Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha (1911), the “first” black opera. A new ethnoanthropological and musicological analysis
More than one century after its birth and its unlucky efforts to stage it properly, Scott Joplin’s complex and beautiful opera Treemonisha calls for a new, interdisciplinary critical analysis. African-American music needs to be viewed not only as a synthesis of oral and written sources, but also in light of how popular music and the mass media have influenced its development. This requires a revision of the musicological study of jazz and related genres to include ethnographic, anthropological and systematic points of view.