Carnegie Hall, May 2, 1912. A 124-piece symphonic orchestra performs on stage, a stage framed by an Italianate proscenium adorned with twisting plant forms. In addition to an orchestra’s conventional instruments, the tuxedoed musicians play banjos, mandolins, and guitars. Not only do they perform on instruments not found in an orchestra, they depart from classical music and play ragtime songs. The upper-crust New York audience loves it, and they clap and sway to the rhythm. 

Nothing like this had been presented in such a hallowed hall.  

On center stage is James Reese Europe conducting the Clef Club Orchestra. With his round wire-frame spectacles, confident gaze, and brilliant conducting, Europe embodied a new generation of Black artists shaping the country’s culture. The 31-year-old conductor and his superb band bring the syncopated sounds of Black music to a mixed-race audience of elite New Yorkers.

As the band launches into “Panama” – soon to become a jazz standard – the formally attired audience sways and rocks in their tiered boxes. The sounds are familiar to most Black listeners. Symphonic versions of the plantation songs and gospel hymns they heard growing up. And for White listeners, the songs provide a pleasing discovery of Black musical brilliance.

The transformative power of the music isn’t lost on music critic Lester Walton, who gazes across the mixed-race audience and feels a never-before sense of pride as a Black man living in America.

Walton, who reviewed music and theater for the New York Age, expresses his delight in his column “Music and the Stage”:    

It has long been my wish that local colored musicians appear in a concert at one of the leading music halls of the city and give the white citizens an opportunity to hear music written and played by colored people. … It was not until Thursday evening at Carnegie Hall that my wish was gratified.

Walton watched the Carnegie Hall audience attentively and compared the different reactions of Blacks and Whites: 

… I spent most of my time watching the white auditors [attendees], as I was particularly anxious to know just what they thought of the concert.

It is extremely unfortunate … that color prejudice, with its inconsistencies and un-American spirit … is running riotously rampant in this country. … So when a golden opportunity is afforded us to show that we are no different from other human beings and that … we are making great strides in this great era of civilization and advancement, it is a source of great pleasure to [witness the concert] Thursday evening at Carnegie Hall.

… No color line was drawn in any part of the house, both white and colored occupying boxes. Carnegie Hall was packed to the doors with members of both races, and hundreds were turned away. Yet no calamity occurred because the colored citizens were not segregated in certain parts of the house, as some of our theater managers think it is necessary to do, despite laws forbidding discrimination.

Such laws were common:

In a remarkable passage, Walton defended ragtime music and noted its effect on White patrons:

Many white composers and writers do their best to disparage syncopated music, commonly noted, known as ragtime, and do their utmost to show that this brand of music does not even merit passing consideration. Yet I noticed that not until the Clef Club had played “Panama” did the audience evince more than ordinary interest. White men and women then looked at each other and smiled while one lady seated in a prominent box began to beat time industriously with her right hand, which was covered with many costly gems.

It was then that after a brief mental soliloquy, I was forced to conclude that despite the adverse criticism of many who are unable to play it that syncopation is truly a native product – a style of music of which the Negro is the originator, but which is generally popular with all Americans.[i]   

Lester Walton would be a noteworthy figure if only for chronicling this historic concert.[ii] But his importance is far greater as one of the first American music critics, Black or White, to cover pop music for a major newspaper. His column “Music and the Stage” was among the first music columns to feature popular music in an era when the only music deemed worthy of serious consideration was classical. Pop music – vaudeville, ragtime, and plantation songs – was considered by most music critics to be inferior to classical music.  Or dangerous to cultivated tastes and Protestant social mores.   

In an era when music critics were traditionally White, Walton was part of a new generation of young Black writers, musicians, and artists who came to New York City at the turn of the 20^th century. The creative ferment they fostered blossomed into the Harlem Renaissance. Within this creative milieu, Walton became the music and theater critic, and sports writer, for the New York Age, a prominent Black newspaper. Walton would also become a Broadway songwriter and theater manager. He was also a political activist who advocated for racial equality and peace, and served as a diplomat in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.

When Walton sat in Carnegie Hall that night in May 1912, it wasn’t the first time he’d reviewed the James Reese Europe Orchestra. The previous year, Walton wrote:

Each time I attend a performance of a Clef Club Symphony Orchestra, I leave Manhattan Casino more deeply impressed with the idea that someday the [Europe band] is going to make the devotees of music and New York sit up and take notice, irrespective of whether they be colored or white …[v]

This was the central message that Lester Walton’s writings embodied: that popular music, the people’s music, empowers marginalized listeners to rediscover their lost pride – or gain it for the first time.  

Listen to “Panama” by the Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra on Spotify

Listen to “Plantation Echoes” by the James Reese Europe Orchestra with Noble Sissle on Spotify

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[i] Lester A. Walton, “Music and the Stage,” New York Age, May 9, 1912: 6.

[ii] It doesn’t appear that any White newspapers covered the event, including the New York Times. Today, the Clef Club Carnegie Hall concert is considered an important event in the history of the Hall and popular music.

[iii] Another sign of Walton’s racial pride: it was he who popularized the capitalization of “Negro” and convinced the Associated Press (AP) to adopt the upper case “N” in their prose standards.

[iv] Lester Walton, “Music and the Stage,” New York Age, February 6th, 1908.; 10.

[v] Lester Walton, “Music and the Stage,” New York Age, Nov. 16, 1911: 6.