Classical - the music of the Whites

October is Black History Month here in the UK when we celebrate African and Caribbean contributions to our society with a month long programme of events. We have celebrated classical musicians of colour On An Overgrown Path recently with features on the Guyanese clarinettist and conductor Rudolph Dunbar and the Afro-French composer Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and with contributions from John McLaughlin Williams. Today, to mark the start of Black History Month, here is the story of 32 year old Nigerian pianist Sodi Braide, with thanks to the excellent AfriClassical and Le Piano Bleu websites.

Sodi Braide (above) was born in 1975 to Nigerian parents in Newcastle, U.K. His parents were academics; both were scientists but music lovers as well. In December 1979, Sodi returned to Nigeria with his parents, where it was very difficult to find good teachers. At the time, there was no conservatory of music in the country, and he had to travel 60 miles for piano lessons, saying "When I think back on it, I tell myself it is a miracle that I became a pianist."

In 1987, as a result of a competition supported by the French Cultural Center in Lagos, Sodi Braide was awarded a scholarship to study in France with Françoise Thinat. He was successful in a number of high profile competitions, including Pretoria, South Africa (1996), Leeds, UK (2003) and the Van Cliburn (jury discretionary prize, 2005).

Sodi now lives in Paris where he has benefitted from the enlightened support of the Cultures France programme. This has allowed him to undertake a number of overseas tours, notably of Latin America, and he has recently recorded a CD of works of César Franck for the Lyrinx label (right).

The story of Sodi Braide is another resounding endorsement of visionary educational programmes, and his achievements provide a powerful role model for young people from ethnic minorities everywhere. His own words about the 1996 competition in Pretoria say it all in Black History Month:

“It was just after the end of apartheid, and some were really thunderstruck to discover that in fact there was not a cultural barrier due to skin color! ... I had already played one or two times in South Africa, and I remembered that most of the South Africans, at the time, had never seen seen a Black pianist of classical music, “music of the Whites”, what's more in the finals of such a competition. It was just after the end of apartheid, and some were really thunderstruck to discover that in fact there was not a cultural barrier due to skin color!"

Now read about the Berlin Philharmonic's first Black conductor.
The interview with Sodi Braide was originally published in French on Le Piano Bleu website, which is where my photos also come from. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical music and the shock of cultures

Strange that that we dismiss many early-20th century composers as dead Europeans who wrote downtown music, but find Hitler's record collection so interesting. Neither new music nor discrimination ended in the ruins of Berlin in May 1945, and they both deserve some of the attention devoted to Adolf's proto-Classic FM playlist in the last few days.

Equality and contemporary music converged here in two recent paths about young audiences and the controversial Calliopé cover seen above right. Below are extracts from an inspirational letter received by William J. Zick over at his AfriClassical blog. Read the complete letter here. It is much more relevant to engaging with those important young people than Chaliapin singing Boris Godunov.

Dear Mr. Zick, I have regularly visited AfriClassical with interest and admiration. I am myself passionately interested in the Chevalier de Saint-Georges (portrait above left) and therefore the questions raised by the cover of the Calliope CD retained my attention. That’s why I feel a need to express my point of view.

As the Principal of a junior high school near Vichy, France, I staged a theatre show on the life and music of Saint-Georges this year with the collaboration of several primary and secondary schools, music schools and a fencing school. This show was exclusively interpreted by 14 year old students. The progam included a theatre performance, music, singing, dancing and fencing.

Saint-Georges was first introduced to our children through Saint-Georges raconté aux enfants (Saint-Georges told to children), J.C. Halley’s book, and then we adapted Le Divin Saint-Georges, Daniel Marciano’s play. Most of our students, not particularly inclined to 18th century music, often due to an unfavorable family environment for symphonic music, worked on the show during the whole academic year. It was a hard job and they were at times discouraged.

However, when they started rehearsing with costumes - perfect replicas of the period - things changed. A surprising phenomenon of identification took place: the children became Saint-Georges, Nanon, Georges de Bologne, Texier La Boëssière, d’Eon etc. The fencers tried extra hard to cross blades with style and even their attitudes were those of another century; the singers interpreted Saint-Georges’s Romances with greater conviction and the actresses and actors became different people when playing their roles.

