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Roland Wiltse Hayes (June 3, 1887 – January 1, 1977) was an American lyric tenor and composer. Critics lauded his abilities and linguistic skills demonstrated with songs in French language, German language, and Italian language. Hayes’ predecessors as well-known African-American concert artists, including Sissieretta Jones and Marie Selika, were not recorded. Along with Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson, Hayes was one of the first to break this barrier in the classical repertoire when he recorded with Columbia Records in 1939.
When Hayes was 11, his father died, and his mother moved the family to Chattanooga, Tennessee. William Hayes claimed to have some Cherokee ancestry, while his maternal great-grandfather, Aba Ougi (renamed as Charles Mann) was a Chieftain from the Ivory Coast. Aba Ougi was captured and shipped to the United States of America in 1790.The University of North Carolina library extension publication, Vols 10–11 (1944), p. 25.
Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Curryville (founded by Roland's mother) is where Roland first heard the music he would cherish forever, . It was Roland's job to learn new spirituals from the elders and teach them to the congregation. A quote of him talking about beginning his career with a pianist:
I happened upon a new method for making iron sash-weights," he said, "and that got me a little raise in pay and a little free time. At that time I had never heard any real music, although I had had some lessons in rhetoric from a backwoods teacher in Georgia. But one day a pianist came to our church in Chattanooga, and I, as a choir member, was asked to sing a solo with him. The pianist liked my voice, and he took me in hand and introduced me to phonograph records by Enrico Caruso. That opened the heavens for me. The beauty of what could be done with the voice just overwhelmed me.
Hayes trained with Arthur Calhoun, an organist and choir director, in Chattanooga. Roland began studying music at Fisk University in Nashville in 1905 although he had only a 6th-grade education. Hayes's mother thought he was wasting money because she believed that African Americans could not make a living from singing. As a student he began publicly performing, touring with the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1911. He furthered his studies in Boston with Arthur Hubbard, who agreed to give him lessons only if Hayes came to his house instead of his studio. He did not want Roland to embarrass him by appearing at his studio with his white students. During his period studying with Hubbard, he worked as a messenger for the Hancock Life Insurance Company to support himself.
In April 1920, Hayes traveled to Europe. He began lessons with Sir George Henschel, who was the first conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and gave his first recital in London's Aeolian Hall in May 1920 with pianist Lawrence Brown as his accompanist. By at least June 1921 he was being invited to sing at private house parties; the poet Siegfried Sassoon heard him while staying with the wealthy music-lover Frank Schuster at Bray-on-Thames.Hart-Davis, Rupert, ed. Siegfried Sassoon Diaries, 1920-1922, Faber and Faber, London, 1981, p.69:"Have written one poem, 'A Negro Singer' - Roland Hayes, who came down last Sunday and sang Fauré's 'Apres un Rêve' beautifully, and some spirituals, Adrian Boult at the piano." Soon Hayes was singing in capital cities across Europe and was quite famous. Almost a year after his arrival in Europe, Hayes had a concert at London's Wigmore Hall. The next day, he received a summons from George V and Queen Mary to give a command performance at Buckingham Palace. He returned to the United States of America in 1923. He made his official debut on November 16, 1923, in Boston's Symphony Hall singing Berlioz, Mozart, and spirituals, conducted by Pierre Monteux, which received critical acclaim. He was the first African-American soloist to appear with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.Canarina, John (2003). Pierre Monteux, Maître. Pompton Plains, New Jersey: Amadeus Press, p. 71. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1924.
In 1925, Hayes had an affair with a married Czechs aristocrat, Bertha Henriette Katharina Nadine, Gräfin von Colloredo-Mansfeld (June 21, 1890 in Týnec – January 29, 1982 in Auch), which resulted in a pregnancy.Brooks, Christopher A. 2015, pp. 358, 361–362, 366–367, 379. Bertha had been married in Vienna since 10 August 1909 to a member of a German princely family, Hieronymus von Colloredo (November 3, 1870 in Dobříš – August 29, 1942 in Prague). He refused to allow the expected child to bear his name or to be raised along
with the couple's four older children, quietly managing to obtain a divorce in Prague on 8 January 1926, while Bertha left their home in Zbiroh, Czechoslovakia, to bear Hayes's child in Basel, Switzerland. Hayes offered to adopt the child, while the countess sought to resume the couple's relationship, while concealing it, until the late 1920s. Their daughter, Maya Kolowrat, would marry Russian émigré farm-worker, later painter, Yuri Mikhailovich Bogdanoff (January 28, 1928 in Leningrad – 2012). Maya later gave birth in Saint-Lary, Gers, to twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff in 1949, who later attributed their early interest in the sciences to their unhampered childhood access to their maternal grandmother's castle library.
