In Lieu of Flowers: Paying Homage Through Music

Art by Montreal mobile artist Mana Hemami, cover layout by Greg Williamson.

I’m happy that my new album In Lieu of Flowers is out and paying tribute to so many musical and personal influences. The new collection of songs pays homage to jazz luminaries Wayne Shorter and Maria Schneider, while also honoring the lasting influence of music teachers and personal inspirations. You can get the release from Bandcamp or your favorite digital channels.

The Quartet

On In Lieu of Flowers I play tenor and soprano saxophones, joined in a stellar quartet lineup by highly in-demand drummer Jimmy Macbride, versatile bassist Lorin Cohen on both acoustic and electric, and Chamber Music America grant-winning pianist Grant Richards. I’m psyched that together they have been able to create a cohesive modern quartet sound that propels music forward while staying in touch with the music’s roots. A special thanks to this great band!

Jimmy Macbride, Dave Anderson, Lorin Cohen, Grant Richards outside Samurai Hotel Recording Studios. Photo: Grady Bajorek.

How did an album of (mostly) tribute songs come about?

For me, people remain the most fruitful inspirations for writing songs. A person (or the sad loss of one), can create a strong feeling/impulse for a musical idea, and I will sit with a musical instrument (saxophone, piano or sometimes now guitar), jot down the original idea, and see if I can develop it into a song. This has produced original tribute songs on my prior recordings including Troubled Angel, The Aviator, Osby-An (for Greg Osby), Juror Number One/Two, Svetlana, Blue Innuendo (for Joey Defrancesco), The Phantom (for Joe Henderson), Querida and A Candle for Isaac. Person-al inspirations have been very productive!

I’ve also realized that paying tribute is sort of a family tradition. My father, Emmett, also believed in paying homage... After my mother, a dedicated geriatric nurse, passed away, he commissioned the design of a stained glass window for the facility she had worked (and died) in, depicting life’s journey through the seasons in a colorful composition.

River of Life stained glass at Minnesota hospital

My dad also honored the aunts and uncles who had raised him with an engraved stone monument in their Wisconsin farm field…

Stone memorial to my great aunts & uncle in Wisconsin

So while my dad found ways to pay tribute in physical forms, I have tried to do so via music.

Personal Tributes on this album:

More about the tribute songs on In Lieu of Flowers…

I had started writing a song for" late, great composer/saxophonist Wayne Shorter before he passed away, and finished “One for Wayne” afterward, which contains some nods to his tunes “Speak No Evil” and “Deluge.”

I wrote “Thilmany” in tribute to a family that was friends with mine growing up in Minnesota, including a peer who passed away as a young adult.

After losing my mother years ago, I created a small haven in my apartment to help process the loss, emerging from it one day to write the song “Sanctuary,” performed here as a duo on soprano sax with Grant.

I wrote “Lost City” the year I visited Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) on a student music tour, finding a beautiful city in decay from decades of totalitarian rule.

“Arms of Maria” honors active jazz composing legend Maria Schneider (a fellow graduate of the University of Minnesota). I was thinking about her graceful, ballerina-like conducting style when I wrote it.

“Stell” is dedicated to one-time National Association of Jazz Educators’ educator of the year James Stellmaker, whose reverent students secretly referred him by this nickname. “Stell” makes a musical pun out of “Stella by Starlight,” while honoring Mr. Stellmaker’s exemplary musical and family life.

A cyclist named James Gregg perished in an accident in my Brooklyn neighborhood; he is now memorialized by a white bicycle on the same corner. “Ghost Bikes” pays tribute to this type of memorial and the 33-year-old man who inspired it.

And finally, “Sandy’s Ladies” — originally written on guitar — is named for my friend and pandemic guitar teacher, Sandy Carter, a man whose life journey has taken him from West Coast guitarist, to hot rod aficionado, and now also a devoted attendant to his granddaughters.  

Thanks for checking out In Lieu of Flowers!

Jessica Williams 1948-2022

Photo: Elaine C Arc

This week the world has lost a great musical artist. I'd like to pass along my experiences with Jessica Williams to help others appreciate her music. Passing along her music is a way to dispense more of the light she seemed to want shining in the world. I'll mention my experiences with Jessica as a listener, as a potential music business associate and as a person. 

