Nobody Knows the Trouble I Sing A Contrary review by Harriett Green The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert that Awakened America
Raymond Arsenault
2009, Bloomsbury Press
 In Marian Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939, civil rights and high culture converged in a moment of defiance, justice, and momentous artistry. Raymond Arsenault intimately chronicles the life of the pioneering African-American vocalist and, in particular, the events leading up to her legendary concert.

Anderson was born to an impoverished family in South Philadelphia, and from an early age, she used her talent to support her family. After initial rounds in churches and gathering halls in the African-American community, she launched increasingly successful touring circuits around the Northeast and the South, her renown spreading to the point that she sang as a young woman in the prestigious concert halls of Philadelphia, New York's Carnegie Hall, and across Europe.  Although she was recognized from the start as an unparalleled talent, she did not graduate from high school until age 24, and at every turn she encountered Jim Crow laws and other obstacles posed by racial discrimination. Under the tutelage of pioneering male African-American singer Roland Hayes and renowned teacher Giuseppe Boghetti, Anderson overcame the setbacks to stake her place on the world stage as an vocalist of the highest caliber. 

Anderson garnered the admiration of musical giants such as Jean Sibelius and Arturo Toscanini, and by 1939, she was a wealthy and highly-acclaimed artist the world over. Despite her stature, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused in 1939 to allow her to perform in their Constitution Hall (the largest performance venue in Washington D.C. at the time) simply becasue of the color of her skin.  This controversy and the landmark civil rights moment it birthed forms the anchor of Arsenault's narrative, which is driven by a question: What is the power of art to transform the social configuration of a nation?

In his well-organized and heavily documented investigation of Anderson's lifelong work, Arsenault unearths a little-known and surprisingly old saga in which African-American artists strove to break out of the stereotyped genre of folk songs and establish their place in the performance of Western classical music. He unearths long-forgotten pioneers including Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, a former slave and Civil-War era classical vocalist, coloratura soprano Marie Seilka, who performed for presidents and queens, and classical violinist Will Marion Cook. He lays out the better known history of African-Americans in American arts and entertainment, from the minstrelsy of Amos and Andy to the literary and musical artists of Harlem Renaissance to Paul Robeson and Dizzy Gillespie. Within this detailed context, Arsenault builds an account of Marian Anderson's premier place in the pantheon of American music.  He pays particular attention to her conflicted but pivotal role in the American civil rights movement, for she first tolerated segregated audiences for the sake of profit, before alliances with Mary McLeod Bethune and the NAACP pushed her into demanding desegregated concerts on her 1951 tour. Even so, Arsenault's account is oddly dry and formulaic given the rich subject matter and the tumultuous historical era he examines.  As the book unfolds, the power of Anderson's biography sinks under Arsenault's formidable depth of detail:  He chronicles virtually every conversation, news account, and protest event that surrounded Anderson's Lincoln Memorial performance, and in setting the context for Anderson's career, he includes as many of the immense historical events and figures that occurred during Anderson's life as possible.  

Yet while Arsenault's narrative occasionally falls into the trap of methodically recounting one event after another, it ultimately proves to be a valuable addition to the field of American biography. Sound of Freedom reminds us of the power of art to untether the seemingly fixed tenets of societal mores, and shows us how one humble woman used her gift to transform the perception of her people.
 
Harriett Green is a graduate student in library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Index of Reviews...>Reviews.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0
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