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Marian Anderson: A Singer's Journey: The First Comprehensive Biography
A definitive biography of one of America's greatest singers and a seminal figure in the American civil rights movement uncovers the life of the first AfricanAmerican soloist at the Met and the first AfricanAmerican singer to perform at the White House.
- GenresMusicNonfictionBiography
447 pages, Hardcover
First published February 22, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 29, 2019
The summer is winding down. The kids go back to school tomorrow and after a three day Labor Day weekend the academic year will be in full swing. During the month of August, I participated in my own form of back to school reading, studying the 1960s and civil rights. Marian Anderson is a prominent American whose name pops up in my feed from time to time. Her name and career also made an appearance in the last book I read, a memoir by Coretta Scott King, who aspired to be a concert singer like Anderson, a prominent contralto opera singer of color. With Anderson being a performer who tested segregation lines, I felt inspired to read a biography of her, yet the offerings were few and far between. I settled for a book written by musicology professor Allan Keiler, hoping to be inspired by an opera singer whose career spanned decades.
Marian Anderson was born in April 1897 in South Philadelphia, the first of three daughters born to Joseph and Anna Anderson. Like many African Americans of the era, the Anderson struggled to find employment and cobbled together multiple jobs to make ends meet, eventually moving in with Joseph’s parents Benjamin and Isabella Anderson along with their daughter Mary. Joseph Anderson died young, and the widowed Anna became even more dependent on her in-laws as the three generations continued to live under one roof for many years. Educational opportunities were few for Marian and her sisters Alyse and Ethel. The sisters learned more in their church, especially in the choir, than they did in school. While integrated in a northern state, African American students were given fewer academic challenges than their Caucasian counterparts. Anderson would not complete high school until she was twenty four and already a concert singer. While determined to complete her education, the lack of economic or academic opportunities would plague Anderson for years.
It was apparent to members of Anderson’s church that she was gifted vocally from a young age. Through intervention from her minister, Anderson learned with a vocal coach and advanced to the top choir in her church. She began to make a name for herself on the black music circuit, specializing in spirituals other songs familiar to the black community. Anderson would give concerts in the south at traditional black colleges and churches, seeing first hand segregation that was the reality of life in the south. The author makes a point throughout that Anderson never wanted to ruffle the feathers of segregation and civil rights like her contemporaries Paul Robeson and Roland Hayes; she just wanted the same musical opportunities as white singers. When Anderson realized that she would never achieve great heights as a concert singer without knowledge of European music, she chose to study in Europe for a good part of the late 1920s and 1930s. There she studied under top teachers and learned German lieder and well as French, Italian, and Scandinavian operatic pieces, paving the way for her career in the United States.
Marian Anderson’s crowning moment occurred on April 9, 1939 when she gave an outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Although she gave between sixty and eighty concerts a season upon her return to the States, Washington, D.C. was never on her schedule as the city remained segregated. Paul Robeson petitioned to sing in the city, using his career to promote civil rights. Anderson would have desired to sing at the acoustically pleasing Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution closed the venue to people of color, with no exception. Through the intervention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and the NAACP, Anderson was permitted to sing at the Lincoln Memorial to an integrated audience. While it would be three years before she sang in the nation’s capital again, civil rights pundits believed that Anderson’s presence promoted the cause. Many children’s books have been presented about this concert, and I had hoped for a larger description of it, but this author was not as good interested in civil rights as he was in Anderson’s musical career.
Allan Keiler holds a PhD in musicology, and his description of Anderson’s career is from a technical standpoint. Although biography has always been my favorite genre as I learn about people through a historical lens, Marian Anderson’s life was presented in a manner that would be most interesting to someone with a musical background. Keiler spends paragraphs describing Anderson’s musical training and her metamorphosis from church singer to contralto adept in performing the European masters. He did note a little about the business side of performing as well as her struggle to marry her high school sweetheart Orpheus Fisher, who easily passed for white. These passages as well as the events leading to the Lincoln Memorial concert were of interest yet were few and far between as the author inundated readers with the technical side of music. As much as I enjoy music, I had been more interested in Marian Anderson from a historic lens.
