Composer Margaret Bonds collaborated with Langston Hughes on a 1960 musical titled "Shakespeare in ... [+]
The African Diaspora Music Project is a free online database, but it required more than internet research to build the collection of nearly 4,000 songs and more than 1,200 symphonic works.
Louise Toppin, an opera singer and professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, worked as a research assistant to music scholars George Shirley and Willis Patterson in the late 1980s. She learned that many works by Black composers haven’t been published, have been underperformed or were never premiered.
Even Margaret Bonds, a high-profile composer of the 20th century, posed challenges in terms of bringing her music to a new audience.
Because Bonds died in 1972, Toppin relied on Bonds’ daughter when seeking permission to record music for albums such as 2000’s “Ah! Love, But A Day: Songs and Spirituals of American Women.” After the death of Bonds’ daughter, who had no children, Toppin needed to find the legal heirs.
“Once I found the heirs, I had to build their trust,” Toppin says. “I wasn’t trying to take something from them. I told them, ‘I am going to give you the royalties that come to this music. I’m not asking for anything other than to let this music be heard.’”
The African Diaspora Music Project exists because Toppin amassed one of the largest personal collections of works by composers of African descent. Since the website’s launch in 2019, the database continues to grow as more works are submitted and discovered.
“This is 32 years of championing this music,” Toppin says. “I want to see it last for hundreds more.”
Portrait of composer William Grant Still, 1949. (Photo by Carl Van Vechten Collection/Getty Images)
In addition to Bonds, known for her collaborations with poet Langston Hughes, highlights of the African Diaspora Music Project include compositions by Harlem Renaissance standout William Grant Still, famed tenor Roland Hayes and Indiana University educator David Baker.
In the wake of last year’s protests calling for an end to police brutality toward Black Americans following the murder of George Floyd, Toppin says it’s logical for vocalists and orchestras to seek inclusive repertoires.
“Of course the events of 2020 have caused people to think differently and to want to work differently,” Toppin says. “I’m always cautiously hopeful for the sustainability of it, because I’ve lived long enough that I’ve seen moments and movements. But this one feels different, and it feels stronger. I’m getting calls from major orchestras that are making commitments to not just program a concert in February or January, which they used to do, but are talking to me about how to deepen their seasons.”
Susie Park, chair of the Minnesota Orchestra Artistic Advisory Committee, plans to explore the African Diaspora Music Project database when preparing an anti-racist learning initiative.
“As the database grows as a repository, I can only imagine how it will serve to be even more indispensable to musicians and administrators searching for music by Black composers, and effectively expand the canon and face of classical music as we know it,” Park said in a statement.
