- Black musicians faced discrimination and segregation while touring, even as late as the 1950s and 1960s.
- Despite progress, Black artists still face challenges including subtle forms of racism.
- Representation of Black artists and composers in classical music is low, but organizations are working to increase diversity.
- Mentorship and early exposure to the arts are crucial for fostering the next generation of Black artists.
From 1936 to 1966, a road guide for Black travelers existed.
Published annually by Victor Hugo Green, "The Negro Motorist Green Book" contained the addresses of motels, eateries and gas stations that would serve Black customers.
The guidebook sprang into the public's collective conscience via the 2018 Oscar winner, "Green Book." Starring Mahershala Ali, the film details the experiences of Don Shirley, a classical and jazz pianist touring the Jim Crow South with his white driver-bodyguard.
Shirley's story is but one of thousands told by Black artists.
As recently as the 1950s and 1960s, titans of Black music, from Miles Davis to Motown’s finest, were relegated to eating canned sardines on the road because they were unwelcome at white diners.
They slept stacked like dominoes in station wagons because they couldn’t stay in white motels.
Some were even denied services at the very establishments they were headlining.
Now, many of the reigning Black artists board private jets and stretch limos to their next shows and dine at the crème de la crème of restaurants. They sleep in penthouse suites in five-star hotels.
How things have changed. Or have they?
And if they have, did the Columbus music industry get the memo?
The Dispatch spoke with three well-known local Black artists about their experiences navigating the Columbus music community. They touched on topics including covert racism, improving access to the arts and mentoring the next generation of Black artists, as well as arts organizations that are getting it right by providing opportunities for young musicians of color.
Mark Lomax II discusses race-based rejection
"I was once told my music is excellent. If I’d just change the narrative, I’d be famous if I didn’t focus on African American history,” Columbus-born drummer Mark Lomax II said.
Lomax, 46, began playing drums at 2 and by 14, he was touring with a gospel choir. He switched to jazz at 16 and recorded his first album — the first of more than 60 — three years later.
Also a composer and educator, Lomax is a fixture in local music circles with his hands in many genres. He describes his style as “Afro-chamber music.”
“The ‘afro’ reflects the source materials and aesthetics, Afro-diasporics, rhythms and storytelling,” he said. “And ‘classical’ represents my training in ensembles.”
In addition to performing locally, Lomax has toured with the Delfeayo Marsalis Quartet, and his classical compositions have been performed by symphonies and orchestras around the world.
Still, he has felt the wicked barb of discrimination as a Black artist.
Lomax recalled having his work rejected as a student at Ohio State University because the content skewed toward Black composers like Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.
“The reason I know it was because I was Black is ... when it came time for my dissertation, I (composed) in the style of Tchaikovsky for the protagonist elements and a more Ellingtonian jazz-style for the second part,” he said.
“Guess which part they didn’t like?”
Lomax has faced other challenges, such as being turned down for a festival gig despite being a label artist because his message was “too political.”
But no-thank-yous and slamming doors haven’t thwarted his perseverance or fostered self-pity.
“To be frank, I said, ‘(Expletive) them.' It’s still hard. I don’t feel like I’ve overcome anything. I build my own infrastructure with what I need to do and how I need to do it,” he said.
“I have the capacity to document my work and release it directly to the consumer. The challenge is I don’t own a wonderfully acoustically treated performance venue.”
Why are some folks seemingly so afraid of “an artist who leans into the narrative of an oppressed people,” as Lomax describes himself?
“I think they are afraid of the implications of the narrative being put forward that African-descended people in America have never had power,” he said.
Changing the narrative
If there’s a silver lining to be found, Lomax’s audiences are increasingly diverse, meaning white listeners are embracing his music — and not just for its sonic properties. They’re listening to his messages and the complex histories behind them.
What more can be done to help change the narrative? In Lomax’s estimation, it's crucial to mentor young Black artists to not only appreciate their craft but to teach them the business side of the music industry.
“I had mentors who helped me understand what it is to be an artist, but no one taught me how to read a contract or how to have a conversation with donors. That’s something we can do,” he said.
Lomax is a frequent speaker at local schools and colleges and has worked in after-school programs. When he’s on the road, he makes a point of visiting schools in marginalized neighborhoods — “like the one I grew up in,” he said.
“We have to get better about building that infrastructure. We have to do our best in our realms of influence.”
Lomax lauded The Academy, an intensive training program started in 2023 by the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, for its efforts to increase the number of student musicians of color.
“What we need is more of what they’re doing, and what they’re doing at the Sphinx Organization in Detroit, which focuses on performing arts; they are focused on Black and brown folks. They’re putting out some really great talent in the world of classical music,” he said.
“We have to try to be engaged to find that young talent and cultivate it. And hopefully, in 20 years, it won’t be like it was for me.”
J Rawls on challenges in hip-hop
If Lomax’s rundown of his experiences seems blunt, even pointed, Ohio State assistant professor of hip-hop, producer and DJ Jason Rawls paints a somewhat different portrait of what it’s been like for him as a Black artist in Columbus.
Known in the music community as J Rawls, the 51-year-old has worked with some of hip-hop's biggest names including Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def), the Beastie Boys and Talib Kweli, with whom he'll reunite at this year's Ohio Black Expo: Riverfront Culture Fest on Memorial Day weekend.
“As far as challenges as an artist, they haven’t been necessarily because I’m a person of color,” he said.
“The bigger challenge in hip-hop right now is being a woman. There’s so much divisiveness in hip-hop because that’s what we see in our society right now.”
Even that is changing, with more than half of his students being female, Rawls noted.
Similarly, the number of white hip-hop fans has exploded in the last two decades. Various sources — studies, magazine articles, scholarly papers and TV news reports — estimate that between 60% and 80% of hip-hop music consumers are young, white males.
