Concluding a celebration of Black History Month by way of music, we have a selection performed by musical prodigy Philippa Duke Schuyler. Schuyler lived from 1931 to 1967. She was an enormously gifted musician who spent much of her youth touring and performing. She later grew disillusioned with her status as a racial symbol, and she took to a career in journalism and performing overseas. Sadly she was killed while covering action in Vietnam, when the helicopter she was in crashed. Schuyler’s name lives on, attached to a middle school for talented and gifted students in Brooklyn.
Here is Philippa Schuyler performing Bach. In recordings like this you can hear worlds meeting, hundreds of years apart.
"She later grew disillusioned with her status as a racial symbol…" Boy, is THAT a real thing. "A credit to her race," I'm sure someone must have said at the time.