By Jeannie Gayle Pool – IAWM Journal (2003)
Composer and pianist Zenobia Powell Perry was born on October 3, 1908,1 to a well-educated, middle-class family. Her father, Calvin Bethel Powell, was a black physician, and her mother, Birdie Lee Thompson, was Creek Indian and black. Perry was trained in piano by a local teacher, Mayme Jones, who had been a student of black pianist-composer R. Nathaniel Dett. Years later, in 1931, Perry went to the Eastman School in Rochester, New York, to study music with Dett. Although her studies with Cortez Reece at Langston University in Oklahoma were brief, he encouraged her to think seriously about composition. She had a significant educational opportunity at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where she assisted the famous black choir director, arranger and composer, William L. Dawson. After completing her degree, Perry headed a black teacher-training program, supervised in part by Eleanor Roosevelt, who became a friend, ally and mentor and sponsored her graduate studies in education in Colorado. She also studied composition with Darius Milhaud, Allan Willman and Charles Jones at the University of Wyoming and the Aspen Conference on Contemporary Music in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Zenobia Perry’s first university faculty position (1947 to 1955) was at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College (later called University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff). From 1955 until 1982, she was a faculty member and composer-in-residence at Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio, where she is now Faculty Emerita.2 Her compositions have been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, West Virginia University Band and Orchestra, and other performing ensembles, as well as by many singers. Her opera, Tawawa House, based on the history of Wilberforce, Ohio, and completed with a commission by the Ohio Arts Council/Ohio Humanities Joint Program, premiered in 1987.3
Perry’s hometown, the all-black town of Boley, Oklahoma, provided a lifetime of inspiration and material for her work as a composer, long after the town, known for its black ownership, self-governance and autonomy, had been destroyed by Jim Crow politics. The history of Oklahoma and, in general, the history of the United States in the early 20th century, as it related to race relations, had a tremendous impact on Perry’s life. The philosophical outlook and political activism of Booker T. Washington, with whom she had a life-long family connection, strongly influenced her own life as well as the institutions where she studied and served as faculty and administrator.
Zenobia Powell Perry’s life story highlights a need to re-evaluate what factors determine a successful career as a composer in the United States in the 20th century. She was not born into a family of musicians; she was not a child prodigy; and she has never lived in a major urban center. Being black, Creek Indian and mid-western, as well as female, contribute to a fascinating combination of factors that make her music, which is full of originality and inventiveness, reflective of a unique perspective.
Perry did not begin composing seriously until she was in her forties. Although, while a young woman, she had been encouraged to compose by Dett and did some arranging as an accompanist and faculty member at Tuskegee Institute, she did not study theory and composition until she was well into her thirties.4 She would never be considered one of the leading-edge composers of our time because her success thus far has been limited, and her reputation extends to just a small community of people who hold a long-term interest in black American music and women composers.5 She is very modest about her accomplishments and has not been aggressive in promoting her music. She is, nevertheless, an important black American woman composer of concert music.
In many ways, Zenobia Perry has lived a blessed life, often seemingly in the right place at the right moment, always taking advantage of even the smallest of opportunities presented, and always meeting challenges with a “can-do” attitude. As a young woman, she was abandoned by her first husband while pregnant and then suffered the death of her 11-year-old son. Married a second time during World War II, she divorced again when her second child was only a preschooler. She successfully raised her daughter, Janis-Rozena Peri, who is a fine musician in her own right and a singer with a strong spiritual outlook and social conscience.6 Perry raised her daughter while pursuing advanced degrees in music, including studies in composition and orchestration, and fulfilling her obligations as a college music instructor and administrator.
In addition to her extensive responsibility as the eldest sibling in her immediate family, she supported her elderly mother for many years and helped raise her brother’s children. For these and other accomplishments, Zenobia Powell Perry offers an extraordinary role model for women who hope to achieve success in their music careers while being mothers or caring for family members. Not only has she had a successful career in music, she also has been active in the civil rights movement as a member of the NAACP since 1962.
Particularly since her retirement in 1982, Perry has received numerous honors and awards related to her teaching, composing and volunteer community work. But the most significant tribute to her is the continuing performance of her works by a devoted group of musicians, many of them former students, and also by those who have only recently discovered her music. To date, one piece has been published, a compact disc of her songs and piano works has been released,7 and her name is beginning to appear in reference books as well as in publications about black American composers and women in music.8
Through the years, Perry has always demonstrated resourcefulness, determination and perseverance. She has pursued music throughout her life, despite her father’s lack of encouragement, two marriages, two divorces, and two children. She tells a story of how she decided to follow R. Nathaniel Dett to the Eastman School to continue her studies with him. She took the funds deposited by her parents (required for all students) at Hampton Institute for her return ticket to Oklahoma and used it to settle in Rochester. Only afterwards did she contact her father to ask for his support.9 This is a woman who, once she knows what she wants and needs, obtains it.
