The success, however, is usually framed through her intersectional identity as a woman in a patriarchal society and as a Black musician in an age of segregation and racism. Born in 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price achieved great success as an African American woman composer in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. One of these ignored stories that has been brought to life recently is that of the composer Florence B. The problem with this narrative is that it produces and reiterates the erasure of other musical stories that-by not being written-are misrepresented and often forgotten. For example, music-history textbooks still teach us that, in the past, women would sing and play the piano, thus bringing to life the compositions of the genius composers, and that the music of exotic and foreign communities (also known as non-Western) could be used as a source of inspiration for the “great men” in question. It is not a coincidence that many of the individuals marginalized in this kind of historiography are marked as Others based on their race and gender. Indeed, individuals who differed from this profile were commonly relegated to a supporting role in the overall narrative. The reproduction of this hierarchy across histories and pedagogies of music contributed to make less visible and less audible the contribution of musicians who diverged from this norm. Much of the music history written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries tended to center this imagined character as its protagonist, creating a hierarchy not only of the compositions that they produced but also of their standing as individuals. The narrative of music being created by gifted and special individuals whose works seem to transcend life and history is usually associated with a very specific demographical profile: male, White, and European.
When people think of Western art-music composers, one of the first images that often comes to mind is that of the genius.
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