Music of Baltimore
The city was a major stop on the African American East Coast touring circuit, and it remains a popular regional draw for live performances.
Major music venues in Baltimore include the nightclubs and other establishments that offer live entertainment clustered in Fells Point and Federal Hill.
Baltimore rose to regional performance as an industrial and commercial center, and also become home to some of the most important music publishing firms in colonial North America.
These concert programs featured compositions by locals Alexander Reinagle and Raynor Taylor, as well as European composers like Frantisek Kotzwara, Ignaz Pleyel, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Giovanni Battista Viotti and Johann Sebastian Bach.
John Cole, an important publisher and tune collector in Baltimore, known for pushing a rarefied European outlook on American music, responded with the tunebook Beauties of Psalmody, which denigrated the new techniques, especially fuguing.
[5] 19th-century Baltimore had a large African American population, and was home to a vibrant black musical life, especially based around the region's numerous Protestant churches.
The "first instance of mass black assertiveness after the Civil War" in the country occurred in Baltimore in 1865, after a meeting of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in Battle Monument Square, marking the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Other prominent music publishers in Baltimore in this era included George Willig, Arthur Clifton, Frederick Benteen, James Boswell, Miller and Beecham, W. C. Peters, Samuel Carusi and G. Fred Kranz.
In contrast, religious musical instruction by the middle of the 19th century remained based around itinerant singing masters who taught for a period of time, then continued to new locations.
[5] Early in the 20th century, Baltimore's most famous musical export was the duo of Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, who found national fame in New York.
[14] The first half of the twentieth century saw Baltimore hosting composers including George Frederick Boyle, Joseph Pache, Mark Fax, Adolph Weiss and Franz Bornschein.
In the following decade the Company modernized, receiving new funding from, among other sources, the Ford Foundation, which led to professionalization and the hiring of a full-time production manager and the stabilization on a program consisting of three operas every season; this schedule has since been expanded to four performances.
[15] The Baltimore Chamber Music Society, founded by Hugo Weisgall and Rudolph Rothschild in 1950, has commissioned a number of renowned works and is known for a series of controversial concerts featuring mostly 20th-century composers.
[7] After World War II, William Marbury, then Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peabody Institute, began the process of integrating that institution, which had denied entrance to several well-regarded African American performers based solely on their race, including Anne Brown and Todd Duncan, who had been the first black performer with the New York City Opera when he was forced to study with Frank Bibb, a member of the Peabody faculty, outside the Conservatory.
In the field of 20th-century popular music, Baltimore first was a major center for the development of East Coast ragtime, producing the legendary performer and composer Eubie Blake.
[19] Pennsylvania Avenue attracted African Americans from as far away as North Carolina, and was known for its vibrant entertainment and nightlife, as well as a more seedy side, home to prostitution, violence, ragtime and jazz, which were perceived as unsavory.
Blake was the most well known figure in the local scene, and helped make Baltimore one of the ragtime centers of the East Coast, along with Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.[28] He then joined a medicine show, performing throughout Maryland and Pennsylvania before moving to New York in 1902 to play at the Academy of Music there.
Their success grew quickly, and they soon had numerous songs performed across the country, including on Broadway, most famously "Baltimore Buzz", "Gypsy Blues" and "Love Will Find a Way".
The widespread acclaim for Shuffle Along led to changes in the theatre industry nationwide, producing demand for African American performers and leading to newly integrated theatrical companies across the country.
The two most popular of the early jazz performers in Baltimore, however, were Ernest Purviance and Joseph T. H. Rochester, who worked together, as the Drexel Ragtime Syncopators, starting a dance fad known as the "Shimme She Wabble She".
Many of The Royal's band members would join with touring acts when they came through Baltimore; many had day jobs in the defense industry during World War II, including McCleary himself.
McCleary would be The Royal's last conductor, however, while Chambers' orchestra became a fixture in Baltimore, and came to include as many as thirty musicians, who would sometimes divide into smaller groups for performances.
The earliest well-known Baltimore saxophonists include Arnold Sterling, Whit Williams, Andy Ennis, Brad Collins, Carlos Johnson, Vernon H. Wolst, Jr.; the most famous, however, was Mickey Fields.
Competitive music and dance was a part of African American street gang culture, and with the success of some local groups, pressure mounted, leading to territorial rivalries among performers.
Also, Epic recording Artist Tony Sciuto "Island Nights" who was also a member of Australia's Little River Band, Player and ABC Fullhouse's (Jesse and the Rippers) was raised in Medfield Heights (Hampden)area.
The Urbanite magazine has identified several major trends in local Baltimorean music, including the rise of psychedelic-folk singer-songwriters like Entrance and the house/hip hop dance fusion called Baltimore club, pioneered by DJs like Rod Lee.
More recently, Baltimore's modern music scene has produced performers like Cass McCombs, Ponytail, Animal Collective, Spank Rock, Rye Rye, Double Dagger, Roomrunner, Mary Prankster, Beach House, Lower Dens, Future Islands, Wye Oak, The Seldon Plan, Dan Deacon, Ed Schrader's Music Beat, Dope Body, Rapdragons, Adventure, and JPEGMafia, many of whom are associated with the New Weird America movement, and thus is the city itself.
Recently, a number of new media sites have risen to prominence including Aural States (Best Local Music Blog 2008),[45] Government Names, Mobtown Shank and Beatbots (Best Online Arts Community 2007).
[52] Beginning in middle school in the sixth grade, students are taught to make mature aesthetic judgements, and to understand and respond to a variety of forms of music.
The Eubie Blake Center exists to promote African American culture, and music, to both youth and adults, through dance classes for all age groups, workshops, clinics, seminars and other programs.
