Negro Dance, Op. 21, No. 1

Composer: HOLT, Nora
  • This piece was originally part Holt’s Negro Dances, Op. 21, a suite of four dances for piano.1
  • Unlike most of Holt’s music, which has sadly been lost, this piece survives because it was published in Holt’s magazine Music and Poetry, which ran for several issues during 1921.2  
    • This work appeared in the magazine’s January 1921 issue, where it was described as “from the Southern Suite for Piano.”3
    • Holt’s magazine also described the piece as a “brisk, lively number, which should be played with verve and spontaneity.”4
  • Read about this dance’s genre, Juba (an African-American vernacular dance). Florence Price also wrote many Juba dances. 

Sources

  1. Nora Holt, Negro Dance Op. 25, No. 1, ed. Helen Walker-Hill (NM: Harbach Music Publishing, 2020), 5.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Cheryl A. Wall, “8. Nora Holt: New Negro Composer and Jazz Age Goddess,” in Deborah Willis et al., Women and Migration: Responses in Art and History (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019), 91-104, accessed March 2, 2022, http://books.openedition.org/obp/7966. 
  4. Ibid.

Cut IDs

24519