William P. Gotlieb/Library of Congress via flickr.com
August 7, 20179:00 AM ET
In the mid-to-late 1950s, the jazz composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams retired from public performance for nearly four years. During her hiatus she converted to Catholicism, and the first record she made after her return was a marked departure from her previous work: It was a mass.
In 1962, the Catholic Church canonized a new saint: A Peruvian brother of the Dominican Order named Martin de Porres, the son of a freed slave named Ana Velazquez and a Spanish gentleman who refused to recognize him because he was born with his mother's dark features. St. Martin de Porres was a gifted healer who was dedicated to the poor — today, he is the patron saint of those who seek racial harmony.
His canonization was inspiring to Williams, and so Mary Lou Williams Presents Black Christ of the Andes, a devotional work composed in his honor, was born. The composition is rooted in both Catholicism and the black American music tradition — and it undoubtedly found critics among those who adhered exclusively to one of those schools or the other. Williams performed the full piece for the first time at Saint Francis Xavier Church in New York in November of 1962, and she recorded it in October 1963.
read more at: http://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541822331/shocking-omissions-mary-lou-williams-choral-masterpiece-black-christ-of-the-ande
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