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Indiana University Press
The following review appeared in the August 2015 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only. Please review our Permission and Reprints Guidelines or email permissions@ala-choice.org.
Humanities
Performing Arts - Music
As much about social justice as about music, this book is expressive in terms of narrative voice—with such phrases as “like the lilting, plaintive quality of a viola”—and descriptive in terms of geography. The great-grandson of a slave and a rising tenor during the era of Jim Crow, Roland Hayes (1887-1977) was called the “black Caruso” on occasion, even though he never sang in an opera. Brooks (anthropology, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.) and Sims (voice, Northern Illinois Univ.) do a good job of addressing Hayes’s childhood, education, and personality. They explore the breadth of Jim Crow, including the fact that hospitals rarely treated African Americans in the early 1900s. Each of the 14 chapters covers a period in Hayes's life, starting with 1887-1911 and concluding with 1960-77; an epilogue looks at his legacy. Over his lifetime Hayes crossed paths with a variety of influential musicians, and the authors elaborate on these encounters. Well researched, with several primary sources and newspapers cited, the volume includes 48 illustrations of Hayes and other musicians. The authors also include Hayes’s repertoire, which ranged from art songs by Schubert, Ernst Bacon, and William Walton to spirituals and songs Hayes composed.
--R. Hartsock, University of North Texas