R. Nathaniel Dett

“Robert Nathaniel Dett was born on October 11, 1882 in Drummondville, Ontario, Canada, a town founded prior to the American Civil War by fugitive slaves from the U.S.” His maternal grandmother, Harriet Washington, may have escaped from slavery via the Underground Railroad by crossing the river from Niagara Falls, NY to Niagara Falls, Ontario—known then as Drummondville.

Dett’s grandmother taught him Negro spirituals. His parents, Charlotte and Robert, could sing and play the piano. He started playing the piano at age three. The Dett family attended a BME church in Drummondville. It “was built in 1836 by formerly enslaved people who escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad.” The Dett's sang spirituals at this church and young Nathaniel played the piano.

Dett learned “how to read music and play the piano better” from his music tutor, Mrs. Marshall.  He was so gifted that he could often play piano music by ear after just listening to her play it from sheet music.

When Dett was eleven, his parents, grandmother, and older brother Samuel moved to Niagara Falls, NY. At fourteen, he worked as a bellhop at the Cataract House—a hotel known for its Underground Railroad operations. In no time, he was playing the piano in the hotel lobby and continued to do so for many years.

When Dett’s parents separated around 1900, Charlotte provided for her son’s musical education. From 1901-1903, he studied with Oliver Willis Halstead of the Halstead Conservatory in Lockport, NY. 

In 1902, Dett composed “The Cave of the Winds” to honor the cavern behind Bridal Veil Falls--the smallest of the three waterfalls that comprise Niagara Falls. He found further inspiration for his work in African American folk music, including the songs and spirituals that his grandmother sang. He called them “the melodies of an enslaved people.” 

In 1908, Dett graduated from the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College in Ohio. He was the first African American to earn a bachelor’s degree in Music with a double major in piano and composition. Once again, his life intersected with the Underground Railroad. Not only did Oberlin College have “a tradition of accepting women and African Americans as students,” it “also produced many abolitionists who were active Underground Railroad conductors.” 

Dett began touring as a concert pianist in 1914. He and Helen Elise Smith married in 1916 and had two daughters. Smith was a pianist as well and the first black female graduate of Damrosch Institute, later the Julliard School. As the years passed, Dett helped found the National Association of Negro Musicians and taught at several historically black colleges.

Dett was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Howard University in 1924 and Oberlin College in 1926. He earned a master’s degree in Music from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY in 1932. He studied with two famed composers: Nadia Boulanger of the American Conservatory in France and Arthur Foote of Harvard University.

Dett was the Director of Music at the Hampton Institute in Virginia (later Hampton University) from 1913 to 1931. There he “developed [a] choir that received critical acclaim in the USA and Europe.” The choir performed at Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, and the White House. 

Overall, R. Nathaniel Dett became “an internationally known choral director, composer, concert pianist, and poet.”  He published more than 200 piano, choral, and vocal works, and one book of poetry. The piano suite “In the Bottoms” is his most critically acclaimed piece.

He died in 1943 in Battle Creek, Michigan while on tour with a USO Women’s Army Corps chorus. He is buried in Fairview Cemetery in Niagara Falls, Ontario. The church the Dett family attended when Nathaniel was a boy is just a mile and a half away. Today, it is known as the Nathaniel Dett Memorial Chapel.

Hope L. Russell, Ph.D.