Marian Anderson did inspire a singer named Coretta Scott, who entered the Boston Music Conservatory in the late 1940s. Sadly, I learned this from Coretta Scott King’s memoir, not from Anderson’s biography. While Anderson’s life sounds fascinating, Keiler did not present it in manner appealing to non academic people. At times the reading became so tedious that I had to finish this book at two-thirds done and skim the rest. Marian Anderson lead a remarkable life; she was a pioneer for civil rights in her chosen profession yet a reluctant voice for equality. I would have liked to know more about her from a historic standpoint, and will have to read a separate biography of her in order to give her due.
low 3 stars
Marian Anderson was born in April 1897 in South Philadelphia, the first of three daughters born to Joseph and Anna Anderson. Like many African Americans of the era, the Anderson struggled to find employment and cobbled together multiple jobs to make ends meet, eventually moving in with Joseph’s parents Benjamin and Isabella Anderson along with their daughter Mary. Joseph Anderson died young, and the widowed Anna became even more dependent on her in-laws as the three generations continued to live under one roof for many years. Educational opportunities were few for Marian and her sisters Alyse and Ethel. The sisters learned more in their church, especially in the choir, than they did in school. While integrated in a northern state, African American students were given fewer academic challenges than their Caucasian counterparts. Anderson would not complete high school until she was twenty four and already a concert singer. While determined to complete her education, the lack of economic or academic opportunities would plague Anderson for years.
It was apparent to members of Anderson’s church that she was gifted vocally from a young age. Through intervention from her minister, Anderson learned with a vocal coach and advanced to the top choir in her church. She began to make a name for herself on the black music circuit, specializing in spirituals other songs familiar to the black community. Anderson would give concerts in the south at traditional black colleges and churches, seeing first hand segregation that was the reality of life in the south. The author makes a point throughout that Anderson never wanted to ruffle the feathers of segregation and civil rights like her contemporaries Paul Robeson and Roland Hayes; she just wanted the same musical opportunities as white singers. When Anderson realized that she would never achieve great heights as a concert singer without knowledge of European music, she chose to study in Europe for a good part of the late 1920s and 1930s. There she studied under top teachers and learned German lieder and well as French, Italian, and Scandinavian operatic pieces, paving the way for her career in the United States.
Marian Anderson’s crowning moment occurred on April 9, 1939 when she gave an outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Although she gave between sixty and eighty concerts a season upon her return to the States, Washington, D.C. was never on her schedule as the city remained segregated. Paul Robeson petitioned to sing in the city, using his career to promote civil rights. Anderson would have desired to sing at the acoustically pleasing Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution closed the venue to people of color, with no exception. Through the intervention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and the NAACP, Anderson was permitted to sing at the Lincoln Memorial to an integrated audience. While it would be three years before she sang in the nation’s capital again, civil rights pundits believed that Anderson’s presence promoted the cause. Many children’s books have been presented about this concert, and I had hoped for a larger description of it, but this author was not as good interested in civil rights as he was in Anderson’s musical career.
Allan Keiler holds a PhD in musicology, and his description of Anderson’s career is from a technical standpoint. Although biography has always been my favorite genre as I learn about people through a historical lens, Marian Anderson’s life was presented in a manner that would be most interesting to someone with a musical background. Keiler spends paragraphs describing Anderson’s musical training and her metamorphosis from church singer to contralto adept in performing the European masters. He did note a little about the business side of performing as well as her struggle to marry her high school sweetheart Orpheus Fisher, who easily passed for white. These passages as well as the events leading to the Lincoln Memorial concert were of interest yet were few and far between as the author inundated readers with the technical side of music. As much as I enjoy music, I had been more interested in Marian Anderson from a historic lens.
Marian Anderson did inspire a singer named Coretta Scott, who entered the Boston Music Conservatory in the late 1940s. Sadly, I learned this from Coretta Scott King’s memoir, not from Anderson’s biography. While Anderson’s life sounds fascinating, Keiler did not present it in manner appealing to non academic people. At times the reading became so tedious that I had to finish this book at two-thirds done and skim the rest. Marian Anderson lead a remarkable life; she was a pioneer for civil rights in her chosen profession yet a reluctant voice for equality. I would have liked to know more about her from a historic standpoint, and will have to read a separate biography of her in order to give her due.
low 3 stars
March 28, 2021
I thought author Allan Keiler did a great job with the life of Marian Anderson. His biography of this iconic Black singer, who performed regularly from the 1920s to the 1990s, was often a page turner. I'm not a musician, but Keiler made even the sections on learning lieder and other art songs interesting to me.
