"Finding A Source of Emotional Oxygen in the Music of Adolphus Hailstork: "Done Made My Vow" (1985)

This post is one of several which began nearly three years ago, but had to wait "until the proper time" for completion...including a "premiere" YouTube clip!!

On this, the LAST day of February 2017...bouncing thoughts...

The 2013 and 2014 years-in-review were a challenge nonpareil: international unrest and conflict accompanied by national, state and local traumas and after-effects.] As people of color in America, we've come to the conviction that "truth is never trumped by fiction"…collectively, we've just about seen it all, or so we allege that we have. The confrontation and assault upon black men in 2014-2016, only to be encored with insult atop of the injury...led tens of thousands of protesters around the world into the streets and even some expressways to make one of--or perhaps both passionate statements..."Black Lives Matter" and "I Can't Breathe"!!

As I prepared to teach a special course on Black Composers at NCCU, my thoughts were drawn to a group of works that one could easily categorize as "music which only seems appropriate during month of February". The month of February has been known as Black History Month since 1926, which began as Negro History Week behind the forceful urging of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). Chosen in conjunction with the birthday celebration of Abraham Lincoln "The Great Emancipator", and the perceived need of some ethnic celebration, the shortest month was set aside--better than no time or place at all.  (Although African Americans were not included in the planning of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a "Negro Day" was included in the exhibition schedule.)

Strangely the designation of such a category, quite honestly, I despise--NOT because of any notions of self-hatred (or racism turned "from outside in") but partially from the already torn and ironically marginalistic treatment of the history of black people in America (and the fact that the month is already short enough and annual budgets are usually inflexible for any other "spontaneous" planning). Throughout history, when featured for "entertainment and exoticism" black people and culture have been appropriated by the forces that wield control of media and money, who also see to it that any potential for sociopolitical and economic parity remains strangely influenced and carefully controlled by the conspiratorial justice and penal systems (aka "the prison industrial complex").

My Ebenezer Scroogistic attitudes notwithstanding, the one work that remains wedged deeply within my subconscious is the commemorative work written for the 50th anniversary of the founding of Norfolk State University in Norfolk, VA..."Done Made My Vow" by Adolphus Hailstork. Its source material and structure place it in that (parenthetically disdainful) "BHM" category, but the flow of the narration, the sung texts and the character of the music (and its "flowing integrity") engages the listener in way that informs, reminds and ultimately challenges them on levels that transcend "calendar tradition": how they perceive and regard themselves and their fellow human beings as individuals, and the nature of their relationship to the larger human community.

The work's required performing forces, structure, "audible moment form" and meaning(s) are all quite formidable.  Its "enrichment" lies in the most fortunate of experience of encounter in concert performance, and this work has yet to become a "household" performing or audience experience in American culture.  The musical forces required for a performance are quite formidable: Narrator, soprano, tenor and boy soprano vocal soloists, large orchestra and chorus.  The work is based on two songs, one a short anthem of his own composition, “My Name is Toil”; the other is an old Negro spiritual from which the entire work takes its name.  The work is cast broadly in the form of an African-American Christian worship service, still a radical departure from the structural format of the Baroque, Classical or Romantic oratorio.  The leading role of the Narrator serves that of African griot, preacher-teacher, and "older peer" throughout the work.  Hearkening back to the ancient Greek theatrical role of the Chorus, it serves as “both church choir and Civil Rights protest congregation.  The sonic and expressive capacities of the orchestral accompaniment create a highly diverse panorama reflecting the variety of African-American music traditions--within and beyond the preponderant and predictable.

Quiet ethereal strings open the work (of 45 minutes' duration), hovering above timpani strokes which slowly intone the spiritual "Done Made My Vow To The Lord". The hushed atmosphere doesn't really allow for immediate identification of or much familiarity with the melody. This opening provides a sonic "entrance" into the world of the Narrator, who introduces himself as "TOIL", not just a physical person but "an identity shrouded in a state of endeavor".  "Come, acquire wisdom; cling to it, and never let it go".  The opening anthem's text is: "My name is Toil; my mother is strength, my future: achievement, my goal is pride; I’ve walked this land, I’ve tilled its soil, in the name of this Nation I have died; so I’ll fight for the right to be free, to proclaim to this world I’m a man, look at me…” 

The text will be repeated later, not by the solo Narrator but the full choir in its approach toward the transformative culmination of the work.

The introductory statement is followed immediately by the hushed entry of the choir in the title spiritual in imitated melody.  This canonic section does not last long, but leads into the Time of Thanksgiving.  The YouTube clip of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (Daniel Hege, conductor) is available at the end of this post, but a listener-friendly outline follows "in the reading meantime"...

I.               “Now is the time for Thanksgiving…” (Bless the Lord!!)

II.             “Now is the time for Remembrance…” (“to honor those who declared themselves GUILTY before the bench of injustice, and in doing so changed a Nation”: Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, DuBois, Garvey, Malcolm X, A. Philip Randolph, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr.); the excerpt of the “I Have A Dream” speech of MLK constitutes “Pinnacle I”.  The music which follows this Pinnacle signals two things: a. it continues the mood of “thanksgiving” (praise and worship); b. it moves onward from “profound remembrance and historical reverie” through drum and dance (“Great Is The Glory Of The Lord”) to a hushed, prayerful moment of music (“Thy true love endureth forever”), similar to music that would accompany an “altar call”.