One discovers in Perry’s music a fresh, clear, individual voice of a woman who lives a life of substance and breadth, a woman who carries with her throughout her life the love and strength of her own very proud and distinguished parents and the keen guidance of her musical mentors. She is the beneficiary of an extraordinary network of friends, colleagues and several generations of music students. She cultivates these protégés with care, and, especially since her retirement, has been continuously asked for advice, reassurance and recommendations.
Zenobia Powell Perry is a precious and articulate link to a special moment in American culture of the 1920s and 30s, a period when black American composers and musicians were beginning to be recognized for their unique contributions to the country’s musical life. Their influence extends worldwide in all kinds of music. Through the experiences of her teachers— R. Nathaniel Dett and William Dawson—Perry is linked to a musical tradition (particularly the spirituals) born of early African-American life, a tradition that reaches back to the music of the pre-Civil War African slaves. Among Perry’s colleagues were black American musicians of earlier generations, some of whom made a living as traveling virtuoso performers and had international concert careers.
Her studies with French-Jewish composer Darius Milhaud and white-American composer Allan Willman brought Perry into contact with the international contemporary music community of the 1940s and 50s, allowing her to expand her musical language and make contacts among many first-class performers and composers. Their encouragement and support was critical in propelling her from a performance career to one in which composition was the focus of her musical life. Both Milhaud and Willman knew, respected and appreciated many successful women composers (including the famous French composition teacher, Nadia Boulanger) and both were interested in black American music.10
Perry has been influenced by both black American and native American folklore, music, language and poetry. These cultural heritages are richly reflected in her own compositions, instrumental and vocal, and in her original poetry. Poised between the two traditions, she teaches us much about the nexus where black American and native American experiences converge. In this sense, her story is a uniquely American story, richly dense in substance and steeped in the hopes of each generation of minorities in this country as they have pursued creative expression.
Zenobia Perry lives a simple, healthy, modest life, deeply rooted in mid-western ways and common sense. Her values embody the highest sense of what is right and wrong, what is just and unjust, what is fair and unfair, and a commitment to fight for what is right. At the core of black rural American life, these values have enabled several generations to survive and prosper in a country that has been prejudicial and often hostile. Perry has had control over her life and work by owning the roof over her head and the tools of her trade. She managed to provide for herself, her daughter, her mother and others throughout her teaching career. Yet she may boast of having resources beyond what most of us have in terms of a fortified soul and a loveliness of being, which has particularly enabled her as one of the splendid teachers of our time.
Giving back to her community to repay what she has received over the years is of paramount importance to her. She teaches quilting at a senior citizens’ home, serves as secretary of the local NAACP chapter, and often speaks in local schools. She is active in her church and is a member of the Greene County Women’s History Project, which is documenting the achievements of outstanding women in her area of Ohio.
The reasons to review the compositions of Zenobia Powell Perry are many.11 For a number of years, particularly in the late 1950s and 1960s, not many contemporary composers wrote tonal music or music with clear, classic melodies—two aspects that characterize her works. Her compositional style is deeply rooted in singing traditions, reflected in its melodic integrity and in the length and balance of her phrasing. Beginning in the mid-1980s, composers using a more traditional tonal resource began to receive wider acceptance, although an international contemporary atonal idiom still prevails, to a certain extent, particularly among composers in academia. Perry always found support for her music in black colleges where the black American singing traditions have been carried on within choral programs and with the training of amateur singers; accordingly, Perry has continued to write in one style that satisfied her own creative aspirations. Despite not fitting into the stylistic mold of the academic American composer of her generation, she never felt compelled to follow the criteria of the contemporary music community’s taste. Rather, she has composed to please herself and the performers for whom she has chosen to write and thereby has always found an audience that appreciates her very personal, even intimate, expressions of emotion. Much of her music is straightforward and direct, yet elegant and profound.
Some may speculate that, had she been more widely performed, she may have gravitated to the atonal, more “modern,” compositional style of her peers. However, her ambition was never to be a famous composer, but rather to express herself through her music, while serving her community. Many gems may be found in this body of work, each of which shines, even glitters, on its own, meriting repeat performances. Rather than complain that, as a composer in America in the late 20th century, she has had to teach to support herself, Perry has found great joy in her teaching and was motivated by her students and academic life to compose.
