From Erie to Carnegie Hall

Contributed

Cheryl Rush Dix of Erie enjoyed the American Symphony Orchestra's concert at Carnegie Hall featuring the music of Harry T. Burleigh with her son-in-law, Eric Cleary. She is a founding member of the Burleigh Legacy Alliance.

Erie has a rich gift just waiting for you to unwrap, one that honors the past, celebrates the present, and promises to endure for the future.

That is how Cheryl Rush Dix explains the lessons we can absorb and the inspiration we can draw from Harry T. Burleigh – composer, arranger, singer, oral historian, music editor, world traveler.

Burleigh is an Erie "treasure," one who makes our community "richer than we know," said Cheryl. "The Burleigh story is one in which we are the exemplars of what it means to be better together."

If someone isn't familiar with Burleigh's story, you can explain his legacy this way, Cheryl suggested: "There's a great present in that wrapped box that you are going to love. Let me share it with you … The gifts that came from here were developed here."

Burleigh rose from humble roots in Erie to international acclaim thanks to those who financially contributed to his enrollment in the founding class of the New York Conservatory of Music. "Some folks put in a little and some of the great and glorious names put in a lot," Cheryl said. It was a community-wide effort of pulling together in typical Erie fashion.

But Burleigh's story isn't just a local one. His life and his music are integral to America's narrative – both the uplifting and the harrowing parts of our history.

As a youngster, he had learned the spirituals when he and his brother Reginald accompanied their maternal grandfather, Hamilton Waters, while he worked as a lamplighter in Erie and sang plantation songs. Formerly enslaved, Waters had purchased freedom for himself and his mother.

In a forward Burleigh wrote in 1917 for his arrangement of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," he said that Black spirituals are "the only music in America which meets the scientific definition of folk song. Success in singing these songs is primarily dependent upon deep spiritual feeling. The voice is not nearly so important as the spirit."

He also pointed that it would be "a serious misconception of their meaning and value to treat them as 'minstrel songs,'" in which singers, including a performer named Jim Crow, mocked Black people by "swaying the body, clapping the hands, or striving to make peculiar inflections of voice" to entertain white audiences.

Burleigh described the true beauty and power of the spirituals: "Through all these songs, there breathes a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and brotherhood of man. The cadences of sorrow inevitably turn to joy, and the message is ever manifest that eventually deliverance from all that hinders and oppresses the soul will come, and man – every man – will be free."

Those insights help to explain why his music has a starring role in United in Sound: America at 250, a Carnegie Hall series celebrating our country's birth. On Jan. 30, Cheryl attended the American Symphony Orchestra's opening concert, Forging an American Musical Identity. The concert featured Burleigh arrangements of "Go Down Moses," "Behold That Star" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." On May 14, the Orchestra of St. Luke's and baritone Joseph Parrish will celebrate the friendship between Burleigh and noted Czech composer Antonin Dvorak at Carnegie's Flushing Town Hall, also part of United in Sound: America at 250.

The promotion for this concert at carnegiehall.org states: "Their collaboration, rooted in spirituals and folk music, helped shape a distinctly American sound that continues to inspire us today."

Yet you don't have to travel to New York City to experience the Burleigh phenomenon.

This year, the Harry T. Burleigh Spirituals Festival, held every year in Nashville, Tennessee since it began in 2016, will take place in Erie.

Patrick Dailey, countertenor and a voice professor at Tennessee State University (part of the network of Historically Black Colleges and Universities), organizes the Burleigh Spirituals Festival, along with Erie's Burleigh Legacy Alliance and other partners.

At a Dec. 3 concert at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Paul, "Celebrating Harry T. Burleigh's Legacy Across American Music with the Sankofa Project: A Journey Through Black Music and Artistry," the Erie audience heard Dailey, Analia Corpas, Frederick Taylor, and Gary Mitchell Jr. deliver a multiple-ovation performance of Burleigh's pieces as well as music by singers he influenced, including Sam Cooke.

Jean E. Snyder's book, Harry T. Burleigh, From the Spiritual to the Harlem Renaissance, is considered the defining biography of his life in Erie and his storied career. It is in the Heritage Room at Blasco Library and can also be purchased online.

That concert, part of the annual Burleigh Week in Erie, was a sumptuous taste of what's in store for Erie at the Spirituals Festival March 25-28. There will be concerts, workshops for students of all ages, and lessons on how Burleigh's music has resonated for decades. For example, the 2019 festival featured the world premiere of "The Tupac Shakur Art Song Project."