I first encountered Jessica Williams' music as a student DJ at KUMD radio, on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth. I don't remember whether it was recommended by an older DJ, or whether I found an early solo piano LP browsing the thousands of albums that graced the station library. I do remember that it made a strong impression on me, and that I played these songs on the air as often as possible, hearing stronger feedback about them than anything I recall playing on KUMD. I remember my college jazz ensemble director asking me after a radio show, who is Jessica Williams; why haven't I heard of her?  "Why haven't I heard of her" seems like the perfect reaction to Jessica’s stunning musicality. In fact, one of her favorite stories was playing for the great jazz pianist Bill Evans and having him ask, "Where the hell did you come from?"

Jessica was from Baltimore, classically trained at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and played with Miles Davis alum "Philly" Joe Jones, before moving west to the San Francisco area in 1977, and living out the balance of her life in the Pacific Northwest.

Over the years I passed along Jessica's music to musical friends who had not heard of her, like an unsolicited favor that was always well received. I became interested in re-releasing that first piano solo album of Jessica's, and had some delightful phone conversations with her. I learned that she was recording solo piano records at home on her own piano. She maintained her website, received the orders and brought CDs to the post office every day to ship them. She was very suspicious about others trying to make money off of her music, no doubt from decades of creating great music only to hand it off to businesspeople of questionable ethics.

I attended two of her solo piano concerts at the home of Seattle music supporter Richard Rodseth, to whom many of us are grateful for the chance to meet her, and hear her up close despite her declining health. She was very humble and willing to talk with other musicians about the challenges of playing improvised music on a high level, sharing remarks like "thinking is bad" and "sometimes I try too hard” along with priceless anecdotes about music legends like Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Finally in 2017 I made a push to re-release that early solo piano album, which will remain nameless for reasons you will soon see. I tracked down the label owner from that 70s recording I found so brilliant. He proceeded to find the master tapes, and suggested I approach her about publishing royalties for her original songs on the album. To my surprise, besides having bad memories about her personal circumstances at the time of the recording, she didn't feel that it was up to her artistic standard. She didn't want it re-released despite her stretched finances. I wrote to the label owner and told him we wouldn't be able put out the record.

Interestingly, she did tell me about three out of print recordings that she did want see issued/reissued:

• A recorded 1992 concert in Victoria, British Columbia with a 2 minute standing ovation from 2,000 people. This is apparently different from the 1996 "Victoria Concert" album on Jazz Focus records.

• Her episode as featured guest on the legendary Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz show which can be heard here.

• Organomic Music - with Eddie Henderson, et al. in San Francisco.  She said they "really got into some spaces" for that 1981 recording. Here is one of the songs from this record.

Jessica Williams is my favorite solo jazz piano player. I’ll share just one of many favorite performances here for people to enjoy, a rendition of the jazz standard “They Say It’s Wonderful”:

Chorus 1 (from 0:00): plays the melody 

Chorus 2 (from 1:21): beautiful arrangement on the melody

Chorus 3 (from 2:30): in full flight as an improviser with melody, depth and wit

Chorus 4 (from 3:34):  variations on the melody with flights into octaves, winding back to earth with a gorgeous coda

Here is a fundraiser organized by a trusted friend of hers, to help her husband with expenses: https://gofund.me/33edbc81

West Town: The Chicago District that Welcomed My Danish Family Immigrants

Wall of the Ogden International School of Chicago, West Campus on West Erie Street. Photos @2021 Dave Anderson unless noted.

My first relative in the United States, Martin Robertson, escaped the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 by bringing his wife, infant son, and what few belongings they could carry across the North Branch of the Chicago River, probably treading a bridge at Erie Street. At this time, his work and their home were in the North District, but after it burned, the family settled in unharmed West Town. West Town became a foothold in America for the Robertsons and many other immigrant families like them, and its welcoming of immigrants can still be seen on a walk through the neighborhood today.

Present-day Google Map showing several landmarks in Martin Robertson’s neighborhood.

Following the fire, Martin Robertson (who had previously gone by his Danish name Mads Rasmussen) began showing up on Chicago city directories on Cleaver Street. The Robertson family home from 1875-78 was at 116 Cleaver, now site of the Pulaski Park Public Pool. Starting in 1879 they lived a couple blocks north at 201 Cleaver, at the location of today’s Rowe Elementary School (all listed addresses were prior to Chicago’s 1909 street renumbering project).

Advertisement circa 1878 of the North Chicago Rolling Mill Company, which later became part of the Illinois Steel Company and US Steel.

