Friday, May 7, 1976
University Daily Kansan
3
Joplin's Pulitzer late but pleasing
By ROBERT GILES
Guest Writer
Guest Writer
In an act of joyous inspiration this week, women and women who award the Paltzer Prize and
Posthumously, of course, because Joplin died 95 years ago, his spirit broken by the failure of the music for which he is now celebrated.
That music is an opera which Joplin titled
review
"Treemonisha." He devoted the last years of his life to it and, in a desperate effort to attract backers, presented an informal fund-raising dinner for the local hall in Harlem for an invited audience.
This run-through was as close as Joplin ever got to hearing "Treemonish" performed. The audience's bored indifference and lack of interest in theickets sent Joplin into a terminal decline.
The phenomenal rebirth of Joplin's rattle timepieces, after more than a half-century of virtual silence, led to a fresh appraisal of the opera. After single appearances in Atlanta and Houston, she had a brief period. It was a show, wrote critic Alan Rich, "whose sheer beauty and exuberance stuns the senses and leaves the eyes moist."
The story is set in Arkansas after the Civil War. Treemonisha is the only educated person in the black colony. The rest of her people are ruled by three continers.
"Treemonish" is both fable, based on an African legend and fantasy, in which evil is saved by a wise wizard.
One day the conjurers kidnap Treemonisha because they consider her
Program returns after complaint
"Gospel Expressions," a JKHJ-FM radio program, will be aired Sunday after a request for equal time was granted last Sunday.
Rita Charlton, JKH school manager,
said Wednesday that the University of Kansas student radio station had been introduced a religious program at 8:30 p.m. on Sundays.
Charlton said the station had recently received a request for an equal opportunity to reply to the program from Jas Wagner, Lawrence junior.
The Federal Communications Commission's "Fairness Doctrine" requires radio stations to provide an opportunity for users to air their stories as a public service by the station.
Charlton said she gave Wagner equal time because he did have an opinion different from "that expressed on "Gospel Expressions."
education a threat to their power. Just as they are about to dump her on a wasps' nest, her friend Remus, disguised as the devil, rescues her.
Tim Calcarra, Kansas City, Kan, senior and producer of "Gospel Expressions," said
The people want to punish the conjurers, but Treemonisha asks that they be forgiven. The people, impressed by Treemonisha's wisdom, ask her to become their leader.
Running through that simple story is a social message, astonishing for the period in which it was written and still valid as a doctrine of black liberation: that education is the road to salvation. Joplin also is saying that the teacher who is her 18-year-old heroine, because she has an education, to become the leader of her people.
We're looking for certain majors to become Lieutenants.
that there was no preaching on the program.
"Basically, the program is made up of Christian music with the good news of
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Although there are three rags in "Tremonisha," it isn't a rattle opera. Joplin wrote it as serious grand opera. The vocal lines have a naive beauty and the harmony an enchanting fluency; but even in the absence of syncopated rhythms, this music retains the intoxicating quality of Joplin's piano rags.
They are performed in concert halls by leading artists and symphony orchestra. Their significance to American music and culture is that American culture are soberly evaluated.
But Wagner said he thought the program expressed a thought that many people had, that it was important for people to know.
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"You don't need a personal relationship with the Creator, because you are the Creator," he said. "I don't think you need Christ to have true love and brotherhood."
Ragophiles have watched in amazement as Joplin's piano rags have been embraced enthusiastically—and sometimes by people of widely divergent backgrounds.
Wagner said that on his program he played a lot of Beatles music and talked about the music.
Charlton said she didn't know if Wagner would ask for equal time.
The success of "Treemonisha" on Broadway last fall drew additional attention to Joplin as the creator of a native music form. I suspect the Pulitzer jurors were not the only thing that, indeed, it was time to accord special honor and respect to an American genius.
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