Music Critic Lucien H. White
One hundred years ago today …
Lucien H. White was the music writer for the New York Age, contributing a weekly column, “In the Realm of Music.”
New York Age, Feb. 7, 1920. Newspapers.com.
His February 7th piece is typical, focusing on a concert of classical music performed by African Americans, in this case, the touring duo Roy Tibbs (piano) and Lillian Evans Tibbs (voice), a husband-and-wife act. Among White’s best-known work is “Black Music Concerts in Carnegie Hall, 1912-1915.”
White had a front row seat to the new genre known as jazz, but failed to appreciate it. (See Burton William Perett’s The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America, p. 61.)