Still and Steady: The Radical Grace of Composer Zenobia Powell Perry

Zenobia Powell Perry was a composer of measured strength and unwavering intent. Her music, like her life, moved with quiet determination—unfolding at the margins of American classical music while refusing to be erased by it.

Born in 1908 in Boley, Oklahoma—one of the first all-Black towns founded in Indian Territory—Perry grew up at the intersection of African American and Native American cultures. Her Creek heritage, Black identity, and upbringing in a segregated United States would all shape a compositional voice steeped in resistance, remembrance, and cultural hybridity.

Perry studied with some of the most influential musical figures of the 20th century. She was mentored by R. Nathaniel Dett and taught by William Dawson, Darius Milhaud, and—briefly—Nadia Boulanger. Yet despite her training and talent, Perry remained outside the mainstream of American music institutions. Like many Black women composers of her generation, she was more often confined to historically Black colleges and universities than invited into major concert halls.

Her compositional language was neither conservative nor avant-garde, but grounded—inflected by folk songs, spirituals, and tonal lyricism. Works like Homage (1960) for piano and Clarinet Sonata (1963) show a composer deeply engaged with classical forms while drawing melodic and rhythmic inspiration from African American traditions. She wrote art songs, choral works, orchestral pieces, and chamber music—each underscored by a clear sense of purpose.

Her magnum opus, Tawawa House, is a full-length opera completed in 1985 and finally premiered in 2014, nine years after her death. Set at the real-life Tawawa House resort in Ohio—later the site of Wilberforce University—the opera tells the story of an early haven for enslaved people and abolitionists. It is a rare operatic work that centers Black historical experience not as metaphor, but as narrative. Through it, Perry reclaimed the operatic stage as a site of Black memory and resistance.

Perry was also an educator, activist, and scholar. She taught for over four decades, most prominently at Central State University and Wilberforce University in Ohio, helping to nurture generations of students—many of whom were encountering classical music for the first time. She was committed to making music accessible without diluting its power.

Her legacy, like her music, has often gone unheralded. Yet in recent years, her work has begun to reemerge—performed, recorded, and studied as part of a broader effort to reexamine the canon of American classical music. What her music offers is not just a corrective to exclusion, but an alternative vision: one in which lineage includes the overlooked, and mastery is not measured by visibility alone.

Zenobia Powell Perry did not need to shout to be heard. She composed with clarity, taught with conviction, and left behind a body of work that speaks—still, and steadily—for itself.