-time” (the popular American song that is played, whistled, sung\nand danced to in the theater, in our homes and on the street) received\nits first impulse from Negro songs. A remarkable volume entitled\n“The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” contains an interesting\naccount of the beginnings of “rag-time” by an author who evidently\nhas intimate knowledge of the facts. He says that “rag-time” orig-\nnated “in the questionable resorts about Memphis and St. Louis by\nNegro piano-players who knew no more of the theory of music than\nthey did of the theory of the universe;” that this music made its way\nto Chicago and thence to New York, springing into immediate popu-\nlarity, the crude improvisations of the Negro players and singers hav-\ning been “taken down by white men, the words slightly altered and\npublished under the names of the arrangers” (who reaped the finan-\ncial profit).", "IT has been said that \"rag-time\" first appeared in our music-halls\nabout the time of the Chicago World's Fair and it is possible that\nthe reiterated syncopation of the Oriental drum-beat which went\nechoing forth all over the country with the polyglot songs and rhythms\nof the \"Midway Plaisance\" may have had some slight share in the\nevolution of our popular music. But some authoritative colored men\nhave traced the origin of the first \"rag-time\" melodies directly to the\ncommon working-songs and boisterous merrymaking of their own\npeople; and in spite of white imitators and Broadway manufacturers\nof popular songs, no one can invent such attractive \"rag-time\" as\nthat written by colored men (who are only just beginning to be ade-\nquately paid for their own ideas); also ignorant colored people sing\nand play this kind of music naturally and instinctively in a way pecu-\nliar to themselves, and difficult, at first, to the average American. All\nthis would help to prove the Negro's influence, at least, on the music\nof this country.", "Doubtless the Negroes in the South heard the tom-tom and the\nsharply accentuated rhythms of Indian song from the surrounding\ntribes with whom they mixed to some extent prior to the removal of\nthe Southern Indians to Indian Territory. Also the slaves heard con-\nstantly the music of their masters,—the hymns and ballads of the\nwhites. But the voice of the African sounds through these two\ndifferent influences, shaping a folk-song of its own that is distinctly\nthe product of the Negro in America. The enslaved race which is now\npart of our body politic, presenting one of the most difficult problems", "661"]

THE STAN

## THE NEGRO'S CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN MUSIC

of adjustment that our country has to meet, has sung itself uncon-
sciously into the very life of our nation.

Very different indeed from modern "rag-time" both musically and
spiritually are the old folk-melodies of the plantation; yet many of
these have also the rhythmic feature of syncopation—the short note
falling on the even beat of the musical bar. The religious slave-songs
or "spirituals" have been made familiar to Northerners through the
singing of the students of Hampton and Fiske Institutes, two of the
great Negro schools of the South which have held meetings all through
the North in the interest of their educational campaign. These and
other schools have printed small collections of the plantation melo-
dies, chiefly religious songs,—a noble work, for the slave songs are fast
being lost to the memory of the present generation.

White musicians here and there have turned to these beautiful
Negro folk-tunes for themes and inspiration. Though we took from
the Negro greedily (and still applaud him as an "entertainer" in
vaudeville and cabaret) yet few of us ever gave to the colored man any
serious consideration of his talent or stopped to think that the music
which white composers found worthy to be valued as a contribution
to a future national "school" and whose themes they purposed to
"develop" might be "developed" by Negro musicians if encouraged
to study. Though the Negroes had already made some organized
effort at self-education musically (as in a conservatory of music
founded about nine years ago in Washington by a colored woman,
Mrs. Gibbs Marshall), it is only two years ago that a group of earnest
people in New York, interested in the uplift of the Negro and also in
music, conceived the idea of establishing a Music School Settlement
for Colored People. This institution had the two-fold aim of preserv-
ing and developing the beautiful old Negro music in its purity, and of
educational appeal through music would take the children from the
streets in the daytime and provide wholesome and instructive recre-
ation for adults in the evening. The purpose of the school was chiefly
that the colored people could best be reached.

AS might have been foreseen, the enormous Negro population in
New York at once endorsed this effort, the churches and the
people at large contributing to the embryo school and quickly
enrolling both children and grown people as pupils. The school has
been in actual existence little over a year, yet already it has a building
of its own at Two Hundred and Fifty-Seven West One Hundred and
Thirty-fourth Street in the "Black Belt" of Harlem, with an orchestra

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and chorus, and classes in nearly all important branches of music. Of
course no one entertains the mad dream of turning all the pupils of the
school into professional musicians, for it is only the exceptional few
in any race who are sufficiently gifted to warrant devoting themselves
exclusively to art; and pity it would be indeed, to divert Negroes, of
all people, from more practical work at the present stage of their
economic development. Yet music, as a factor in the life of communi-
ties and in the home, is an undoubted influence for education, refine-
ment and uplift, and to the Negroes, who are a distinctly gregarious
people, it is, as it always has been, a natural and wholesome element
of social intercourse. But there are already Negroes in New York who
actually do sing and play for a living, and it is precisely these that the
school may help to lift out of the demoralizing environment of all-
night restaurants and cheap theatrical shows into a world of better
effort.

Though the actual work done by the young institution is produc-
tive of much good, it is the influence of the school which is most potent
both as a settlement, and also in creating a better understanding
between whites and blacks. As a rule, it used to make no difference
how gifted a colored man might be, or how well he might play an
instrument; the Negro could hardly hope to be taken seriously and
to find a place among white musicians: vaudeville and "entertain-
ing" were the only fields in music easily open to him. A very few
men in different parts of the country have forged their way to the
front, with a heroism worthy of all admiration. But most Negro
musicians have been obliged to stay with the clog-dance and the
comic-song; the color-line was a barrier in music as in the trades and
professions.

But, through the efforts of the School, New York was given a real
awakening last May, when the city learned to see what the Negroes
had themselves accomplished in music utterly without the aid,
instruction, or even the knowledge of white citizens. Few white
people had ever heard of the orchestra of the "Clef Club," a band of a
hundred and twenty-five members organized a few years ago by the
colored people themselves at whose head now stands James Reese
Europe, a man with a strong sense of organization and discipline and
with pronounced musical ability. For the benefit of the Settlement
School this orchestra and several other colored musicians volunteered
their services at a great concert of Negro music given on May second
in Carnegie Hall. I mention the date because this concert really
formed an epoch in the musical life of the Negro and also in the devel-
opment of Negro music. Hardly a day passes that the influence of
that concert is not felt in some phase of Negro life in this city, for

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