Margaret Bonds

American composer and pianist (1913–1972)

Margaret Allison Bonds (March 3, 1913 – April 26, 1972) was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher. One of the first Black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States, she is best remembered today for her popular arrangements of African American spirituals and frequent collaborations with Langston Hughes.

Margaret Jeanette Allison Majors was born on March 3, 1913, in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Monroe Alpheus Majors, was an active force in the civil rights movement as a physician and writer. His work included the founding of a medical association for black physicians who were denied membership in the American Medical Association on the basis of race. As an author, Majors is known for his book, Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities (1893), and for his work as editor of several African American newspapers. Her mother, Estelle C. Bonds, was a church musician and member of the National Association of Negro Musicians. She died in 1952. When her parents' troubled marriage ended in 1917, young Margaret's last name was changed to her mother's maiden name, Bonds. Despite the divorce, Margaret continued to stay in touch with her father, who, in 1920, wrote the first nursery rhyme storybook for African American children called First Steps and Nursery Rhymes; he dedicated it to 7 year old Margaret.

As a child, Margaret Bonds studied piano under the Coleridge Taylor Scholarship, which was awarded to her by the Colereidge Taylor School of Music, where her mother worked as an educator for 20 years. During this time, she, at the ages of both 8 and 9 years old, won piano scholarships from the Chicago Musical College. Margaret's piano teachers up until the age of 13 included Estella Bonds, Martha B. Anderson, and Tom Theodore Taylor. At 13, she began studying with William Levi Dawson and Florence Price. Margaret's mother often hosted other Black musicians, artists, and writers in her home. Among those included Abbie Mitchell, Lillian Evanti, and composer Will Marion Cook, all of whom would become influential to her future musical studies and career. In 1940, Margaret Bonds married Lawrence Richardson (1911 1990), a probation officer, after moving to New York City in 1939. The couple later had a daughter, Djane Richardson (1946 2011). When Bonds died on April 26, 1972, in Los Angeles, California, she was survived by her husband, daughter, and sister.

During high school, Bonds continued to study piano and composition with Florence Price and later with William Dawson. Bonds was one of the few Black students at Northwestern University; the environment was hostile, racist, and nearly unbearable.</blockquote>

Bonds moved to New York City after graduating from Northwestern University. There she attended the prestigious Juilliard School of Music and studied composition with Roy Harris, Robert Starer, and Emerson Harper, and piano with Djane Herz. However, it is inconclusive whether Boulanger truly thought Bonds had no need of further instruction or was acting from a position of racial prejudice. The work Boulanger refers to is The Negro Speaks of Rivers, a setting for voice and piano of Langston Hughes' poem by the same title—the very poem which brought Bonds such comfort during her years at Northwestern University. On May 22, 1952, Langston (poet), Bonds (pianist), and Daniel Andrews (baritone) collaborated on a project, "An Evening of Music and Poetry in Negro Life," performing at Community Church. This project took place just months after Bond's debut solo performance at Town Hall in New York City, February 7, 1952. Ever a good friend, Hughes sent Bonds a Western Union telegram the afternoon of her performance, telling her how much he desired to be present and sending his best wishes. Bonds wrote several music theater works. In 1959, she set music to Shakespeare in Harlem, a libretto by Hughes. It premiered in 1960 at the 41st Street Theater. Entitled "Simon Bore the Cross", it is a cantata for piano and voice, and is based on the spiritual "He Never Said a Mumblin' Word". The death of Langston Hughes in 1967 was difficult for Bonds. Afterward, she left her husband and daughter to move from New York to Los Angeles where she remained until her death on April 26, 1972.

Bonds was active in her career throughout her studies at Northwestern University. In 1932, Bond's composition Sea Ghost won the prestigious national Wanamaker Foundation Prize, bringing her to the public's attention. In 1936, she opened the Allied Arts Academy where she taught art, music, and ballet. That same year, an adaptation of "Peach Tree Street" appeared in Gone With the Wind. Around this same time, she formed the Margaret Bonds Chamber Society, a group of black musicians which performed mainly the work of black classical composers. Bonds lived in Harlem, and worked on many music projects in the neighborhood. In 1967, legendary choral director and vocal coach Frederick Wilkerson featured the original piano/vocal version of her setting of W. E. B. Du Bois's civil rights manifesto "Credo" in the first all Bonds concert in Washington, D. C., and later that year the likewise legendary choral conductor Albert McNeil performed the choral/orchestral version of that same work, along with The Montgomery Variations, in San Francisco.

In 1969, Margaret moved to Los Angeles, working as Music Director and teaching piano at the Los Angeles Inner City Institute and at the Inner City Cultural Center.

In the 1960s, Leontyne Price, the first African American opera singer to become internationally famous, commissioned and recorded some of Bonds' arrangements of spirituals. Some of Bonds' music, mainly piano pieces and art songs, has been recorded on various labels, mostly on compilation albums of music by black composers. In 2019 the premiere recording of The Ballad of the Brown King (performed by The Dessoff Choirs and Orchestra) was released on the Avie label. • Troubled Water played by Michael Noble on American Dissident (198004840682) 2022.