Duke Ellington, Black, Brown And Beige, And Its Importance

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Black, Brown and Beige
Black, Brown and Beige is a Jazz symphony composed by Duke Ellington that first premiered in 1943. This symphony holds great importance to the black community, because it was written in a tone about the Negro journey in America. It is one of the longest works composed by Duke Ellington with three parts. In this composition he targets racial identity in the African American community, and also gives a spiritual sense to the music by featuring Mahalia Jackson; a popular gospel singer at the time. The purpose and intent of Black, Brown and Beige was to create a work in remembrance of the struggles of African Americans in the United States, because up until the 1940's music from the black community was not saved on a wide basis.1
Black, Brown and Beige was premiered at Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943. It was not well received by critics, it was noted that most were ill-equipped to assess the complete Black, Brown and Beige after only one hearing. 2 The compilations of Black, Brown and Beige were considered the largest of his career as a musician. Over three hours long, Black, Brown and Beige was often not played in it's entirety. Duke Ellington said, "Next we play a very short sketch from Brown, which is the second section of Black, Brown and Beige. We thought we wouldn't play it in it's entirety tonight, because it represents an awfully long and very important story."3 At this same performance of Brown, Duke Ellington mentioned that the story was not a very popular story and he would wait to perform the whole piece again when he felt the story was more widely known.4 After Duke Ellington received negative comments from the first performance at Carnegie Hall and the repetition in Boston a few days later, he...

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...ance", which he made as a tribute to the deeds of free Haitians who helped Americans in Savannah. The next dance is the, "Civil War", and it features the celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation the title of the song is, "Emancipation Celebration". It is a mixture of joy and surprise about the final end of slavery. The last dance is, "The Spanish-American War", and it features a song called, "The Blues". It is about the homecoming of heroes and romantic love triangles.12
Finally the last section of this symphony is Beige. Beige is about the stereotypes of the people who live in Harlem. People were considered to just singing, dancing and responding to Tom Tom's.13 The reality was that people trying to find a way to support themselves and there were more churches than the common belief about several brothels in Harlem, and African Americans were very educated.14

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