I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s UCLA symposium “Trouble the Water”: Celebrating the HBCU Choral Tradition through the Music of Undine Smith Moore. While there were many excellent scholars—such as Dr. Fredara Hadley, who spoke on the presence of HBCUs at Juilliard—and the scintillating and knowledgable VSU choral conductor Dr. Craig Robertson,1 my personal highlight as a teacher was to see students sharing their oral history projects.

I spend so much time arranging interviews, preparing interviews, transcribing, fact-checking, then trying to publish. (For example, HBCU Morgan State grad Lonnie Liston Smith’s oral history.) You can get lost in the data weeds. But these students’ faces lit up with pride, curiosity, and enthusiasm when they discussed fascinating interviews with their elders, such as professors Tammy Kernodle (Miami University of Ohio) and Ethel Haughton (Virginia State).

Here’s to those who ask questions, who listen, and who live every moment of their elders’ stories. That’s tradition.

In the course of preparing my talk, I came across a document from Undine Moore’s archived papers at Emory University that I hadn’t looked at carefully since I scanned it there in June of 2023. It always pays to look twice. I just wanted an image to depict how Professor Moore inspired students to compose and accidentally stumbled on new information about D. Antoinette Handy,2 honestly the patron saint of all my research.

Speak low

Scott Gray Douglass

·

June 3, 2024

Read full story

“Perfect!”, I thought. Here’s a program of “original music by students of music theory” from one of Undine Moore’s classes in spring of 1969. Exactly what I was looking for to make the point that her music theory teaching wasn’t all form and analysis but incorporated creativity, as well. She even had students write their own blues lyrics when teaching that genre. Moore knew literature as well as music, from Sappho to Shakespeare.

In a National Association of Schools of Music report from 1953, examiners from Catholic University and Howard observed how students in Moore’s Basic Theory class “presented original compositions illustrating stylistic qualities of the period of common practice” and noted, “The work of this class was exciting and highly satisfactory. The students are undeniably talented and have had excellent instruction.” I can’t be sure whether the person who wrote “A Bit of Whimsy” for two flutes and drum was undeniably talented, but the examiners at least found it “humorous and well written.”

So, how about the 1969 cohort? What did they write? And who played their stuff? It’s mostly what you’d expect: ostinato for organ, fugue in A major, some solo and ensemble songs. Of course, for the purposes of my talk on Moore’s lesser-known jazz education legacy, I was eager to see if there was any syncopated stuff among her students’ repertoire.

Enter pianist Joseph Bonner’s “Suite - Call Me Brown.”3 Okay, now we’re talking. Four movements: Tennetta, Chocolate Boy, Games, Love Dance. I just wish there was a recording to know more about the style of this music. The ensemble is a bit unusual—piano, alto flute, flugelhorn, trombone, string bass, and percussion—but definitely in the ballpark. Was this jazz? Muss es sein? (And why is that alto flute tripping my Spidey sense?)

Yes! Es muss sein! Bonner’s piece was performed by a “Jass Ensemble,” complete with archaic spelling. How cool that choral composer and pianist Undine Moore’s theory classes involved student performances of original jazz…sorry, jass compositions in 1969. Of course, there are two music faculty ringers in there, so…

And that’s when I saw it. “**Mrs. D. A. Miller – Alto Flute.” How did I miss this before? Miller is D. Antoinette Handy’s married name. The third movement of Undine Moore’s Afro-American Suite (1969)—a piece Handy commissioned, no, strong-armed Moore to compose—“Who Is That Yonder? Oh, It Looks Like My Lord, Coming in a Cloud” is written for alto flute. That work was first recorded on Handy’s 1972 LP Contemporary Black Images in Music for the Flute (recently re-released digitally by Handy relative Patrice Jones) alongside two other works Handy commissioned for alto flute, Frederick Tillis’s Music for Alto Flute, Cello, and Piano and Noel DaCosta’s Three Short Pieces for Alto Flute.

This is the first evidence I have seen that Handy, a classically trained flutist who did SO much for jazz behind the scenes as a scholar and NEA Music division director, ever actually played, well…

“Jass.”

One final note. Commonwealth of Jazz had been hanging out at 99 subscribers for a couple beats. Thanks to an intrepid few of my fellow symposium attendees, including students, we are now just past the 100 subscriber rubicon. That warms my heart because, while I definitely still write this blog mainly for my mom and my buddy Dave who dreamed it up, it’s an honor and a blessing to be able to ask questions, listen, and live every moment of our elders’ stories together with y’all.