Perry has also found constant inspiration in her love of poetry and deep admiration of several poets, both past and present, most notably Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), Donald Jeffrey Hayes; Claude McKay (1890-1948), Frank Horne (1899-?), R.H. Grenville (no dates available), and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Her profound love of language and keen ear for the many voices of her lifetime are apparent in the texts she has written for her own compositions.
Perry, thus, stands rightfully alongside other black composers of her generation: Julia Perry (1924-79); Ulysses Kay (1917-96), Hale Smith (b.1925), Thomas Jefferson [T.J.] Anderson (b.1928), Margaret Bonds (1913-72), Undine Smith Moore (1904-89), Eva Jessye (1895-1992), George Walker (b.1922), Evelyn La Rue Pittman (1910-92), Betty Jackson King (b.1928) and Arthur Cunningham (1928-97), among others. Yet major scholars and researchers who have tried to document the history of African American composers of the 20th century have overlooked her, and she is mentioned only briefly in the literature.12Among the few black American women writing concert music today—Dorothy Rudd Moore (b. 1940), Jeraldine Herbison (b.1941), Regina Harris Biaocchi (b. 1956), Tania Léon (b. 1944)—Perry is the most senior.
1. This date of birth has been confirmed by the 1910 U.S. Census Data, at P400 at 047 0136,0226 for Okfuskee County, Oklahoma: C.B. Powell, age 39, born Tennessee, Berdia, age 21 from Arkansas; Zenobia Perry, age 1½, born in Oklahoma. The information could not be confirmed by the Division of Vital Records, Oklahoma State Department of Health, Oklahoma City, which has no record of her birth as of November 16, 2001. Many sources incorrectly give 1914 as her date of birth. Her father was in fact 47 in 1910; he was born in 1863.
2. This was confirmed by phone December 18, 2001, by Treva Rogers in President Garland’s office at Central State University. Zenobia Perry was named “Faculty Emerita” in 1985.
3. Vocalists who have performed her songs in concerts in recent years include Janis-Rozena Peri (Perry’s daughter), Sebronette Barnes and Jo Ann Lanier (Lanyé).
4. The fact that a large number of composition prizes and awards are available only to young composers represents age discrimination.
5. Nicolas Slonimsky remarked on several occasions that he decided to add new contemporary composers to Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Eighth Edition (New York: Schirmer Books, 1992) only after the composer’s music received three reviews in a single concert season in New York, Los Angeles, Boston or San Francisco. This methodology excluded many women and minority composers as well as composers in the Midwest and South.
6. Her daughter, faculty at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, has become Perry’s most ardent supporter and promoter.
7. “Music of Zenobia Powell Perry,” volume 1: Art Songs and Piano, the first recording devoted to the music of Perry, was released December 2002 by Jaygayle Music in conjunction with Cambria Master Recordings of Lomite, California. The project was funded in part by a grant from the F. Eugene Miller Foundation. The album features Janis-Rozena Peri, soprano; John Crotty, piano; and Joyce Catalfano, flute. To purchase the CD, contact Jaygayle Music, P.O. Box 8144, La Crescenta, CA 91224-0144; tel: 818-446-0082; e-mail: jeanniegpool@cs.com; price $12 (includes postage and handling).
8. Helen Walker-Hill included Zenobia Perry’s “Homage to William Dawson on his 90th Birthday” in the anthology, Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music, 1893-1990 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Hildegard Publishing Co., 1990).
9. Zenobia Perry, by author, tape recording, Morgantown, West Virginia, September 30, 2001.
10. This is discussed in greater detail in Jeannie Gayle Pool, “The Life and Music of Zenobia Powell Perry: An American Composer” (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate University, 2002): 168-191.
11. Jo Ann Lanier (later Lanyé) wrote a D.M.A. dissertation, “The Concert Songs of Zenobia Powell Perry,” at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, Illinois, in 1988, available through UMI Press. Unfortunately, her dissertation contains misinformation, some of which was provided by Perry.
12. Although Zenobia Perry is not mentioned in any of musicologist Eileen Southern’s books, I am certain that I introduced them to each other at the First National Congress on Women in Music in March 1981, New York University.
Dr. Jeannie Pool is a composer, music producer and musicologist. Founder of the International Congress on Women in Music, she has produced festivals and conferences on women in music since 1980 in the United States and abroad. From 1980 until 1996, she hosted “Music of the Americas” on KPFK-Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, winning several broadcasting awards. In 1995, she was honored by the National Association of Composers U.S.A. (NACUSA) for her work in promoting American composers and music. Currently, she is adjunct faculty at Fullerton College, where she teaches courses on women in music and music appreciation.