Zenobia Powell Perry

Zenobia Powell Perry was born in 1908 to a well-educated, middle-class family in Oklahoma. Her father was a Black physician, and her mother was Creek Indian and Black. In 1925, Perry graduated from high school determined to study music, so she began her studies at Cecil Berryman Conservatory in 1929, and eventually went to the Tuskegee Institute where she also studied education.

After Tuskegee, Perry became part of a Black teacher training program headed by Eleanor Roosevelt. Perry’s first university faculty position was at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College, later called University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), from 1947 to 1955. From 1952 to 1954, Perry completed her master’s degree in composition at Wyoming University where she studied under Allan Arthur Willman, Darius Milhaud, and Charles Jones. 

Perry began to compose more seriously during her time at Wyoming University in the early 1950s. Her output included a wide variety of vocal, choral, instrumental, and piano works. She drew influence from spirituals, which she grew up listening to her grandfather—a formerly enslaved man—sing. Black and Native American folklore, poetry, and music also informed her compositions, with her overall style incorporating a combination of contrapuntal, tonal, jazz, and folk techniques. 

Perry’s all-Black hometown of Boley, Oklahoma was a source of compositional inspiration throughout her lifetime. She often composed works influenced by her environment, such as her her 1987 opera Tawawa House, whose plot was based on the history of the Underground Railroad in Wilberforce, Ohio—the town she lived in from 1955 until 1982 as a faculty member and composer-in-residence at Central State University.

Despite two divorces, the death of a son, and the challenges of raising a daughter on her own, Perry continued working towards advanced degrees while also working as a professor. In 1962, she joined the NAACP to aid in the civil rights struggle. Perry received numerous honors and awards, particularly after her retirement in 1982, related to her teaching, composing, and volunteer community work. 

Perry’s works continue to be performed today by a devoted group of musicians—many of them her former students—as well as those who have only recently discovered her works. Perry’s compositions have also been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, and West Virginia University Band and Orchestra.

As of 2023, only one of Perry’s works has been published, though her significant contributions to American music are increasingly referenced in recent scholarship. Zenobia Powell Perry died in 2004 at the age of 95, leaving behind a rich legacy. 

–Amy Catherine Helms, Sophia Janevic

This biography was created in 2022 as part of The Savvy Singer, an EXCEL Lab course at the University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre, and Dance and a collaboration with the Hampsong Foundation via the Classic Song Research Initiative.

This biography was edited in 2023 as part of the Song of America Fellowship Program, a project of the Classic Song Research Initiative between the Hampsong Foundation and the University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre, and Dance.