However the highlight of the show was the participation of a group of children who came to Vichy with the Mayor of the birthplace of Saint-Georges in Guadeloupe. The encounter of these two worlds was a great event for both the children of Saint-Yorre and Baillif. In this instance, we may talk about the shock of cultures but also about a spontaneous current of sympathy which was established between the children in the presence of the parents who all wanted to take home one of the Baillif children.

I find the cover of the (Calliopé) CD utterly distasteful. It is, on the one hand, ambiguous and scornful (even racist), and on the other hand, vulgarity is not likely to attract the curiosity of children. They are far more discriminating than one may think!

To add a few more words about our show which was a success – at a secondary school level of course – we are proud of the participation of 150 children, 30 musicians, 20 fencers and 70 young choristers. Over 1000 spectators of the region of Vichy attended the show and I think I can say that it was an opportunity to introduce Saint-Georges’ music to the whole region.

With all my admiration for your work and beautiful website.

Catherine Pizon, Principale du collège Victor Hugo, Saint-Yorre

I make that more than 1270 people who were introduced to the music of Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges in Saint-Yorre alone. I wonder how many people will buy the Calliopé CD?

Discover some important new music composed under the Third Reich and not in Hitler's record collection here, and more inspirational community music making from France here.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Echoes of Rudolph Dunbar on BBC Radio 4

My article on the little known black Guyanese conductor and clarinettist Rudolph Dunbar (above), which I published here on April 23 2007, has attracted a large number of readers according to my server logs, including a number from the BBC. My story ran under the headline Berlin Philharmonic's First Black Conductor, and is also linked from Wikipedia.

Dunbar's inspirational story needs to reach a wider audience, so I was delighted to find BBC Radio 4 broadcasting the Strange Story of Rudolph Dunbar today (August 7 2007). Here is the BBC blurb:

Strange Story of Rudolph Dunbar
Tuesday 7 August 2007 11:30-12:00 (Radio 4 FM)
Wayne Marshall tells the story of Rudolph Dunbar.

Born into poverty in British Guiana, Dunbar became a well-known jazz and classical clarinettist as well as having a European career as a classical conductor.

Despite becoming the first black man to conduct at the Royal Albert Hall and having conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra just days after the end of the Second World War, Dunbar ended his life in obscurity in Britain, convinced that the BBC in particular had barred his way to greater things.

You can to listen to the BBC programme on demand until August 15 here. Following my article as you listen to the broadcast is really quite interesting.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Giving classical music a younger image?

William J. Zick, who writes the excellent Africlassical.com, has taken exception to the cover art by French cartoonist Cabu on the new Calliopé release of the music of the Afro-French composer Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges (Calliope 9373). You can see the artwork above, and William describes it as 'disturbing and bordering on ridicule.'

Here is Alain Guédé replying on behalf of the French label Calliopé: - 'Our idea was to use the cover as a means of bringing Saint-George – and through him, classical music in general – to an even wider public, of people from all different backgrounds. We want to give classical music in France a younger image. And I feel that the same thing can be done in the States.'

'Bordering on ridicule' or 'giving classical music a younger image'? Over to you, readers ....
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Whitewashing the history of music

'The 150th anniversary celebrations give the impression that the whole of Elgar’s reputation is based on the Cello Concerto: the Classic FM view of Elgar' writes David Derrick over on The Toynbee convector.

That's a view I totally agree with. On Friday Radio 3 started its Elgar celebration with a concert of his overture In The South, the Cello Concerto and the First Symphony, a typically unimaginative piece of BBC programming that made no attempt to place the composer in a wider context. Elgar was composing on the cusp between late-Romanticism and the twentieth-century. The anniversary programmes would have done him far more justice by juxtaposing his music with contemporaneous works such as Stravinsky's Fireworks, Webern's Passacaglia, Bloch's Suite for Viola and Orchestra, and the rarely played Symphonic Fantasia from Richard Strauss' opera Die Frau ohne Schatten.

