[Dr. J LanYe’ attended Buffalo Meeting during her yearlong residence in Buffalo while doing research for her opera. She returned to her home state of Ohio to finish and produce her opera entitled Highway to Canaan, and has been living and working there since 2009. Because the pandemic changed our Meeting for Worship to a virtual Zoom meeting without physical boundaries, it has been possible for Dr. J to rejoin Buffalo Meeting every week.]
Every February and March I become busier than usual because it's Black History and Women's History Months. Interestingly, other times during the year Black people and women struggle to get recognized for anything positive. However, this pandemic year seems to have opened the minds of academia and the media in unprecedented ways by acknowledging, studying and writing about little known Black facts and stories that have guided and directed our country for centuries.
My undergraduate alma mater, THE CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC, one of the nation’s elite independent music conservatories, has reached out to me. The school wants to feature my new recording, "Spirituals for Piano and Viola," on its website, thus capitalizing on the fact that two super talented black female CIM grads from different generations have joined to display America's great music in a unique format.
[The recording was also highlighted in last months "AfriClassical Blog," the website about African Heritage in Classical Music.]
The powers that be now have apologized for the institution's failure to spotlight my enormous accomplishments and contributions to music. CIM has had the tendency to focus on only international European based music dealings. Its place on the ladder of success pushed it further and further from the reality of its overwhelming "whiteness and maleness." For instance, It simply overlooked my being the conductor of The Shaker Symphony (now defunct since 2018) for nine seasons, 1997-2006, because it was not a big time orchestra. Nevertheless, when I was selected, no Black woman had such a position in the entire world. Furthermore, I was a highly regarded singer (lyric mezzo soprano)-pianist who was not known as a symphony conductor.
[Read all four pages of my website: DrJLanYe.wix.com/drjismusic.]
Likewise, no one from the famous school has ever formed their own opera company. Notice of the company, "OPERA BY THE LAKE '' hit the newspapers and airways in 2013, but no one from CIM felt it necessary to contact me to congratulate me. Black or white, heading an opera company by myself is something out of the ordinary. I have had to rely on strength from "The Almighty" to keep my gears lubricated and ready to go. Therefore it is refreshing to be "discovered" this year.
Luckily, Eliesha Nelson gets some attention because she is a 20 year member of THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA, the highly praised American symphony.
CIM is also featuring three of my "art songs," two which are particularly appropriate at this time.
The first is "To the Earl of Dartmouth," poem by Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784) who was kidnapped from West Africa and enslaved in Boston:
Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat: What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent's breast? Steel'd was that son and by no misery mov'd That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd: Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway?"
The second is "Ain't I a Woman,” from a speech by Sojourner Truth, a Black woman and former slave who countered arguments that women were too fragile and weak to be allowed the same rights as men.
"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman?"