R. Nathaniel Dett is finally beginning to get the recognition he has deserved for all these years.
His works have recently been performed locally by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale. This past weekend, the Hampton University Concert Choir presented a celebration of his life and work, "Deeper in Dett," at Stella Niagara.
Dett was born in Ontario. He studied composition and piano at Oberlin, and taught at the Hampton Institute in Virginia and at Bennett College in North Carolina. The Hampton Institute Choir -- under Dett, its first black director -- performed in churches and concert halls all over America, and toured Europe in 1930.
He published collections of spiritual arrangements, such as "Religious Folksongs of the Negro" (1927) and "The Dett Collection of Negro Spirituals" (1937). He also wrote anthems: "Listen to the Lambs" and "I'll Never Turn Back No More."
Dett's father decided to move the family to Niagara Falls, N.Y., when Dett was just 10 years old.
Swept up in the rush to escape the awful inhumanity of slavery and its aftermath in the United States, more than 40,000 black men, women and children crossed the border here in Niagara Falls to seek the relative freedom of Canada. The Dett family was one of many who made the courageous journey back to America to stake their claim and make their fortune.
Carrying all they had on their backs, tired from the long journey and afraid they might be sent back to work on the southern plantations, many made homes for themselves and their families in small enclaves carved out for them by the local whites who saw their plight and rose to defend and protect them as fellow human beings.
The mass exodus of black people from the south to the north did not stop with the end of the Civil War. The Jim Crow laws of the South and the bitter racism that crept throughout the North for decades after the war kept a steady stream of African descendants desperate to find a place to settle down, marching northward.
In less than 20 years immediately after World War II, more than 500,000 black people fled the South, finding work in the factories of the industrial northeast, including the Niagara Frontier.
Though many kept heading north, all the way up to and beyond Nova Scotia, the Dett family had settled just miles from the bridge that linked the two countries.
The earliest records of their settlements around Niagara Falls, Ont., known then as Drummondsville, reveal little about them, just enough tantalizing bits of information to raise a curious brow and inspire a small but dedicated group of historians to find, preserve and celebrate their rich heritage.
The R. Nathaniel Dett Memorial Chapel in Niagara Falls, Ont., one of the oldest British Methodist Episcopal churches in Ontario, has been designated a national site. The building, erected in 1836 by former slaves, was renamed in his honor in 1983. The site is also the home of the Norval Johnson Heritage Library, named after a local woman responsible for keeping the church alive.
The chapel and the library are now under the direction of the tireless Wilma Morrison, who is currently overseeing a major restoration of the building.
The Detts were enterprising, setting up a tourist house near the Falls known as the Keystone Hotel, capitalizing on the rising tide of traveling families who wanted to vacation here. The family remained very active in the social and political structure of the rapidly growing black section of Niagara Falls, N.Y., along Erie Avenue, for several years after their famous son left the area.
His impact on the music world was major at the time. So-called "Negro spirituals" were a much-appreciated genre during his lifetime. It served as the only platform that many talented black composers, as well as performers, had available to them.
But over time, as integration began to blur the lines that at one time kept the races separated, even down to the kinds of music we listened to, the "Negro spirituals" began to fade away.
Seen by many as a form of music that expressed the anguish and suffering of the oppressed black slaves and their descendants, many black people turned away from it, but its impression on all music can still be felt in every kind of music we enjoy today.
Indeed, gospel music, as it is more widely known today, accounts for a huge portion of recorded music sales around the world.
Many of today's most recognized white and black performers owe a "Dett" of gratitude to men and women like Nathaniel Dett, who helped bring their music into the mainstream so that we might all be able to appreciate and enjoy it for many generations to come.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 14 2003 |