Elgar's wonderful String Quartet and Piano Quintet were another missed opportunity. They deserve to be programmed, and could have been framed by music from those strange years of transition after the First World War, Bloch's Violin Sonata No. 1, Shostakovich's Five Preludes for Piano, and Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 2 . Sadly David Derrick's description 'The Classic FM view of Elgar' says it all.

Meanwhile another reader raises concerns about BBC Radio 4's new six week series The Making of Music which starts tomorrow with James Naughtie as presenter. The trailer for the first programme sets the Western, white and Christian agenda: 'It was in the churches and monasteries of the Christian world, from Constantinople in the East to Iona in Scotland, the building blocks of classical music were formed. These places were the crucibles of cultural and intellectual life - and, as we'll discover, classical music has always been bound up with the centres of power.'

The description of the next Making of Music programme then perpetuates another common error: 'As Notre Dame was being built, two men were writing the music that would fill it. They are the first named composers to come out of history, and their music still survives. Their names are Perotin and his pupil Leonin.' In fact Notre Dame was not consecrated until 1163, and Hildegard of Bingen, who lived in Germany from 1089-1179, is recognised as the first composer whose history and music are known.

Hardly acceptable at Classic FM, definitely not acceptable at the BBC. But, if you want the Western, Christian, white, male and inaccurate view listen to the first webcast of Radio 4's Making of Music at 3.45pm BST tomorrow June 3.

Meanwhile inclusiveness is also taking a hammering over at London's newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall. If you want to make a telephone booking for a concert you have to use a premium rate 0871 phone line, and you also get whacked for a £2 'transaction charge'. But that's not all. The top price for the Philharmonia's Mahler 3 on June 12 is £50, plus a £1.50 booking fee. And we wonder why audiences are down for classical music.

Now read more about music history rewritten.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Harvard was decidedly conservative

Harvard's political culture in the early 1920s was decidedly conservative. Soon after Robert Oppenheimer's arrival, the university imposed a quota to restrict the number of Jewish student. (By 1922, the Jewish student population had risen to twenty-one percent.) In 1924, the Harvard Crimson reported on its front age that the university's former president Charles W. Eliot had publicly declared it "unfortunate" that growing numbers of the "Jewish race" were intermarrying with Christians. Few such marriages, he said, turned out well, and because biologists had determined that Jews are "prepotent" the children of such marriages "will look like Jews only." While Harvard accepted a few Negroes, President A. Lawrence Lowell staunchly refused to allow them to reside in the freshman dormitories with whites.

From American Prometheus, the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Now read about a Harvard alumni with musical connections, who had strong views on Jews.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Berlin Philharmonic's first Black conductor

“At a concert this week in Berlin, Berlin's famed 65-year-old Philharmonic Orchestra was led by a U.S. war correspondent in battledress. Besides being a war correspondent, the guest conductor was a Negro, born in British Guiana. The 2,000 Berliners and the 500 Allied soldiers in the audience found it quite an experience. They applauded warmly when the conductor led the orchestra through Weber's familiar Oberon and Tchaikovsky's Pathétique. They broke into cheers, and called him back five times, when he gave them Berlin's first hearing of fellow-Negro William Grant Still's boisterous, bluesy Afro-American Symphony.

Slender, serious Rudolph Dunbar is no musical freshman. He studied at Manhattan's Julliard School, has several times conducted the London Philharmonic. He was in Berlin as correspondent for the Associated Negro Press of Chicago. Shortly before the Berlin Philharmonic's Conductor Leo Borchard was accidentally killed by U.S. sentries, he had invited Dunbar to guest-conduct. U.S. occupation authorities were all for it, though their interest was more in teaching the Germans a lesson in racial tolerance than in Dunbar's musicianship.”

