Discourses of Race, Nation, and Style in the Works of Ulysses Kay, 1941–1966

Abstract

This study explores the life and works of Ulysses Kay (1917–1995), explicating the identity markers of race, nation, and style that intersected his music during the first half of his career, from 1941 to 1966. The project expands knowledge of Kay’s early career while providing a revisionist understanding of his engagement with Black American culture, civil rights ideology, Americanist musical conventions, and mid-twentieth-century musical modernism. In my analyses of Kay’s compositions, influences, and activities, I focus on several works that demonstrate the complexity of his positions within these discourses of midcentury American classical music and American culture at large, turning to the score as a site of identity negotiation. The primary works analyzed include his student ballet, Danse Calinda (1941, rev. 1947); the cantata, Song of Jeremiah (1945, rev. 1947); a piece for concert band, Forever Free: A Lincoln Chronicle (1962); and the symphonic essay, Markings (1966). Most of these compositions have received no scholarly attention to this point. In addition to score analysis, I rely extensively on archival resources such as correspondence, composition notes, sketches, newspaper clippings, and related ephemera to anchor Kay and his music to the historical and cultural environments in which the works were created, performed, and received. Collectively, my analyses demonstrate Kay’s keen navigation of the rigidly constructed identity markers of mid-twentieth-century America, documenting further his individualism as a Black American composer.