Maud Cuney Hare

Cuney Hare (1874-1936) was a multitalented figure, a historian of African American music as well as a playwright and pianist. Her father was a successful businessman, and both her parents were musical, with a strong sense of racial identity. Born in Texas, she studied piano at the New England Conservatory of Music (1890–95) and later English Literature at Harvard University’s Lowell Institute. After teaching in various institutions and an unhappy first marriage, she married lawyer William Hare and moved to Boston by 1906. Cuney Hare fought for the rights of black people within the arts. As a researcher, she collected folksongs from southern USA and the Caribbean, resulting in her landmark study Negro Musicians and Their Music (1936). As such, she was an authority on African American music. Her play Antar of Araby (1929) included incidental music by Clarence Cameron White and Montague Ring (pseudonym for the composer Amanda Aldridge).

Cuney Hare’s song oeuvre is small, consisting of Six Creole Folk Songs (New York, 1921), an attractive set of folk-song arrangements of songs in the Creole language, fully tonal with accessible accompaniments in a parlour style. There are several unpublished songs in the Clark-Atlanta University archive.

See also https://songofamerica.net/sheetmusic/maud-cuney-hare-six-creole-folk-songs/

© Natasha Loges, 2022