University Times

The first major film documentary in 50 years on the life of Pittsburgh-native composer Stephen Foster will debut this weekend on public television.

"Stephen Foster," part of the PBS "American Experience" series, will air on WQED-TV April 22 at 9 p.m.

The documentary is the result of four years' research at the Pitt's Stephen Foster Memorial.

"Stephen Foster" chronicles the life of the composer, from his 1820s boyhood in Lawrenceville, to his days as America's first professional songwriter in New York City, where he died at the age of 37. Deane Root, curator of the Foster Hall Collection at the Stephen Foster Memorial, worked with the film's producers. Root oversees the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Stephen Foster materials.

Foster's music includes such standards as "Oh, Susanna" and "Old Folks at Home."

Root said he is pleased about the film's authenticity, and the way it explores the meaning behind Foster's music. "They took pains to get a sense of Foster's milieu — his concerns about his life and career," Root said. "They delved much more into the mind of the man, and they took on what many other filmmakers have apparently avoided — a serious look at the ways in which Foster's music was later interpreted and made to mean different things. They looked very carefully at how 20th-century culture 'racialized' a lot of the music, when in Foster's own time it was a matter of class, not race, that he was criticizing."

According to Root, the opinion that some of Foster's lyrics perpetuate racial stereotypes could not be further from the truth. "In fact, Foster was trying to show a common humanity. He tried to get people in genteel homes to sing those lyrics and embrace them as their own. And so, slowly, they would take on the notion that these slaves' concerns are their own concerns."