If you haven’t heard of Elaine Brown and Singing City, chances are you will beyond this article. Their message of justice and equality is more urgent than ever, and if Brown—not to be confused with Elaine Brown of the Black Panthers, who was also musically inclined—and John Steinbeck never met in the 1940s or 50s, they should have. Both believed in the rights of the individual and the power of art to break down racial and religious barriers. Steinbeck—a lover of music in many forms—made his argument with words. Brown—a music professor at Temple University who formed the interfaith, mixed-race choral group called Singing City in 1948—made hers in song.
If Elaine Brown and John Steinbeck never met, they should have. Both believed in the rights of the individual and the power of art.
Brown and her singers were fearless, touring the Middle East and the Deep South in the waning era of Jim Crow. If a Southern official insisted Singing City’s artists of color had to stay in a “colored” hotel, the white singers would stay there, too. The great African American contralto Marian Anderson (in photo with Brown and Singing City) honored Brown for her work in promoting “diversity and understanding among all people of religious, economic and racial differences.” Other voices joined the chorus of praise as Singing City broke barriers and set a new standard for music in the service of the social vision Steinbeck proclaimed in his writing.
If a Southern official insisted Singing City’s artists of color had to stay in a ‘colored’ hotel, the white singers would stay there, too.
The lives of Marian Anderson and Elaine Brown were examined in a film on Anderson and a talk on Brown presented under the title of “Marian Anderson and Elaine Brown—Breaking Barriers Through Song” at a meeting of the Monterey Peace and Justice Center in Seaside, California on March 11. The PowerPoint presentation on Elaine Brown was given by Lisa Ledin (pronounced Ledeen), Brown’s niece and a public radio voice who has long been involved in civil rights issues, especially in the music world. “My Aunt Elaine’s favorite quote was, ‘Music’s a great glue. It holds us all together,’” said Ledin, who produced two black history radio documentaries that resulted in the book Nelson Burton, My Life in Jazz.
The lives of Marian Anderson and Elaine Brown were examined at a meeting of the Monterey Peace and Justice Center on March 11.
Elaine Brown died in 1997 at the age of 87, having retired from leading Singing City a decade earlier. She knew Martin Luther King, Sidney Poitier, Robert Kennedy, and the legendary Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Eugene Ormandy, and she was influenced by the music educator Herbert Haslam, the composition teacher Nadia Boulanger, and William Sloan Coffin Jr., the CIA case officer-turned-peace-activist who inspired the Doonesbury character Reverend Scott Sloane. Brown subscribed to some of Coffin’s beliefs and lived by two of his most memorable maxims: “I love the recklessness of faith—first you leap and then you grow wings,” and “The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”
Brown also knew Martin Luther King, Sidney Poitier, Robert Kennedy, and the legendary Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Eugene Ormandy.
Boulanger’s observation on the power of music (“Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for: it has broadened the limits of our sorrowful life, it has lit up the sweetness of our hours of happiness by effacing the pettinesses that diminish us, bringing us back pure and new to what was, what will be, what music has created for us”) fitted Brown perfectly. The recent publication of Lighting a Candle—The Writings and Wisdom of Elaine Brown serves as a reminder that Brown was quotable, too: “Feel—not just talk. See—not just look. Listen—not just hear. Possess—not just profess.” Passion for justice and music sustained Brown when her husband Hugh was murdered in a Philadelphia parking lot and their daughter died of cancer, and her legacy endures. Singing City has survived and flourished, fielding mixed-race and children’s choral groups in the spirit of its founder.
Lisa Ledin Finds Inspiration in Her Famous Aunt
Lisa Ledin (photo right) grew up in Marin County, California and on the Monterey Peninsula, where her parents moved when she was 14. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism at UC Berkeley and worked at radio station KSNO in Aspen before taking the job that she says gave her true satisfaction: announcing and broadcasting classical and black music at WGUC in Cincinnati. Her father died, and when her mother Verna was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease she returned to the Monterey Peninsula to become a caregiver. Like Elaine, Verna was musical. Lisa remembers that although afflicted with dementia, her mother could still sit at the piano and play beautifully. When the two sisters were children, a piano teacher listened to them play and said, “She (Verna) has the talent but she (Elaine) has the discipline and focus.”
Lisa’s two older sisters died while she was caring for her mother, and when Verna passed away the tribute Lisa paid was quoted in a print publication: “With her death comes my rebirth with no regrets. What I have really learned is about my own depth and capacity to love. I’ve become more sensitive to my own mortality and to what matters in the end. Truly loving someone, being aware of beauty and keeping the senses alive helps you appreciate each breath. Some people get that from studying Zen or reading books. I learned it from taking care of my mother.” Lisa adopted a black infant named Erika and resumed her radio career, first at KBOQ in Monterey and now at the NPR affiliate KAZU, where she hosts Morning Edition on Fridays and Weekend Edition on Saturdays. Her melodious voice is a powerful presence for KAZU’s underwriting announcements, and her schedule leaves plenty of time for Erika, a high school student who is continuing the family tradition by singing and dancing.
Ledin went to school in Pacific Grove, and reading Steinbeck was her introduction to the Monterey Peninsula when she was her daughter’s age.
Ledin went to a public school in Pacific Grove, where Steinbeck did much of his writing, and reading Steinbeck was her introduction to the Monterey Peninsula when she was Erika’s age. “My way of acclimating myself to the area was by getting close to Steinbeck,” she recalls. “I read almost everything he wrote, all the novels and stories. I roamed Cannery Row and all the places he wrote about. When my parents drove on the highways and I looked out at the fields and workers, his words came to me—the true character of the region.”
“Steinbeck was a protector of each person’s humanity, like my aunt,” says Ledin. “Elaine felt that regardless of race, religion, rich or poor, laborer or professor, people can come together through music. And I feel Steinbeck believed that about literature”—adding “They were a lot alike that way, Aunt Elaine and John Steinbeck.”
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