The 1880 census lists Martin Robertson at 201 Cleaver with the occupation “works at rolling mill,” like several of his neighbors. They likely worked at a North Chicago Rolling Mill steelmaking plant (not shown on the map), then located a half mile to the northeast at Wabanasia Avenue on the North Branch of the Chicago River — upstream and on the opposite shore from where he had escaped the 1871 Chicago fire. Three years after releasing my Melting Pot album and writing that the American Melting Pot metaphor came from it’s burgeoning steel industry, it is gratifying to learn that my first relative in America once worked as a steelworker.

With very little space between houses, surviving homes from this era also feature steps up to sidewalk/street level.

In the neighborhood

Censuses from the period show a mix of German, Scandinavian and increasingly Polish immigrants. Homes were modest, built close together and low relative to the streets and sidewalks, which were raised starting in 1855,

Google Images: Cleaver Street houses opposite Rowe Elementary School

The immigrant past of the neighborhood is honored by prominent buildings. Pulaski Park was named for Casimir Pulaski, Polish nobleman and a hero of the American Revolutionary War, one of only eight people ever awarded honorary American citizenship.

Pulaski Park was designed by Danish American landscape artist Jens Jensen after most of my Danish family members had left the neighborhood.

Just across the street from Pulaski Park stands Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church, a historic Polish church of the Archdiocese of Chicago. While the Scandinavian Lutheran Robertson family would not likely have attended this church, they would have seen its construction from 1877-81, heard its church bells, and known it as a neighborhood fixture. As the region’s Polish immigrants increased, the nearby area around Milwaukee Avenue & Division Street became known as “Polish Downtown.”

Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church, named after a Polish saint.

Church interior.

Matt Matson arrives

In 1887 Martin Robertson bought a ticket to America for his 25-years-younger half-brother Matt Matson, my Danish great-grandfather.

Matt Matson came to America around the peak of Danish immigration in 1887. His older brother came earlier around 1867.

Matt’s first known appearance on a Chicago directly listing was as a tailor in 1889, a mile to the south of his sibling at 248 West Erie Street. Also listed at this address in 1889-1990 were other craftspeople with immigrant-sounding names including a molder, a bricklayer, a cabinet maker and for many years another Scandinavian tailor named Hans Holter.

248 West Erie Street (1221 today) was home to several immigrant craftspeople.

This Noble Square neighborhood of West Town has a now-long history of welcome immigrants. Across from Matt Matson’s 1889 address today sits the high school campus of Ogden International School (photo at top of this post), which strives to celebrate cultural differences, and has painted the phrase “We all live here” in multiple languages on its front steps.

Google Map of today’s West Erie Street in West Town/Noble Square, red mark showing location of Matt Matson listing.

Two blocks over from Matt was Erie Neighborhood House, for 150 years has helped immigrants get established in Chicago. Erie House began outreach to immigrants as the Noble Street Mission at Holland Presbyterian Church on the southeast corner of Erie & Noble. In 1882 Holland Presbyterian turned Noble Street Mission over to Third Presbyterian Church, which in 1886 built a facility for the Mission just down Erie Street, that became known as Erie House. Erie has provided children’s services, clothing and settlement housing for the many waves of Chicago immigrants that have gotten established in West Town before moving on to other neighborhoods: first Western European Immigrants, then Eastern & Southern Europeans, and in recent decades Latino immigrants. As a recent book about Erie House put it:

“Few other agencies provide observers a view of the ethnic ‘parade’ of so any successive waves of different immigrant groups through the same neighborhood over such a long period of time.” (Hellwig, p. 19)

Along the way, Erie House was influenced by Chicago’s Hull House co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, leaders of the Settlement Movement.

Today Erie Neighborhood House offers services in English and Spanish, in response to demand due to Latin American immigration.

While the presence of the Erie & Hull Houses show that many Chicagoans welcomed immigrants, there was still strong prejudice toward some ethnic groups — as there has been throughout US history. The lighting of the Chicago fire that sprang Martin Robertson from the North Division to the West Side was unjustly blamed on an Irish immigrant woman named Catherine O'Leary even though a public investigation exonerated her. A smaller 1874 fire was initially blamed on a Jewish immigrant. And Erie House itself was involved with a highly publicized 1945 incident supporting a black man named John Strong, who faced violence and threats when he moved into the all-white neighborhood (Hellwig, p. 106-108). Though not immigrants, many African-Americans came to Chicago in the 20th century via the Great Migration but were largely red-lined into non-white neighborhoods.

