Africa

• Still completed this three-movement orchestral suite or symphonic poem in Los Angeles in 1930.¹
• This work premiered on April 6,² 1930, in a performance in New York by the Barrère Ensemble. Still dedicated the work to the flutist Georges Barrère.³ Still inscribed the work, “as an expression of gratitude for his [Barrère’s] kindness and encouragement.”⁴

“An American Negro has formed a concept of the land of his ancestors, based largely on its folklore, and influenced by his contact with American civilizaton. He beholds in his mind’s eye not the Africa of reality, but an Africa mirrored in fancy, and radiantly ideal.”

From Still’s program note for Africa⁵

Movements 

1. Lento-Moderato: Land of Peace 
2. Lento: Land of Romance 
3. Moderato con moto: Land of Superstition⁶

1. Judith Anne Still, Michael J. Dabrishus, and Carolyn L. Quin, William Grant Still: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Press: Westport, CT, 1996), 45.
2. Ibid., 46.
3. Catherine Parsons Smith, William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 317, http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1h4nb0g0/. 
4. Still, Dabrishus, and Quin, William Grant Still: A Bio-Bibliography, 45.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.