The news story above was published in Time on September 10, 1945 when the career of Rudolph Dunbar was at its peak. Dunbar lived for another forty-three years, but what happened in those years to the first Black musician to conduct the Berlin and London Philharmonic Orchestras is a mystery. The story starts at the turn of the last century in British Guiana (now Guyana). The date of Dunbar’s birth is variously given as 1902 or 1907, and classical music was an unlikely career for a Black Guyanese boy at that time. But the young Dunbar’s interest was sparked by hearing transcriptions of Wagner and Elgar played in Georgetown by the British Guiana Militia Band. He joined the Militia Band as an apprentice clarinettist at the age of 14, and stayed with them for five years.


His talent was such that he left the band when he was 19 to study at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard) in New York, and lived in the city until he graduated in 1925. His subjects at the Juilliard were composition, clarinet and piano, but he was also active in the Harlem jazz scene, and was clarinet soloist on recordings by The Plantation Orchestra (photo above). While in New York he became a friend and champion of the African-American composer William Grant Still, and their correspondence is held today at the University of Arkansas.

In 1925 Dunbar moved to Paris as a post-graduate, studying conducting with Philippe Gaubert (below), and composition with Paul Vidal and clarinet with Louis Cahuzac. He also spent time with Felix Weingartner in Vienna. Dunbar’s reputation as a clarinettist grew, and reached the widow of Claude Debussy who invited him to give a private recital in her apartment in 1930 for members of the Paris Conservatoire.

Dunbar moved to London in 1931 to work as a music critic, and he also started the first ever clarinet school, which attracted students from around the world. His reputation was such that in 1939 he was commissioned to write a textbook on the clarinet, and his Treatise on the Clarinet (Boehm System) became the standard reference work for the instrument. It remained in print though ten editions, and today commands high prices as a collectors item.

Dunbar remained active as a jazz musician, and in the 1930s in Britain he led two jazz groups, the All British Coloured Band (also known as the Rumba Coloured Orchestra), and Rudolph Dunbar and his African Polyphony, and made pioneering recordings of West Indian music with both these groups. He also composed, and his 1938 ballet score Dance of the Twenty-First Century (described by Dunbar as ‘ultra modern’), which was written for the famous Cambridge University Footlights Club, was broadcast nationally by NBC with the composer conducting.

The outbreak of war in Europe opened up conducting opportunities for Dunbar, and in 1942 he led the London Philharmonic in the Royal Albert Hall in a concert that was described at the time as a fund-raiser for “Britain’s coloured allies”. He wrote for the Associated Negro Press of Chicago, and this gave him credentials as a war correspondent in Europe. He took part in the Normandy Landings with a Black regiment, and was the first foreigner to conduct a symphony orchestra in Paris after it was liberated, and then went on to conduct in Berlin.

In 1945 Dunbar presented a Festival of American Music in the Théatre des Champs Elysees, Paris with the Conservatoire Orchestra and pianist Jeanne-Marie Darré. The programme included the premiere of In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy by William Grant Still (right), as well as Still's Afro-American Symphony. The following year Dunbar made his US conducting debut with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony in a programme that again included Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony. In other concerts he programmed the music of the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor (photo below).

Dunbar was a pioneering activist against racism. When asked at his US debut if he would settle in the country he replied: “I think I will make my home in Paris where, if you are good, they will applaud you whether you are pink, white or black, and if you are bad they will whistle at you.” But he was also supportive of the US, and objected to the British Government promoting his career for political ends, saying “It is not the British who have done it for me, it is the Americans.”

At the end of the war the promise was immense. Dunbar was established as a leading performer and authority on the clarinet, his conducting career was in the ascendant as concert life restarted, and he was seen as a role-model for West Indians. But the promise wasn’t fulfilled. Dunbar is documented as being the first black conductor of a symphony orchestra in Poland (1959), and Russia (1964), both concerts were in Soviet bloc countries at the peak of the Cold War. He promoted concerts for the Jamaican Hurricane Relief Fund in 1951, and toured British Guiana in the 1950s conducting the country’s Militia Band, Philharmonic Orchestra and a youth choir. Rudolph Dunbar died in London in June 1988.

