Sergio Mims: Harvard Gazette: Plans in the works for revival of long-lost 1932 African-American opera "Tom Tom"

Shirley Graham 

Tom-Tom

(Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer)

Sergio A. Mims writes:

There are plans in the making at Radcliffe University for a revival of the long lost 1932 African-American opera Tom-Tom written by Shirley Graham who years after the work's only performance married Dr. W.E.B. DuBois

The Harvard Review

Jill Radsken Harvard Staff Writer

March 12, 2018

Davóne Tines ’09, a bass-baritone with American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), stepped to the microphone in the Horner Room, a rehearsal space at Radcliffe Institute, and began to sing:

Listen to the distant tom-tom
And answer quickly when they call you
Beat more loudly on your tom-tom|
And tell us if there’s danger near.

These are the opening lines of “Tom-Tom,” a three-act opera that hasn’t been performed since 1932, when the Cleveland Stadium Opera Company premiered the work by African-American composer Shirley Graham before a weekend crowd of more than 25,000.

“This is a dream come true to see this come to fruition,” said James T. Kloppenberg, Charles Warren Professor of American History, who came to hear the workshopping of “Tom-Tom” and to celebrate the research of his former student Lucy Caplan ’12.

Caplan, who is working on her Ph.D. at Yale, found “Tom-Tom” while poking around the Schlesinger archives as a junior in search of a topic for her College essay. Composed by Graham, who had studied at Oberlin College and Conservatory and would later marry W.E.B. Du Bois, the opera tells the diaspora story of African-Americans, beginning in an unnamed West African village, traveling to a Southern plantation, and ending amid the Harlem Renaissance.

“The most exciting aspect for me is the ambition and scope of ‘Tom-Tom’; it’s an epic piece,” said Caplan. “It covers amazing historical terrain, and the music reflects all of those locations. Graham’s dad and brother worked in Liberia, and you can hear that influence. The second act has spirituals, and the third, where one of the characters is a cabaret singer, features early jazz sounds.

“But Graham also had studied at a conservatory so she brings in the Western classical tradition, too. You can hear her playing with all these historical and musical elements and turning them into a giant work. She didn’t go for some narrow or miniature story. She went for all of it at once.”