III.           “Now is the time for Dedication…leave not Thy work unfinished…”, referring to future generations; “This Little Light of Mine” is sung by the boy soprano soloist, and gradually joined by two additional vocal soloists, male and female. In a live performance the image of the family is clearly visible as the soloists sing, even though it is an image containing limited meaning when listening to a recording or viewing an online recorded clip. As they sing, the narration and music become increasingly ominous, leading to the words “YOUR Name is Toil”!! At this point for the audience, “the window of truth seen through the narration now becomes a mirror of self-identification”.

What follows is a "loose outline" list of observations described as "resonances" about the expressive impact, symbolism and meaning within this work:

Resonations, Illuminations & Questions…some previously explained, but still appearing in further outline:

1. Following that short orchestral introduction, the Anthem: “My Name is Toil” (Cantus firmus I) is spoken in narration, accompanied by orchestra.
2. The Spiritual: “Done Made My Vow” (Cantus firmus II), sung in hushed tones by the choir.
3. The Narrated Text & Role of the Narrator: guide/elder/preacher/parent.
4. The Structure of the Work (“The Afro-Christian Church Service as A New High Mass”), and its similarities and differences from the cantata and oratorio (a “cantatorio”).
5. The Musical Score: Multiplicities of style reside within this work: Homophonic, polyphonic choral and orchestral counterpoint; highly syncopated rhythmic writing, and occasionally the inclusion of asymmetric meters and metric extensions to musical phrasing; writing for the orchestra that “fits” the setting of the text.
6. Black History functions as an “emotional cantus firmus” whose consistent references run throughout this work.

7. The “mountaintop pinnacles” could number as many as four: a. the narrated “Hallelujah” interjections during the Time of Thanksgiving; b. the “Free At Last” moment; c. the narrated announcement “YOUR Name is Toil”!!; d. the full culminated reprise of “My Name Is Toil”.

8. Visual and sonic imagery resident within the performance: the Chorus as congregation (quasi-Greek tragedy chorus?); the Narrator as “Civil Rights-Era preacher”; the soloists as the black family, showing love between and within; the percussion section of the Orchestra "recalling lost ancestors speaking drum language”; (“those unknown bards” revealing themselves?).
9. "Time phases, with meaning reiterated”: Thanksgiving, Remembrance and Dedication--each phase folding back into the previous one for multiple reasons of significance.  Thanksgiving: for family, familiarity, community and productivity; future time phases alluded to in this opening narrative period.  Remembrance “(stony the road we trod”): remembrance of those who “declared themselves guilty before the bench of injustice” (“We Shall Overcome”); Douglass, Turner, Truth, Tubman, Du Bois, Garvey, Malcolm, Randolph, Parks, King.

10. Pinnacle One: “Hallelujah!! Hallelujah!! Thank the Lord”!! The Narrator has an interjectory “praise moment”, and then re-introduces himself within the phase of Thanksgiving.
11. Pinnacle Two: “Free At Last”, then on to praise with the emotional realms of thanksgiving and remembrance; the drum rhythms compete with the choral layers of imitation, culminating on “Great Is The Glory Of The Lord”. 
12. Dedication…transitioned into by quiet “remembrances of mercy enduring forever”; “leave not Thy work undone” (or unfinished): “This Little Light of Mine”… The song begins with the boy soprano, joined by the soprano, then the tenor; this musical trio is a visual and sonic representation of the family, the two generations representing both past and future. 
13. Pinnacle Three: “YOUR Name Is Toil”!!: the moment at which “a window becomes a mirror”. The orchestral interlude that follows provides a profound “textless commentary”. Actually, the orchestra has served as a sonic “character” throughout the dramatic process of this work.
14. Pinnacle Four: The full reprise of the anthem, sung quietly first (what’s the meaning in that?), then “in full voice and expression. The anthem quote dovetails back to the orchestral introduction at its fortissimo culmination.
15. The structural form of the work achieves a synthesis of “cantata” and “oratorio”, proceeding in parallel motion from the familiar points of worship in the Ordinary of the Mass and the Lenten Season oratorio, i.e., Messiah, Elijah, etc.; (Devotion, Call to Worship, etc.)—Thanksgiving (“Kyrie & Gloria” sections of praise, “celebration”, Remembrance/“Commemoration” (“Credo”); “Dedication” (“Benedictus”, “Agnus Dei”).
16. Closing Resonance and Rumination: MIGHT “Done Made My Vow” on a large scale follow a similar or even parallel textual structure as the Negro National Anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”? You, brave reader and listener are left to provide the answer to this grappling question of poetry and history set to music!!  Bon appetit a la musique!!  
17. Adolphus Hailstork, Done Made My Vow (1985), for Narrator, Soprano, Tenor, Boy Soprano, Chorus and Orchestra.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZG5We9OH2c&feature=youtu.be

After hearing this work, no further words should be written for this post...for they are temporarily...unnecessary.  "Walk with the wise, and be wise".  Music hath spoken...