The Time of Our Singing

Richard Powers

London: Vintage, 2004

Reviewed briefly by Richard Letts

In the 60s, I sat in the basement studios of the music building at the University of California, Berkeley, trying to become a composer. Outside, the civil rights, free speech, and anti-Vietnam war movements raged successively, with rallies, marches, pamphleteering, “riots” as claimed by the media. It was very intense, and pretty difficult to persuade myself that a career in composing esoteric music for a miniscule audience of friends and converts had a greater claim on my time and energies than the issues of fundamental justice being fought in the streets of America.

My dilemma was inconsequential compared with the family at the centre of this epic novel. The black Delia marries brilliant but socially naïve immigrant German-Jewish physicist David Strom in Philadelphia in the 30s. For Delia, white racism blocks most possibilities of a musical career beyond her black church, despite her obvious talent. But she and the musically accomplished David develop a most extraordinary musical life with their three children. The family gathers each evening to sing through the repertoire and to create the most complex polyphonic improvisations. Powers describes a virtuosity almost beyond belief, but who knows, perhaps he has experienced something like this somewhere. He clearly has a deep knowledge of music. It’s heady stuff and the musically passionate reader will enjoy the fantasy.

By the time the older children are approaching adulthood, the doors have cracked open a millimetre, and the eldest, singer Jonah, begins to build a career that would already be exceptional for a white artist. But at the same time, the black civil rights movement is asserting itself. For a black singer to succeed in the then quintessentially white world of classical music was both a triumph and, from the viewpoint of the black power movement, a treason. Caught between these two worlds, the family is torn asunder.

This 630-page novel maintains a poetic intensity that is both inspiring and somewhat exhausting to the reader. It gives vivid expression to the circumstances and feelings of a black family over four generations, contained and frustrated by a white population of uncomprehending cruelty. The point is driven home by the family’s great accomplishments in the culture with which we musicians are so familiar. It’s a most unusual novel, and well worth your time.

Music Forum Vol 11 No 3