by Kate Shunney
Musical composer Walker Williams comes from Morgan County and has taken their passionate interest in music and composition to places around the world. This weekend, Williams will share an original musical piece with choir with a West Virginia audience at Shepherd University.
Shepherd University’s Masterworks Chorale will present “Sprinkle Coal Dust on My Grave” on Saturday, April 26 at the Frank Arts Center with Shepherd University’s School of Music.
The piece is an oratorio about the West Virginia Mine Wars that erupted after coal mine strikes between the 1910’s and 1921, when the Battle of Blair Mountain took place.
As West Virginia coal miners attempted to find a voice and worker protections through the United Mine Workers of America, coal mine operators took increasingly extreme measures to subdue the workers and their demands for fair wages and safety measures in the mines.
The strikes and labor unrest were eventually met with machine guns, armed guards and coal-loyal deputies who enforced compliance to coal company rules with violence.
At Blair Mountain, union miners gathered a force of 15,00 men to march into Mingo County and overthrow the coal-driven martial law. President Harding sent federal troops to quell the march, knowing the miners would not take up arms against the national government. It took until 1933 for the United Mine Workers to establish in southern West Virginia coal country.
Williams learned about these events in the final semester as a student at Shepherd University in an Appalachian music class.
“I was twenty-two years old, I had lived in West Virginia or the entirety of my school, and in all those years I had never been taught that the largest armed conflict on U.S. soil since the Civil War had happened in my state only a century ago,” Williams wrote.
Even after Williams left the state and country to pursue his graduate work in music at the University of British Columbia, the idea of West Virginia’s history stayed in mind.
Williams composed an award-winning string orchestra composition “Vandalia, an Elegy for Appalachia.” When it came time to pinpoint a project for a doctoral thesis, composing a piece of music about the West Virginia mine wars became one of the options. In the end, it was a story they wanted to tell.
Having successfully created “Sprinkle Coal Dust on My Grave” as their dissertation, Williams now holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from the University of British Columbia.
“Sprinkle Coal Dust on My Grave” features storytelling, choir singing, a string band and fiddle, plus soloist singing.
Shepherd University’s Masterworks Chorale will present the 45-minute composition under the direction of Dr. Jason Strunk, Visiting Director of Choral & Vocal Activities.
“We’re really happy to always support the work of our alumni. But it’s a really fantastic work. The subject matter is heavy but it’s brilliantly and beautifully crafted,” said Dr. Strunk.
“This work is very cinematic to me,” Strunk said, saying it interlaces mine songs with hymns, folk songs and Appalachian storytelling.
Dr. Strunk said working on this piece has reconnected him to this region. He grew up in Pennsylvania, but his grandmother was from Levels in Hampshire County and his grandfather was from Little Orleans. When they married, the couple lived in Paw Paw.
“This region has been a part of my life since childhood,” he said.
Strunk directs 67 singers in this single-night performance of Shepherd University’s Masterworks Chorale on April 26. The group is a mix of university students and community members.
Willams’ father, Brice Williams, will be among the singers.
Walker Williams said this world premier performance of the work will be a true first full experience of the piece.
“I once sense, I know what it’s going to sound like,” said Williams.
Audience members may have a familiarity with the history of West Virginia coal mining, or they may not.
“I wrote it figuring there will be some audience members for whom all of this is pretty new, and some who have done research themselves. If you come in not knowing anything, you will come away with a basic knowledge. There’s some depth there. I hope some people will be leaving with some piece of it you didn’t have,” said Williams.
Keeping the audience in mind is part of the composer’s work.
“I’m thinking of the emotional arc of the audience experience and creating something that has a flow to it,” said Williams.
There are hopes that the oratorio will be performed in other venues in the future, and that the Shepherd performance will take the work to new places. That’s the goal, said Williams.
