Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Well, hello, welcome to CEP Time,
Speaker 1: the only show that's for the culture. Today, we'll be
Speaker 1: discussing black classical music. Now. I know you might be
Speaker 1: thinking that classical music it's just for old white men
Speaker 1: whose hair looks like they spend a day inside of
Speaker 1: a tornado. But black musicians have an often overlooked history
Speaker 1: of contributions in the classical music space. Take our first musician,
Speaker 1: George Bridge Tower born in Britain in seventeen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: George was a young musical prodigy, driven into show business
Speaker 1: by his overbearing father, the eighteenth century version of Joe Jackson, Well,
Speaker 1: you better get back in there and learn that a land.
Speaker 1: Before George was ten years old, he was performing for
Speaker 1: kings and princess all over Europe. One concert was even
Speaker 1: attended by Thomas Jefferson. It's rumored that Thomas Jefferson was
Speaker 1: so impressed by the talents of this mixed race baby
Speaker 1: that he was heard saying, maybe I should make one
Speaker 1: of these for myself. Rich Tower was so famous that
Speaker 1: Beethoven himself even wrote him a sonata, which they performed
Speaker 1: together in eighteen o three. On the sheet music. Beethoven
Speaker 1: wrote a dedication to George which read, and I quote
Speaker 1: Mulatto Sonata composer, the Mulatto Bridge Tower, great lunatic and
Speaker 1: Mulatto composer. Keep in mind Beethoven was famous for knowing
Speaker 1: how things sound. Another black classical musician the Sisterretta Jones,
Speaker 1: a world amous opera singer from Providence, Rhode Island. Jones
Speaker 1: toured the world and even performed for then President Benjamin Harrison, who,
Speaker 1: like many presidents from the eighteen hundreds, also worked part
Speaker 1: time as a mall center. Despite being unable to perform
Speaker 1: and fully staged operas because of segregation, Jones was still
Speaker 1: too talented to ignore. She became the very first African
Speaker 1: American woman to headline a show at Carnegie Hall, which
Speaker 1: actually reminds me of the old joke, how do you
Speaker 1: get to Carnegie Hall? You take the cute training to
Speaker 1: fifty seven Street. It's funny because it's true. Our next musician,
Speaker 1: Roland Hayes, the first African American artist to make a
Speaker 1: commercial recording and, judging from these photos, the first Mr
Speaker 1: Steel Your Girl. Although Hayes always presented raw musical talent,
Speaker 1: his career only begin because of a workplace accident. His
Speaker 1: clothes got caught in an assembly line built and it
Speaker 1: dragged him through a machine three times, nearly killing him.
Speaker 1: And while he recovered at home in a fool by
Speaker 1: the cast. It was then that Roland started taking singing seriously, Hay.
Speaker 1: His career took off, and at the peak of the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, he was the world's highest paid singer, reportedly
Speaker 1: making around one hundred thousand dollars a year. That's not
Speaker 1: very rich these days, but back then that made Roland
Speaker 1: basically Kanye and Drake. Roland was also the first African
Speaker 1: American concert artist to record his own record. He hired orchestras,
Speaker 1: scored the music, and hired out Columbia Studios, and promoted
Speaker 1: himself as the Great Negro tenor. He would even go
Speaker 1: through the phone book and if he found a name
Speaker 1: he liked, he'd called that name and try to sell
Speaker 1: them tickets, Which you mean if he didn't call you,
Speaker 1: your name was boring? What no Adam Jones is at
Speaker 1: those concerts at the ticket booth, that'd be people saying
Speaker 1: two tickets for Mofisto Bolonese please. So the next time
Speaker 1: you think of classical music. Don't just think of Bach
Speaker 1: and Chopin, think of the ice stout players like Hayes.
Speaker 1: Well that's all the time we have for today. This
Speaker 1: has been CP time and I'm Roy Wood Jr. And
Speaker 1: remember well for the culture. See if I can do
Speaker 1: a little bit of what old Roland did here, pull
Speaker 1: a name after tone book. Hello is this Charise Dumont? Yes?
Speaker 1: Can you lone me two hundred dollars? Watch The Daily
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Speaker 1: anytime I'm on Paramount Plus. Yeah, this has been a
Speaker 1: Comedy Central podcast.