White composers frequently earned praise for their music’s engagement with these idioms, which often included direct quotation. Dawson responded in The Pittsburgh Courier, a major Black newspaper, to defend his stylistic choices. “Dvorak used Negro idioms,” he said. “That is my language. It is the language of my ancestors, and my misfortune is that I was not born when that great writer came to America in search of material.”Over the decades, the “New World” steadily grew in popularity but never shed the aura of controversy surrounding its connections to Black music.

Source: International New York Times March 17, 2021 09:00 UTC