An Irish pub stands today at the corner of Erie & Noble, in the original location of Holland Presbyterian/Noble Street Mission.

Family Transition

Like immigrant groups in general, the Danish branch of my family became established in West Town before moving on.

In 1890 Matt Matson met and married Swedish immigrant Betty Erickson, and his directory listing moved to his older brother’s 201 Cleaver Street address through 1892. During this time Matt & Betty would have known Martin’s wife (Maren) Katherine Robertson and children well. Matt & Betty started a family, and he built a house for them to the north in West Ravenswood.

Martin Robertson died in 1896 and his widow and children would move north to Chicago’s 15th Ward. The two Robertson daughters who survived childhood, Sophie (Niemeyer) and Anna (Plinkse), would both marry sons of German immigrants, and start families of their own in the Chicago area. Anna lived for years in neighborhoods surrounding Pulaski Park, where "Cousin Ann," as she was known to Matt Matson's daughters, and her husband Leo, would look after them when they came to Chicago seeking work.

Tragically, Matt would lose Betty, my great-grandmother and the mother of his first four children, just 2 ½ weeks after the death of the brother who bought his ticket to America. Matt purchased a multi-grave plot in Rosehill cemetery where four years later the family would bury Martin's 26-year-old son Carl (Charlie) Martin next to Betty.

Matt remarried Olga Lundquist, who became a second mother to Betty’s children. They moved to Wisconsin to start a family farm near Ogema, and continued their own immigrant story.

References:

Maureen Hellwig, A Neighbor Among Neighbors: Erie Neighborhood House, 150 Years as a Home with No Borders, MIPJ, 2020.

Special thanks to family members Dorothy Wanish, Emolyn Wentdorf, Jean, Karen & Evan Anderson for their research help.

Xenophobia in the Melting Pot (A Photo Essay)

all photos © Dave Anderson 2018

I had the chance to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Islands last week, and wanted to share some pictures and impressions…

Huddled masses yearning for a good picture of Manhattan, as the boat leaves

The statue was called “Liberty Enlightening the World (La Liberté éclairant le monde)” by its French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. But to immigrants who sailed into New York harbor, the message they got from the statue was “Welcome.”

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Emma Lazarus’s famous poem with “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” was written before the Liberty’s completion in 1883, and added as a feature inside the statue in 1903. The poem captured the public’s imagination.

The New Colossus said, don’t send me your best, send me your least impressive people, and we will welcome them.

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Next our boat landed at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. Covering America’s immigration history, it also tells our anti-immigrant story…

Here are xenophobic writings and visuals, mainly from the 1920s, in the Museum.

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We’ve reached a new time of pushback on immigration, greater than at any time since the 1920s. We should ask: what do people have to gain by making us afraid of outsiders? Are the fears grounded in reason? Is there also a cost to turning people away?

The immigrants of today are like those of the past in many ways: they are disparaged, they are exploited as a political issue, yet in the end they will succeed as a group and be accepted.

As my boat left Ellis Island, a rainbow cracked through. At a time when the light seems to be straining against darkness — around us and inside of us — it was nice to feel a ray of hope.

Watch the Melting Pot video.

NYC is a Melting Pot of Culture, Food and Music

I’ve heard it said many times: the great thing about living in New York is that the whole world is right here. It seems like one can find so much of the world’s offerings here – and in interesting combinations and mashups. That’s true, whether one is talking about culture, food or music.

 First there are the cultural experiences. I had the chance to see a South Korean movie with a buddy recently in Times Square only to find that we seemed to be the only Caucasians there. Rather than seeing a film loaded with our own cultural values – and clichés – it was fun to see one with Korean themes such as honor and reincarnation playing a strong role. Yes, there are times when the majority gets to be the minority in New York.

Then there’s the food – I remember when I first moved to NYC, I got a kick out of seeing a Chinese/Cuban restaurant on the Upper West Side called La Caridad 78. (How did they come to mix Chinese & Cuban cooking?)  The restaurant is still there, and the city is similarly full of food fusions. There’s also authentic real-thing cooking from a countless number of countries. You can walk certain blocks of Jackson Heights, Queens, and feel like you’re in India with all the authentic restaurant and groceries.  I recall taking a Siberian-born friend to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn and seeing her shed (happy) tears, because the exact same foods from her childhood were there, triggering vivid memories of home.

Fusion food vendor at Smorgasburg in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park

Finally, there’s music – lots of great music from many places. One experience which helped to inspire my new album Melting Pot was participating in jam sessions organized by the Brooklyn Raga Massive (BRM). BRM is a music collective presenting Indian classical and cross-cultural Raga inspired music blended with other traditions. To me, the most interesting thing about their jam sessions, besides the beautiful and groovy Indian sounds, is the lack of almost any imposed structure. As an American jazz musician, I’m used to navigating lots of rules around a public “jam” – who’s leading it, when you can get up to play, who chooses the song.  BRM’s jams have none of that – you just go up when the time feels right; there’s no formal leader and no “tune.” American jazz is traditionally known as “free music,” yet BRM’s version seems to have even more freedom for performers. It’s beautiful to experience the vibe as a performer — or audience member. Highly recommend!

The Songs of Melting Pot

A couple years ago, I looked out at our culture and began to see a lot of fear, especially around the issue of immigration and cultural change. So I decided to make an album to pay tribute to the great North American melting pot. I feel that people coming here from abroad add so much our lives and culture.

The new album, like my previous recordings, is built around a set of original compositions, about which I’d like to write. Melting Pot begins with a three-part “Immigrant Suite.”  I wanted to pay tribute to some specific to immigrants I’ve known who have inspired me to write songs:

• The initial sketch for ”Juror Number One” was written a day of New York City jury duty.  The first juror — our foreman — was a very charismatic and proud Cuban immigrant, and during break he told us a story. He had come to the US from Cuba as a young man in the early 1960s, taking a job as night janitor in a Manhattan office building. One night in 1962, while cleaning the office alone, listening to the radio, he heard the Cuban Missile Crisis erupt on the radio, realizing that two superpowers were on the verge of destroying the world (and him) over a dispute back in his home country. After I trip of my own to Havana in 2016, I finished this tune, trying to represent the juror’s vibrant personal style, and that absurd and scary moment, in musical form.

• The second movement of the Immigrant Suite, is titled “Querida,” for the Portuguese feminine word meaning “sweetheart,” after a Brazilian immigrant friend I met in New York who liked to call the dear people in her life “Querida” (“Querido” if male). Musically, the song is based on the chord progression of Jobim’s standard bossa “How Insensitive” but in 6/4 time. The drum solo is framed to suggest conflict before a final resolution. 

• The suite’s closing movement, “A Candle for Isaac,” is dedicated to my girlfriend Ilana’s father Isaac Judah, who was an East Indian Jewish immigrant to Canada (and for a time, Israel).  Isaac loved singing the traditional song Ma’oz Tzur on the first night of Hannukah. This song starts with this theme quoted sentimentally on the Indian sitar, before being joined by the trumpet and alto sax. I wanted to pay tribute to a daughter’s sadness of missing her father, and a father’s joy.

A “mantra” in Eastern usage refers to a sacred, meditative utterance. In the West, it can mean a motto, slogan or catch phrase. In the same way that mantras are repeated responses to the changing situations in our lives, the song “Mantra” is an attempt to play a single melodic phrase, changing it as little as possible while moving through a changing series of chords.  It was a fun challenge to play over, and to explore the Latin American, Eastern and jazz fusion implications of the song.

The EP-length album closes with ”Trance-like,” a melody which suggested the East Indian context in which we performed the tune. I’ve long admired East Indian culture for its attention to trance. The sounds of Indian music, the practices of Indian spirituality, and spices of well-cooked Indian food all seem capable of transporting us into trance-like states of mind and body, which can help us escape our current troubles for a higher perspective.

The songs of the Melting Pot album went live everywhere this month for the world to hear!  I’m excited to share this music on behalf of myself and the talented Melting Pot ensemble.  Thanks for checking it out!

 In my next post, I’ll write about the cultural melting pot that is New York City. 

The People of Melting Pot

Melting Pot (L to R): Ehren Hanson, Hans Glawischnig, Bryan Davis, Dave Anderson, Neel Murgai, Dave Restivo, Roberto Quintero, Memo Acevedo  

Just like the immigration melting pot is ultimately the story of the people in it, so it is with the Melting Pot music project and band. I’m excited to bring together such great musical messengers fluent in multiple musical dialects of the world.

Drummer Memo Acevedo was born in Colombia, lived and played in Spain, started his family in Canada, and immigrated to the US. He has been a big part (with a big heart!) of the NYC music scene since the 1990s. Memo was mentored by percussion legend Tito Puente, and is a musical encyclopedia of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms. Memo holds residency at the Zinc bar the first Friday of every month with his Manhattan Bridges Orchestra (in which I play saxophone).

Percussionist Roberto Quintero was born in Caracas, Venezuela, growing up in one of the most its renowned musical families as the son of Ricardo Quintero and Eglee Correa. After success in his home country, Roberto moved to New York to fulfill his musical dreams, and he now performs in high-profile music acts in all genres, from symphonic to Jazz, Latin Jazz and Latin House.

Bassist Hans Glawischnig was born in Graz to a musical Austrian father, and an American mother.  He relocated to the US to study at Berklee School of Music before becoming an in-demand bassist all over the world. Our bassist for the Melting Pot September 6 CD release performance, Gabriel Vivas, was born in El Paso Texas, raised in Venezuela, studied at the University of Miami, and performs with some of the top names in the Latin Jazz world.

Born in New York, Dave Restivo is one of Canada's most respected and influential jazz artists. He is a 3-time winner of the National Jazz Awards' Pianist of the Year Award, and is listed in the current edition of Canadian Who's Who. Dave first played with Memo in Toronto as a student in the 1990s.

Neel Murgai is a sitarist, overtone singer and co-founder of the Brooklyn Raga Massive, a raga-inspired musician's collective that I’ve enjoyed jamming with on multiple occasions. Neel's music ranges from Indian classical to original compositions and contemporary cross-cultural collaborations with influences spanning the globe.

Ehren Hanson began learning tabla at age 15 under Misha Masud in New York City. In 2000, he became a disciple of Pandit Anindo Chatterjee and performs frequently with Brooklyn Raga Massive and other groups. Ehren’s wife is Colombian, and he puts the Spanish he has learned communicating with Melting Pot’s Latin percussion team! Melting Pot also features a guest tabla performance by Deep Singh, who was born in London, England, and currently lives in the US, exploring ways to combine Indian percussion with modern Western grooves.

Trumpet and flügelhorn player Bryan Davis hails from the UK, is now based in New York and enjoys an international reputation as a lead trumpet player while performing regularly with groups including Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. Bryan has adopted the American sport closest to my heart, baseball, becoming an ardent fan of the New York Yankees.

Israeli flutist Itai Kriss, now based in New York, contributes to a couple of songs on the Melting Pot CD as a special guest. Itai’s terrific flute playing can also be heard on his new album Telavana, exploring connections between Middle Eastern and Caribbean music.

These are the people of Melting Pot, and I couldn’t be more excited about their contributions to our new album! Melting Pot gives us the chance to celebrate the ideas and energy that people bring from everywhere, to make this a better place.

In my next post, I’ll talk more about the songs of Melting Pot.

Where Did "The Melting Pot" Come From?

People are familiar with the American idea of the immigration “melting pot,” but few would guess where it came from. We got the term “melting pot” from the arts.

At a time of massive American immigration, a 1908 play called The Melting Pot premiered in Washington, DC from British writer Israel Zangwill. The play's protagonist David Quixano sought to write a great symphony called The Crucible dedicated to immigration in America. David declares that “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming!” and quarrels with an antagonist, wealthy Quincy Davenport Jr., who as the only American-born character in the play wants to “stop all alien immigration.” David says “the real American has not yet arrived.  He is only in the Crucible, I tell you.” 

Israel Zangwill.  Source: Wikipedia

Play's program cover shows immigrants streaming past Statue of Liberty into crucible.  Source: Wikipedia

A Russian Jewish immigrant to New York who had escaped pogroms in his home country, main character David finishes his symphony, has it performed to great acclaim, and proposes to marry his love Vera, a Russian Christian immigrant. David proclaims the “glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!”[1]

As the curtain came down on its opening night, US President Teddy Roosevelt is said to have shouted from his box, “That’s a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that’s a great play.”  Roosevelt later wrote a letter to Zangwill saying that The Melting Pot would always be “among the very strong and real influences upon my thought and my life.”

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The Melting Pot took its central metaphor – depicted on its program cover – from the making of steel. Raw iron gets liquefied in a smelting pot or crucible to purify, mix, and pour it into a useful form. This metaphor took hold in the heart of the Industrial Revolution, when making steel was necessarily seen as making progress. The play captured enough of the public imagination that the “melting pot” metaphor is still a part of American culture. 

I learned about the play The Melting Pot while finishing my album, also called Melting Pot, which releases September 14, 2018.

[1] Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot, The American Jewish Book Company, New York, 1921 (available as a free Amazon Kindle book).