Were Dunbar's conducting talents simply eclipsed by de-Nazified conductors returning to the podium after the war, or were there other reasons why the promise wasn't fulfilled? Exactly what happened remains a mystery, but there are some tantalising clues. Dunbar's brief obituary in the Musical Times says: 'He gradually withdrew from public life, and devoted himself to fighting racism and trying to increase black involvement in Western art music.

But there seems to be more to it than a gradual withdrawal from public life. It is known that Dunbar conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. One of the leading authorities on music in Guyana is Dr Vibert C. Cambridge at Ohio University, and in an article for the Stabroek News in Guyana in August 2004 Dr Cambridge quotes from an interview Rudolph Dunbar gave six months before his death in 1988:

“Dunbar spoke about the particular vindictiveness of a producer/director of music at the BBC who derailed his musical career in Europe. Dunbar described that director of music as “despicable and vile” and the BBC “as stubborn as mules and ruthless as rattlesnakes”.

Today Rudolph Dunbar (left) is remembered as a one of a pioneering group of West Indians who fought racism in the UK. The musician who was the first Black conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and who wrote a standard reference work on the clarinet, does not warrant a single mention in the current or earlier editions of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, or other major music reference books. Why remains a mystery.

Sources:
* Rudolph Dunbar by Dr Vibert C. Cambridge, Stabroek News August 22, 2004
* W. Rudolph Dunbar: Pioneering Orchestra Conductor, The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 193-225
* Rudolph Dunbar, The Musical Times, Vol. 129, No. 1749 (Nov., 1988), p. 619
* Debut in the Bowl, Time Sept 02 1946
* Rhythm in Berlin, Time Sept 10 1945
* The Pantheon of West Indian Heroes Framed, Black Britain, July 8 2006.
* Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945-1953, by David Monod, NewMusicBox Oct 24 2006.
* Listeners to the BBC Radio 4 programme on Rudolph Dunbar broadcast on August 7 2007 should read Echoes of Rudolph Dunbar on the BBC.
(c) Bob Shingleton 2007

Now read about Multicultural, multimedia, and banned.
I have contacted Dr Cambridge for more information on the later years of Rudolph Dunbar's career. Other information from readers is very welcome, updates will be published. With thanks to John McLaughlin Williams who read a draft of this article. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Elitism on the world's great orchestral stages

A reader wrote yesterday and asked whether I agreed with everything I post here. The answer is an emphatic no. But I do try to provide food for thought. Which is why I offer an extract from, and link to this article in the current American Spectator. And for those arriving from Agonist.org I would point out that the words below are a quote (which is what an extract is) from the American Spectator article - not my words.

So what should orchestras do to increase the numbers of minority violists? Perhaps they should follow Nazi Germany's lead which set quotas on the number of Jews who could attend medical or law school in order to allow more goyim to become doctors and lawyers? Orchestras could limit the number of white male and female Asian-American orchestra members, and instead of calling it a quota system, they could call it "diversity."

Or orchestras could follow the lead of the professional athletic associations which 50 years ago stopped excluding athletes on account of skin color and now simply hire the best. Does any one really want to see boxing or the NBA adopt a quota system?

Traditionally government and academia have been the testing grounds where theories of social engineering are put into practice. Social engineers, however, have been less successful making inroads into professional sports, the arts and the military. Perhaps that is why our government and schools run like an Edsel, while the San Francisco Symphony and the U.S. Marines are beyond compare.

Certainly a good case can be made that black and Latino students should be exposed to classical music. I'm all for it. But a similar argument can be made for poor and middle class white kids in rural schools, and yet I do not hear Aaron Dworkin pushing for more hillbilly cellists.

If ever there was a case for elitism it should be made on the world's great orchestral stages, where perfection should never be held hostage to political correctness. If you want mediocrity, look to the government and the public schools. Plenty there to go round.

Now for an alternative view read here, here, or anywhere else on the blog.
Thanks to Bernard T for the heads-up. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical music can help change the world

A reader posted a very interesing comment on my recent article Music can change the world - Indeed, Harry Belafonte, and other pop music icons, have made a difference, and continue to, but what comparable influence have classical musicians had in the last 50 years? ... the last 100 years? - Bodie Pfost.