Marian Anderson is best known today for something that happened in 1939, when segregation was still rampant in much of the United States. Though internationally acclaimed, Anderson was not allowed to sing in the Daughters of the American Revolution private hall, the largest in Washington, DC, and after months of complicated behind-the-scenes efforts that she was not directly involved in, she sang instead at the Lincoln Memorial.
The simple version of the event, which came from something Anderson wrote to a young admirer, was that she couldn't sing at the DAR hall so Eleanor Roosevelt had her sing at the Lincoln Memorial. That is really not right. It was the NAACP, Howard University, and the impresario Sol Hurok, among others, who were the ones who made it happen. Eleanor Roosevelt told the world in her newspaper column that she was quitting a certain organization because of its segregation policy, but she didn't arrange the Lincoln Memorial concert.
Keiler starts Anderson's story back with the birth of her parents. After they move from the South to Philadelphia, there's a lot about the family's life there and about trying to make ends meet. What really fascinated me was the way the Black community in that city recognized Anderson's talent early on and made sure, through church events and fundraisers, that she got the voice teachers she needed and the high school education she couldn't afford. It really was Black Philadelphia that set Anderson on her path.
Also interesting to me was just how focused and ambitious (though always modest) Anderson was. She knew she had a gift -- her faith told her it came from God -- and she wanted to fully develop it. She worked hard at learning every type of highbrow music and the languages she needed to sing the songs. She loved sharing her gift with audiences. Over decades of concerts around the world, she accepted most invitations.
It was later in her career that the US government began to see her promotional value and used her to demonstrate that America wasn't all about race riots. Some observers thought she wasn't enough of a firebrand, but she was wiling to help her government even after she saw the way her concerts were used as propaganda. She was even appointed to serve on a US delegation to the UN at one point.
The book is full of concert reviews both ecstatic and critical and shows step by step how she unintentionally became much more than a singer to much of the world.
Marian Anderson is best known today for something that happened in 1939, when segregation was still rampant in much of the United States. Though internationally acclaimed, Anderson was not allowed to sing in the Daughters of the American Revolution private hall, the largest in Washington, DC, and after months of complicated behind-the-scenes efforts that she was not directly involved in, she sang instead at the Lincoln Memorial.
The simple version of the event, which came from something Anderson wrote to a young admirer, was that she couldn't sing at the DAR hall so Eleanor Roosevelt had her sing at the Lincoln Memorial. That is really not right. It was the NAACP, Howard University, and the impresario Sol Hurok, among others, who were the ones who made it happen. Eleanor Roosevelt told the world in her newspaper column that she was quitting a certain organization because of its segregation policy, but she didn't arrange the Lincoln Memorial concert.
Keiler starts Anderson's story back with the birth of her parents. After they move from the South to Philadelphia, there's a lot about the family's life there and about trying to make ends meet. What really fascinated me was the way the Black community in that city recognized Anderson's talent early on and made sure, through church events and fundraisers, that she got the voice teachers she needed and the high school education she couldn't afford. It really was Black Philadelphia that set Anderson on her path.
Also interesting to me was just how focused and ambitious (though always modest) Anderson was. She knew she had a gift -- her faith told her it came from God -- and she wanted to fully develop it. She worked hard at learning every type of highbrow music and the languages she needed to sing the songs. She loved sharing her gift with audiences. Over decades of concerts around the world, she accepted most invitations.
It was later in her career that the US government began to see her promotional value and used her to demonstrate that America wasn't all about race riots. Some observers thought she wasn't enough of a firebrand, but she was wiling to help her government even after she saw the way her concerts were used as propaganda. She was even appointed to serve on a US delegation to the UN at one point.
The book is full of concert reviews both ecstatic and critical and shows step by step how she unintentionally became much more than a singer to much of the world.
March 20, 2021
It's often challenging to find historical information on/for our Black community. Records weren't always issued or retained. But in this biography, I had the uncanny feeling that I was walking in Ms. Marian's shoes. The author did a phenomenal job of bringing her experience to life for the reader. Thank you!
February 19, 2022
With her talent, grace and dignity, Marian Anderson transcended the racial barriers of her time, and emerged as one of the great singers of our age.
July 19, 2022
Bought this book for my granddaughter. Inspiring true story of an important cultural figure.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews