85 years after his oratorio was silenced, Black composer gets his due!

morning heights – Eighty-five years after composing an oration on freedom from slavery, and 79 years after his death, the black composer R. ,” in celebration of Juneteenth Riverside Church. Dett was a Harlem Renaissance composer and predecessor of enslaved Americans who fled to Canada via the Underground Railroad. His speech, “The Moses Order” first appeared on the radio in 1937, but the broadcast did not go as planned. “He was probably one of the first black composers to broadcast a classic master piece on radio,” says Liz Player, executive…

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