Word: folke
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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William Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony had a few exciting moments when drum beats drilled out a climax in true African fashion. But for the rest Composer Dawson appeared to have forgotten his primitive background. After his shoe-shining days in Anniston, Ala., he worked ambitiously at Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. He studied music in Kansas City, later in Chicago where Conductor Frederick Stock chose him for his first trombonist. He returned to Tuskegee in 1930, to head the music department, direct the choir...
...Negro Symphony Composer Dawson wanted to voice the struggles of his people. He used Negro folk themes but he dressed them with such fancy orchestration that they lost their force and spontaneity. Applause was more for Dawson, the Negro who had managed to have a piece played by the proud Philadelphia Orchestra, than for a symphony which was for the most part undistinguished, a conventional copy of the white man's ways...
...ropes, pitchforks and rifles kept Kansas abolitionist because they did not want the agricultural competition of cheap slave labor. A noted boozer, tobacco-chewer and wencher, sly "Ace" is first seen confessing his sins to a camp-meeting audience so he can mount the rostrum and persuade the good folk to elect him Kansas' first Senator in 1861. He is elected, goes thoroughly jingo when the first shell bursts over Fort Sumter, becomes chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. Then, after three years, "Ace" is sickened by the casualty lists, decides to end the fighting...
...Hennessy's strictly moral canal hotel at Rome (immoral canal hotels could be identified by their white chimneys), Dan meets Molly Larkins (June Walker). She is a pretty minx born to the Erie water. The conflict between "notional" Molly and simple Dan is the traditional one between water folk and land folk...
...born to be a bargeman. Before the summer is over, he and Molly have parted. Then, as the canal is about to close for the winter, and while an employment agent in Hennessy's Hotel is significantly hiring "canawlers" to work on the Utica & Black River Railway, the young folk meet again. Dan has to toss Jotham Klore into the water before he can persuade Molly to come and live with him on his new farm. Excellent as are the sharp, penny-plain performances by Miss Walker and Mr. Fonda, they do not dim the legitimate debut of droll Herb...