After the 1930s, Hayes stopped touring in Europe because the change in politics and the rise of the Nazi Party made it unfavourable to African Americans.
In 1932, while in Los Angeles for a Hollywood Bowl performance, he married Helen Alzada Mann (1893–1988). The new Mrs. Hayes was born in Chattanooga and graduated from what is now Tennessee State University. One year later they had a daughter, Afrika Hayes. "Afrika Hayes Interview: Growing Up With Roland Hayes", Schiller Institute. Reprinted from the Summer 1994 issue of FIDELIO Magazine. The family moved into a home in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1943 he sang several times in Britain to entertain troops, and appeared at the Royal Albert Hall on 29 September as the soloist before a 200-member choir of all Black soldiers, and all from USAAF Engineer Aviation Battalions. After the concert he dined at the London residence of Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee, Commanding General of all logistics forces in the European Theater of Operations, who routinely received visiting political, manufacturing, and show business figures in the Theater.
Hayes did not perform very much from the 1940s to the 1970s, but continued yearly concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York and performances at Fisk and other colleges. In 1966, he was awarded the degree of Honorary Doctorate of Music from The Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford. Hayes continued to perform until the age of 85, when he gave his last concert at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge. He was able to purchase the land in Georgia on which he had grown up as a child.Chris Hillyard, , Reflections (Georgia African American Historic Preservation Network), Vol. XIII, No. 4, February/March 2017, p. 3. Originally published in Calhoun Magazine, Jan/Feb 2017.
He died on January 1, 1977, five years after his final concert.
Hayes's wife and daughter mistakenly sat in seats reserved for white customers in a shoe store in Rome, Georgia in 1942. An argument erupted which resulted in the two leaving. Later, Hayes confronted the store owner, whom he knew, and resolved the conflict. Upon leaving, Hayes was assaulted by police and put under arrest, with his wife also being taken into custody. Gradually the story received national attention and much sympathy for Hayes. The assaulting police officer was fired, with federal charges made against him.Christopher A. Brooks, Robert Sims "Roland Hayes: The Legacy of an American Tenor" (2014), p. 242-255 A poem by Langston Hughes, entitled "How About It, Dixie," refers to the incident. "How About It, Dixie" . in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, p. 291, note p. 659; first published in New Masses (October 20, 1942).
Hayes faced heavy criticism from anti-Jim Crow activists for performing in an integrated theater in Washington, D.C., on January 5, 1926, followed by a segregated theater in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 7, 1926.Christopher A. Brooks, Robert Sims "Roland Hayes: The Legacy of an American Tenor" (2014), p. 147-148
Hayes taught at Black Mountain College for the 1945 Summer institute where his public concert was, according to Martin Duberman, "one of the great moments in Black Mountain's history." After this concert, in which unsegregated seating went well, the school had its first full-time black student and full-time member of the faculty.Biography at the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
Racial reaction
Hayes, before departing from Prague for Berlin in 1924, was warned by American Consul General not to go to Germany until the occupying armies had been withdrawn, as Germans had bitter feelings over being occupied by armies with black troops. An open letter to the American Ambassador was published in a Berlin newspaper, calling "for the prevention of a certain calamity: namely, the concert of an American Negro who has come to Berlin to defile the name of the German poets and composers." Despite this protest, Hayes wrote, "I refused to believe ... that they would hold me, a private Negro citizen of the United States, responsible for the presence of French-speaking Africans." Hayes booked his recital at Konzerthaus Berlin with no difficulties. Germans were still unhappy about his appearance in Berlin, and when he appeared on stage several members of the audience began to boo and hiss at the singer. Despite the hostile climate, Hayes began to sing Franz Schubert's "Du bist die Ruh." Hayes's remarkable voice and musical talent won over the audience and his concert was a success.Kira Thurman, "A History of Black Musicians in Germany and Austria, 1870-1961: Race, Performance, and Reception" (2013), p. 145-146
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Categories: 1887 Births, 1977 Deaths, People From Gordon County, Georgia, American People Who Self-identify As Being Of Cherokee Descent, American People Of Ivorian Descent, Fisk University Alumni, Musicians From Chattanooga, Tennessee, People From West Newbury, Massachusetts, Black Mountain College Faculty, 20th-century African-american Male Singers, 20th-century American Male Singers, 20th-century American Singers, Burials At Mount Hope Cemetery
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