Margaret Bonds [Hardcover]

This is the first major biography of African American composer, pianist, and activist Margaret Bonds. It draws on extensive archival research to correct numerous misconceptions large and small about her and offers an account of her life and work that is detailed, yet accessible to scholars and non-specialists alike. Author John Michael Cooper places emphasis on identifying the cultural, familial, political, and racial factors that motivated Bonds as she rose from being a child prodigy from Chicago's South side to international renown. Special features are new insights into the chronology and nature of Bonds's collaborative friendships with contemporary notables including Langston Hughes, and a concluding survey of her hundreds of works categorized by genre.In response to the increasing globalization of music, theComposers across Culturesseries, formerly theMaster Musiciansseries, seeks to explore the inexhaustible diversity of music, and its common links to our shared humanity.Composer, pianist, teacher, and social-justice activist Margaret Bonds fought against racism, sexism, and economic injustice throughout her career, amassing a portfolio of social-justice compositions unrivalled in eloquence and originality which challenged longstanding barriers between Black and White, male and female, popular and classical. During her lifetime the political economy of music publishing consigned most of her music to manuscript dissemination, and since her death -- despite the enduring popularity of works such asHe's Got the Whole World in His HandandThe Ballad of the Brown King-- her success in transcending the barriers she faced as an African American and a woman has been obscured by the forces of racism and sexism in concert life, which, together with White- and male-dominated music historiography, have viewed her life and work through the lens of specious, racist, and sexist tropes.This book draws on an unprecedented mass of archival evidl#(