People often refer to Black music as the music of people of African descent, to genres like blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, reggae, spirituals and so on. The Black History Month, commemorated this month, gave a good sample of it. Yet, music originating from the African continent is often under represented and the valorisation of its huge output in America, which is what the Black History Month organizers are aiming at, is worth a closer acquaintance.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the last two centuries saw the advent of genres that reflected the survival of spirit in a newly and often painfully changing world. Amidst a time of cultural disruption (the twentieth century), the work of William Grant Still (1895-1978), often regarded as the dean of Afro-American composers may be a completely new discovery for most of us. He may be a most unexpected example because Still, of Negro, American Indian, Spanish, Irish and Scotch blood, exercised most of his art in so-called serious (white) music.

Listening to some of his piano and orchestral works successfully recorded in 2005 on the Naxos label, his compositions appear with a direct, unpretentious blend, unlikely to reveal that he was trained by such an iconoclastic and sulfurous composer as Edgar Varèse.

<B>Afro-American symphony</B>

Still came from a period during which, although it was really effervescent in musical creation (the so-called Harlem Renaissance), there was much to struggle for in order to establish the dignity of musical genres like theblues, ?so often considered lowly.? Still ?wanted to demonstrate that it could be elevated to the highest musical level? in works like his Afro-American Symphony.

Now that musical standards have moved on to less biased criteria and escaped the tyranny of such hierarchical classifications, this music may speak for itself: a sense of drive and a true gift for orchestration (In Memoriam - 1943), a naturally flowing and soulful character that investigates the symphonic language common to that most American composer Charles Ives to create a world apart of sounds and of mystery (Africa -1930). A universe that would have delighted Maurice Ravel, so fond of jazz rhythms.

These works can be listened to, alongside another masterpiece, the Afro-American Symphony, on a recent Naxos CD ?American classics series? (by Fort Smith Symphony under conductor John Jeter. Label n°: 8.559174), that can be currently ordered from internet shops like www.amazon.com with credit card payment. To learn more about William Grant Still?s enormous output, take a look at a very helpful resource website : www.williamgrantstill.com.