Introduction: Music and Art

 

 

Stevie Wonder, “Village Ghetto Land” 

 

“For as long as there’s life, for as long as we have things happening in the world, for as long as people haven’t been able to work it out, for as long as people are not trying to work it out, for as long as there’s crime and destruction and hate, bigotry, for as long as there is a spirit that does not have love in it, I will always have something to say.”

~ Stevie Wonder, concluding an interview with Larry King, 2010, in which he is asked whether he feels he will ever “run out of things to say” with his music.

For more links to Wonder’s music, see “Music and Art” for Chapter 6.

 

 

Ruby Green Singing, 1928, James Chapin (1887–1975). James Cox Gallery at Woodstock, NY

 

 

 

As a child, one of my first “graced encounters across the color line”: learning to play “Solace” (1909), by Scott Joplin (1867-1917), performed and discussed in this video blog by Chris Pramuk.
                

 

 

The Art Spirit, Robert Henri (1865-1929). A native of Cincinnati, Henri led the Ashcan School movement in art, and attracted a large, intensely personal group of followers. In writing Hope Sings, So Beautiful, I tried to bring something of the “art spirit” as Henri describes it in this classic compendium of teaching notes and life observations, and I hope something of his spirit informs this website.