Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul by Deanna Witkowski

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul by Deanna Witkowski Kim R. Harris Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul. By Deanna Witkowski. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press. 2021. 168 pp. $16.95. During a recent solo piano jazz concert, performer, composer, recording artist, and author Deanna Witkowski explained that she wrote Music for the Soul to encourage people to “listen to the tunes.” With this book on the life, music, and spirituality of Mary Lou Williams (1910–1981), Witkowski accomplishes her goal. Jazz enthusiasts reading the book will remember Williams in the context of her contributions and importance to virtually every period of jazz history during the twentieth century. Readers with interest in Catholic liturgy will understand Williams as a composer of sacred music, as well as a music minister and director for jazz Mass settings. These Masses include Mary Lou’s Mass, the first jazz Mass to be sung and prayed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City (February 18, 1975). African American Catholic readers, many of whom know her story in part, will come to know in greater depth Williams’s contemplative vision, conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, and her [End Page 74] place in Black Catholic history. Readers of the previous books in the People of God series, of which Music for the Soul is a part, will welcome Williams’s addition to the group of historic and contemporary heroes and heroes of faith. All who imbibe Witkowski’s lush musical descriptions will be drawn to “listen to the tunes.” As a musician, scholar, and adult convert to Catholicism, Witkowski has unique qualifications to author this text. Her connection to Williams includes working relationships with several of Williams’s musical colleagues, spiritual contemporaries, and former students. This deep association with Williams’s life, work, and community recently led to Witkowski’s relocation to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Williams’s hometown. Williams’s positive attitudes and actions, as well as her tenacity, hospitality, and generosity, shine through in the recounting of her care for jazz musicians, friends, and family members. The story of this jazz giant also includes encounters that for a time discouraged Williams from creating and performing the music she loved. Though Williams wrote of being sexually assaulted only in diaries, Witkowski briefly recalls these experiences, as well as other challenges, disappointments, and outright betrayals faced by a young and eventually seasoned female African American jazz musician, performing solo and with various bands “on the road.” Intertwined with accounts of her musical career. Witkowski weaves stories of Williams’s mystical experiences, devotion to Mary, Mother of Jesus, and her soul’s journey toward religious conversion. Readers will almost hear and see Williams practicing on the basement piano at Our Lady of Lourdes parish, quickly stopping to write down the “crazy arrangements” that came into her head when she went to the church to meditate and pray. Witkowski writes as someone who in Williams has found an unexpected conversation partner, “soul companion and lifelong mentor.” This book offers the intimate writing of a skilled musician, spirited person of faith, enthusiastic convert to Catholicism, and an expert in the jazz idiom. It should encourage readers to seek out material such as the audio recordings and videos of Williams available online. Additionally, documentaries, lectures, recordings, and performances by [End Page 75] musicians (such as Witkowski herself) are expanding knowledge of Williams’ legacy for those of us who are inspired to “listen to the tunes.” Kim R. Harris Loyola Marymount University Copyright © 2022 American Catholic Historical Society