Preserving Our Nation’s First Songs
The years between 1860 and 1920 saw an extraordinary explosion of new musical styles in America. Much of this music — from spirituals and brass bands to ragtime, blues and early “jass” — came roaring back to life through performances and lectures last October at Susquehanna University’s Symposium on Historic American Music: Diverse Sounds for a Young Nation.
“Sheet music in the 18th and 19th centuries was considered disposable, much like newspapers today,” explains Rick Benjamin, adjunct instructor of music at Susquehanna. “Add to that the delicate nature of the materials used at the time and poor storage conditions,” he says, “and America’s musical history is at risk of crumbling away.”
Anchoring the symposium was Benjamin’s decades-long work to preserve early American music, amassing a 20,000-title collection from forgotten scores destined for landfills.
Over three days, the university hummed with music from Grammy Award winner Dom Flemons, the 8th Green Machine Regiment Band, the Roof Garden Jass Band and Susquehanna’s own Symphonic Band, and a multimedia tribute to the great American world’s fairs performed by Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. Among the speakers offering rich context behind the performances were Columbia University’s John H. McWhorter, who also is a columnist for The New York Times, and American musicologist and author Edward A. Berlin, a leading expert on ragtime.