"This will be the 10th anniversary of a full academic and music festival, with a plenary opening concert and a capstone concert," said Cheryl, a founding member of the Burleigh Legacy Alliance and my longtime friend and mentor. Cheryl compared the establishment of the Burleigh Legacy Alliance to "getting the band back together" with those associated with its predecessor, the Burleigh Society. That includes Legacy President Johnny Johnson, retired Erie School District teacher and researcher/writer about Erie's Black history; Jean E. Snyder, Ph.D., whose book Harry T. Burleigh, From the Spiritual to the Harlem Renaissance is the definitive biography of Burleigh; and Cheryl, among others.

The Burleigh Society and now the Legacy Alliance carry on the work of the late Charles Kennedy Jr., who died suddenly in 2009 at age 59. Kennedy was known for his living-history portrayals of Burleigh and for educating Erie about Burleigh's story. He was the son of Mother Mary Beth and the Rev. Charles Kennedy Sr., who ministered to the poor and championed social and racial justice in Erie and abroad.

Shortly after Snyder published her Burleigh biography in 2016, she invited Cheryl to attend a sold-out Burleigh concert in New York City. At a reception that followed, one of the "luminaries" who had performed asked what Erie was doing for Burleigh.

"After this wonderful, emotive concert, I came away with a fire lit," Cheryl recalled. She vowed that "the next time somebody asks me that question, especially if my feet are in Carnegie Hall, I will have a better answer," she said. She and the others reconstituted the Burleigh Society with its new name, the Burleigh Legacy Alliance, committed to making "Erie a home for Burleigh performance and scholarship," she said.

Cheryl and other Burleigh fans are captivated by the fact that in addition to preserving the Spirituals, he also composed art songs and set to music poetry by Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Langston Hughes.

"He wrote the music for 'Lovely, Dark, and Lonely' by Hughes for Marian Anderson, his voice protégé," Cheryl said. Anderson, famed contralto and civil rights pioneer, didn't sing Burleigh's interpretation of "Lovely, Dark, and Lonely" but in her career, she sang many songs that Burleigh arranged.

With Burleigh's connection to poetry, it's only natural that Erie poet Mabel Howard has joined the Legacy Alliance as a board member and that she celebrated Burleigh's life in a poetry event she created for the Hagen History Center for Black History Month in February 2021. You can watch her program, Beauty of a Colorful Mind. Honoring the Past While Inspiring a Brilliant Future on the Hagen History Center's YouTube channel.

In addition, drop into Mabel's Café 7-10, 7 W. 10th St., and chat with her about poetry, Burleigh, and the current state of the arts, especially for artists of color.

"It's tough for African Americans in general to make it in the arts sector. To break into someplace we haven't been before is always something to be celebrated," Mabel said. "He took an elite path that many from his time, and even from now, haven't. He was willing to break barriers for himself and push through the vision that he had for greatness."

Mabel looks back with appreciation to the poets who participated in the "Colorful Mind" event. "They brought Harry T. Burleigh to life, through their lens," she said.

Debbi Lyon, library assistant at Blasco Library's Heritage Room, created this poster to show Harry T. Burleigh's worldwide travels and international fame. (Contributed photo)

To learn more about Burleigh, another good source is the Erie County Library, where two Burleigh biographies are in circulation, Hard Trials: The Life and Music of Harry T. Burleigh by Anne Key Simpson and Nobody Knows: The Harry T. Burleigh Story by Craig von Buseck.

Both books are also available for reference in Blasco's Heritage Room, along with the biography by Jean Snyder.

Debbi Lyon, library assistant in the Heritage Room, highly recommends Snyder's book because it also gives insight into Erie's Black history. In the preface, Snyder writes: "Burleigh's most profound influence in his formative years was this strong family, for whom education was a primary value, and through his public and business education in Erie, he developed the confidence that facilitated his entrée into New York City's broader public arena."

From Snyder, I also learned that Burleigh's father joined with three other men to start the Equal Rights League, which advocated for full voting rights for African-American men and "to remove race and gender barriers from all state elections."

In addition to the Burleigh books, the Heritage Room also has copies of Burleigh's arrangements of various Spirituals (the originals are safeguarded in the rare books collection).

Debbi also noted that at the library's Heritage Room, "We don't just celebrate Black History Month in February. We celebrate it all year."

Specific details about the Burleigh Spirituals Festival in Erie will be available soon at Burleigh Legacy Alliance website.

Cheryl also suggested marking Sept. 20 on your calendar. That's when a Catholic Mass featuring Burleigh's music will premiere at Mercyhurst University. "So, be present at the creation. That's my advice!"

Amen.

Liz Allen hopes to attend the Flushing Town Hall concert with Burleigh's music on her next visit to New York City in May. You can reach her at lizallenerie@gmail.com.