Many music historians trace hip-hop’s inception to a back-to-school party on Aug. 11, 1973, when DJ Kool Herc realized that people danced longer when he played the percussion breaks from records instead of the entire song.
The dancers became known as break-boys and break-girls — or b-boys and b-girls — and their moves were dubbed breakdancing.
Because hip-hop is generally seen as a type of music, many outsiders misconstrue what the movement is truly about, Rawls pointed out. Therein lies his duty to educate and break down barriers to understanding.
Beyond the music: Hip-hop as a culture
While his experiences as a Black artist in Columbus have been fairly innocuous, Rawls said there is a challenge to clear up the misconception of “hip-hop” as just a musical genre.
“First and foremost, it’s a culture. The culture is so much bigger than rap music. It’s all-encompassing, which makes it more special,” he said.
In his hip-hop studies program, students are given a holistic view of hip-hop culture, with hands-on learning about the pillars of the movement: MCing (rapping), DJing (turntablism), breakdancing and graffiti.
“They’re thinking it’s going to be lecture-based, but they actually touch the culture. For instance, I’m doing a class section on graffiti where they’ll learn from an actual graffiti writer,” he said.
“For breakdancing, we get them on the floor, and they walk away with a new sense of what hip-hop culture is.”
Additionally, Rawls said he hopes to teach a course on DJing in the fall. He said such interactive exposure helps elevate the profile of the hip-hop culture — a key factor in eliminating negative stereotypes based on certain subcategories of rap.
“The importance is if (people) understand it as a culture, they’ll see there’s more to it than just the music, misogyny and homophobia of some artists. They’ll see past the bad things,” he said.
“There is more to it than just what you see in the mainstream media or on mainstream TV.”
Looking toward the future, Rawls said he sees Columbus’ hip-hop culture “growing in a very positive way.” He cited The Kutt Records and Rich Street Records, both of which offer hip-hop-related events, as examples of local businesses involved in the movement.
“If hip-hop goes downhill or loses its luster, it’s our fault,” he said. “It’s up to us to spread it to the younger generations and get them as excited as I was.”
Behind the podium with Antoine Clark
According to astudy by the League of American Orchestras in 2023, Black people represented 2.4% of musicians in surveyed orchestras. Despite that dearth, Worthington Chamber Orchestra founder Antoine Clark has found the local community overwhelmingly welcoming.
“One thing I love about the Columbus arts community is it feels inclusive. I believe organizations like the Greater Columbus Arts Council and Ohio Arts Council really do push hard to create opportunities for everybody in general, but definitely for people from backgrounds not seen as much in fields of art,” he said.
Clark, who’s also the orchestra’s music and artistic director, generally gives people the benefit of the doubt, but he’s not blind to instances of discrimination. Sometimes, he said, the bias is subtle.
“Early in my career, I wondered what people thought of me, knowing they had probably not worked with a Black conductor. I did feel sometimes when I was on the podium and a musician would respond to me a certain way, I knew they wouldn’t do this with a white conductor,” he said.
“At the same time, I respect myself. I’m not going to let someone disrespect me, challenge me about what I have to offer or make me doubt being a conductor or artist.
“People can be people. I want to chalk it up to that instead of, ‘You’re being racist.’”
Clark, 47, said the only real moment of explicit racism he’s experienced as a Black classical musician happened not in Columbus, but the Czech Republic, where a roommate told him he would never be a conductor because he was Black.
“I was quite offended,” he said. “Obviously, I’m happy to say I’ve proved this person wrong.”
Amping up access to the arts
Clark said access can help create more young Black artists — access to education and live performances, especially for those from economically disadvantaged areas.
“They don’t often get those opportunities, and their families might not have the background (in) classical music,” he said.
Additionally, Clark believes that arts organizations can help by exposing patrons to more Black composers.
“If people are offered Beethoven versus Florence Price, we know what will sell out first. I want to create familiarity with these names so people can realize this is part of our American story,” he said.
“As people get to know about these composers and they become more part of their daily lives, people become more comfortable hearing them in the concert halls.”
Clark reiterated his admiration for the local organizations that are “amplifying diverse voices,” but it’s too soon for them to rest on their laurels.
“I have seen organizations make some efforts, but I would like to see more, especially from some of our leading organizations. When you can present a season of 12 masterworks, and I see maybe one or two people of color or women represented (as composers), that’s quite an imbalance.
“(Worthington Chamber Orchestra) only (does) three masterworks, but you’re going to see a woman or person of color on each program we put forward,” he said.
Fostering the next generation
Imperative above all else is Black artists showing up for young Black people, especially aspiring musicians, Clark said.
Also, Black youth must be introduced to the arts early to keep pace with their white peers, some of whom began playing instruments at a young age.
“Some string players start at 2-3 years old. If classical music wants to become more representative, we have to start at an early age.
“I think that representation does matter because they’re seeing, ‘Wow, there’s a Black conductor’ or a female conductor, and they see they can do that, too,” he said.
When he’s not wielding the baton, Clark is involved in numerous initiatives to increase access to music and engage diverse communities.
He participated in the 2021 Youth Orchestras Online DEI panel, a collaboration between Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestras.
In 2022, he was the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s Multicultural Awareness Council innovator, a yearlong residency for Black classical musicians demonstrating artistry, innovation and a passion for education and community engagement.
Clark also has conducted workshops for the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, which gave him a Music Educator Award last year.
"Because early access is important, I've done everything I can to put myself to work with organizations, to really get myself into communities where kids can see someone like me," he said.
Entertainment and Things to Do reporter Belinda M. Paschal can be reached atbpaschal@dispatch.com.
