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Donald Macleod explores the life and music of African-American composer William Grant Still. Today, Still marries – for a second time – and is embraced by the American musical establishment.

When Still married Verna Arvey in February 1939, just two days after his divorce from his first wife Grace came through, they had to drive over the border to Tijuana to do it – racially mixed marriages were against Californian law in those days, as they continued to be until 1948. It wasn’t just on a personal level that Arvey had been become indispensable to Still; she helped him practically, too, effectively becoming his secretary and PR assistant, not to mention musical advisor, librettist and even biographer. By now, Still’s career and reputation were in the ascendant. In 1936, he had become the first African-American to conduct a major US symphony orchestra: the LA Philharmonic, at the Hollywood Bowl. When his Second Symphony was premièred the following year, it was by the crack team of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Then there were honorary degrees, fellowships and prestigious commissions, like the one to write the theme music for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. But despite all these tokens of respect, Still must have been keenly aware of the situation faced by people of colour outside of the cultural bubble. His setting of a poem by Katherine Garrison Chapin, ‘And they lynched him on a tree’, inspired by the murders ten years previously of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana, received its first performance in 1940 – the same year that the Gavagan anti-lynching bill was blocked by the US Senate.

Blues, Pt 1
Artie Shaw and his Orchestra

Lenox Avenue (The Crap Game; The Flirtation; The Fight; The Law)
Juano Hernandez, narrator
CBS Symphony Orchestra
Howard Barlow, conductor

Symphony No 2 in G minor, ‘Song of a New Race’ (4. Moderately Slow)
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Neeme Järvi, conductor

Out of the Silence (Seven Traceries, No 4)
Monica Gaylord piano

And They Lynched Him on a Tree
Hilda Harris, mezzo soprano
William Warfield, narrator
Leigh Morris Chorale
VocalEssence Ensemble and Singers
Philip Brunelle, conductor

Old California
New York Philharmonic
Pierre Monteux, conductor

Produced by Chris Barstow for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales.