Stephen Foster circa 1860
STEPHEN FOSTER: Father of American popular music B Y M A DE L E I N E RO S TA M I
Stephen Foster fundamentally shaped the
American music canon in the late 1800s and forward, penning songs that reached the masses. He built the foundation of American popular music as a genre; his songs reached larger audiences than any composer ever had before, and his melodies endured long after his death. Behind those famous melodies, however, Foster himself was an incongruous figure with many talents and flaws. By piecing together his few surviving personal letters and manuscripts and connecting these dots with remarks from Foster’s few friends, we can begin to paint a picture of the man. The creative team behind Paradise Square embraced this challenge, creating a musical that highlights both his demons and his unwavering desire to bridge together Americans from across the country during a time of deepening political and social strife.
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Stephen Foster was born on July 4, 1826: it seems inevitable that an attachment to the idea of American brotherhood would one day find itself at the core of much of his music. The Fosters, a family of Scots-Irish descent, settled in Pennsylvania. The Fosters remained intent on upholding their status in the community and searched for ways to bring joy into their household of nine children, with Stephen himself as the youngest. Stephen and his siblings created their own backyard minstrel show when he was just 9 years old. They would perform for neighbors, sparking his interest in entertaining. In one of his few surviving letters, a 10-year-old Stephen wrote to his father, asking for blank sheet music and black ink so that he might begin transcribing the songs he performed. The unbridled optimism that ran through the Foster family’s veins informed Stephen Foster’s own choice to leave
