Melba Liston: “Renaissance Woman”

The new Negro is a sober, sensible creature, conscious of his environment, knowing that not all is right, but trying hard to become adjusted to this civilization in which he finds himself by no will or choice of his own. He is not the shallow, vain, showy creature which he is sometimes advertised to be. He still hopes that the unreasonable opposition to his forward and upward progress will relent. But, at any rate, he is resolved to fight, and live or die, on the side of God and the Eternal Verities.

—William Pickens “The New Negro” 1916¹ (Gates. and Jarrett 2007, 84)

All your life you have heard of the debt you owe ‘Your People’ because you have managed to have the things they have not largely had.

—Marita O. Bonner “On Being Young— A Woman—and Colored” 1925 (Wall 1995, 9)

Melba Doretta Liston, the brilliant self-taught trombonist, composer/ arranger, and educator who challenged the gender status quo in jazz must be counted among those Black women whose tremendous accomplishments within the American musical landscape lay dormant for far too many years. A cultural nationalist, Liston utilized her own internal challenges as well as the pain and suffering of her people as muse, meaning, and manuscript for her artistic endeavors. This essay posits that we might better understand Liston’s achievements, importance, influence, as well as her artistic and political motivations by viewing her and her work through the lens of the Harlem Renaissance. The movement’s terms and cultural politics provide insight into Liston’s personal experiences and professional realities. I hope to reveal Melba Liston as a “renaissance woman” as defined by an expanded reading of the intellectual zeitgeist of the “New Negro” and glean historiographical insight about Liston (and by extension other jazz women) through the experiences of better-, but still under-documented Renaissance women writers.

One may ask why it is important to understand Liston as a “renaissance woman.” The answer is simple: in order to correct the historical chronicle, it is not enough to cut and paste missing biographical details or to quietly insert the comprehensive accomplishments and accolades of hidden or forgotten voices. Just as Liston influenced and supported many of the voices that have been chronicled as significant contributors to jazz and black music, her dynamic contributions should be equally visible and included within the historical narrative of the music that she loved, nurtured, and nourished. The term “renaissance woman” references comprehensive influence across a multitude of expressions or fields and reflects a life-long legacy of impact. Liston exemplifies the term, and as a practitioner, teacher, and leading voice of her generation, deserves placement among the ranks of those who have reached the upper echelons of black cultural expression. Renowned author, educator, actress, and activist Dr. Maya Angelou proudly referred to herself as a “global renaissance woman” (http://mayaangelou.com), and a brief exploration of the blogosphere suggests Patrice Rushen, Terri Lyne Carrington, Esperanza Spaulding, and other phenomenally talented women within the arts as “renaissance women.” The latter three women are not only expanding the sound, presentation, and awareness of jazz and black music on a global stage but are among a greater number of brilliant, innovative, and expansively influential black women who, like Melba Liston before them, are augmenting the boundaries of black cultural expression.

The Negro Renaissance has been most notably documented through the experiences of the men who codified, portrayed, composed, scripted, and choreographed during and beyond the period. Alain Locke, Aaron Douglas, Duke Ellington, Charles S. Johnson, and Charles Williams are among the brilliant men who have been heralded as the creative architects and archetypes of the period and its determined, self-reflexive identity, the New Negro. For many, New Negroes were always male. Only those who stood above the aggregate (“New Negroes”) and whose artistic, intellectual, and/ or social contributions trumped the rest were dignified as “renaissance men.” Over the decades, descriptions of New Negroes, such as that of William Pickens’s in the above epigraph, depict the New Negro as an altruistic alternative to minstrel caricatures. New...