Now that is a good point. There have been many examples of classical musicians (and composers are excluded from this discussion) making media friendly gestures in support of human rights, but very few examples of musicians actually prepared to lose their freedom, and audience, in pursuit of what they believe in. But among the exceptions is Paul Robeson (pictured here), and his activism is particularly relevant with the controversy over the execution of Saddam Hussein still reverberating around the world, as Robeson founded the American Crusade Against Lynching.

Robeson is best known as an actor and singer, and for his powerful bass-baritone voice which reached down to C below the bass clef. He was acclaimed for his playing of Othello in Shakespeare's play, and his celebrated concert performances helped achieve a wide audience for Negro spirituals.

He was also a political activist. He campaigned for the rights of Asian and Black Americans, and as part of this founded the American Crusade Against Lynching. In 1948, Robeson was active in the presidential campaign to elect Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, and went on the campaign trail among ethnic minorities in the southern states. His political vews resulted in NBC cancelling his scheduled appearance on former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s television program, Today with Mrs. Roosevelt, in 1950.

In 1950, after he refused to sign an affidavit that he was not a Communist, the U.S. government took away Robeson's passport. When Robeson and his lawyers asked officials at the U.S. State Department why it was "detrimental to the interests of the United States Government" for him to travel abroad, they were told that "his frequent criticism of the treatment of blacks in the United States should not be aired in foreign countries". The travel ban ended in 1958 when a U.S. Supreme Court test case ruled that the Secretary of State had no right to deny a passport, or require any citizen to sign an affidavit, because of his or her political beliefs

As I described in a recent article Robeson was president of the English Pete Seeger Committee, of which Benjamin Britten was also a member. This committee sponsored Seeger's visit to the UK in 1961 while the singer was awaiting sentencing for contempt of Congress. The photograph here shows Seeger testifying to the House on Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. Robeson's support for the Soviet Union was controversial. He took part in pro-Soviet rallies to combat fascism and anti-semitism in the early 1940s, sung in the USSR in 1949, and was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952, and continued his support for the USSR after clear evidence of the Soviet regimes anti-semitism emerged.

Robeson, who died in 1976, was a fearless and committed campaigner for human rights. Even if some of his later activism was naive and misguided, he can truly be said to be a classical musican who showed that music can help change the world.

Now for more on classical music and ethnic diversity read BBC Proms - a multicultural society?
Pete Seeger photo credit New York Post Corp. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Music can help change the world

The Vienna Philharmonic’s glacial progress towards appointing female players reminds me both of how far we have travelled in the last forty years in the areas of race and equality, and how far we still have to go.

In 1968 Harry Belafonte, whose album Calypso was the first LP to sell more than 1 million, appeared on a primetime CBS television special hosted by British singer Petula Clark. In the show, the two singers performed a duet, and Petula Clark held on to Belafonte's arm, as my still from the programme shows here. After the first take the director asked them to repeat the song, standing apart. It transpired that an executive from the show's sponsor, an automobile manufacturer, saw the first take and ordered it to be re-shot. His reason was that showing a white woman touching an African-American might adversely affect car sales in southern states.

An outraged Petula Clark and her husband Claude Wolff, the show's executive producer, destroyed all the takes except the first one. The transmission went ahead with the original duet, and the programme achieved very high viewing figures following press exposure of the sponsor's attempted inteference. But Belafonte was less successful when he used footage of the violence at the 1968 Democratic Convention in a Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour programme - CBS cut the sequence before the show was broadcast.

Harry Belafonte refused to perform in the southern states of the US between 1954 and 1961, and was an early supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King. He has been a vociferous opponent of the current Bush administration, and has criticised the African-Americans holding senior positions in it. Belafonte has also controversially supported the regime of Hugo Chavéz, President of Venezuela, a country that has received international praise for its progressive music education.

For more on 1968 read Notes of a College Revolutionary.
Image credit Belafontetracks. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk