JUNETEENTH

posted by James Reel

This Saturday, June 19, is an annual holiday that doesn't get a whole lot of press: Juneteenth, African American Emancipation Day, first celebrated in Galveston, Texas in 1865 and now a worldwide event. In celebration, KUAT-FM will have works by black composers scattered through the day's schedule--such American figures as William Grant Still and Duke Ellington (a suite from The River, starting at 10 a.m.), and, because it's now an international event, the Englishman Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who was once so prominent that he was called the "African Mahler." His music sounds nothing like Mahler's, though, as you'll discover if you tune in for his Clarinet Quintet about 9:30 and then stick around for Mahler's Symphony No. 9 beginning a bit more than an hour later.