Documentary -- Work in Progress.
When Edmond Dédé, a pioneering 19th-century Creole composer from New Orleans, escapes racial segregation and builds a musical legacy in France, his 1887 grand opera vanishes—until its first-ever performance in 2025 sparks a cross-continental journey to restore his place in music history.
INTERVIEW IN THE SUD OUEST IN BORDEAUX, THE CITY WHERE EDMOND DÉDÉ LIVED
Marguerite de Bourgoing’s documentary could be called “In Search of the Lost Maestro.” The French filmmaker was living in Los Angeles in 2017 when she was hired to edit a video for a church. The soundtrack recounted the story of pioneers of African American music. One excerpt caught her attention: the name of the composer, with its French resonance, Edmond Dédé, and the title “Mon pauvre cœur.” “The fact that he lived in Bordeaux for thirty years definitely hooked me,” she explained during her visit to Bordeaux in July.
She would later learn that “Mon pauvre cœur” is the title of the earliest known melody composed by a Black Creole composer (1852). Around the same time, Sally McKee’s biography of Edmond Dédé was published: although studied as a significant figure in the history of African American music in the United States, the composer remains almost unknown in France, and especially in Bordeaux, the city where he spent most of his professional life.
Born in 1827 in slaveholding Louisiana, Edmond Dédé belonged to a French-speaking “free” family of color. His father, a clarinetist, encouraged young Edmond, who excelled on the violin. A victim of discrimination, Edmond Dédé went to Mexico for MUSIC until the Jim Crow laws, which enforced racial segregation, forced him to leave the United States, like many other Black artists of the time. He landed in France, where no legal restrictions were tied to skin color, and attended classes at the Paris Conservatory as an auditor — a dream that was out of reach for a Black man in the United States at that time. He then conducted the orchestra at the theater in Bourges, before settling in Bordeaux, where he would remain for thirty years, as accompanist and composer at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, at the Alcazar theater on the right bank (later transformed into a dance hall and then apartments), and at the Folies Bordelaises (today the Fnac on rue Sainte-Catherine).
At the music-hall Alcazar, he was mentored by Martial Léglise, known as Bazas, a colorful impresario famous for his tirades against the theaters of Bordeaux. A virtuoso violinist, Edmond Dédé infused his Bordeaux orchestras with accents drawn from his mixed-race heritage. So much so that, by the late 1880s, “there was not a single Bordelais who did not know Edmond Dédé and had not listened to him and applauded him at least once,” reported L’Artiste de Bordeaux.
Long considered lost, the score of his four-act opera Morgiane ou le sultan d’Ispahan was rediscovered in 2011 in the collections of Harvard University Library in Cambridge. The opera was performed for the first time in January 2025, at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, where Edmond Dédé had been baptized nearly two centuries earlier. Morgiane ou le sultan d’Ispahan carries historical, cultural, and social significance that goes far beyond its score.
“He straddles both the world of high art music and the world of café-concerts,” explains Marguerite de Bourgoing. His work blends the European classical tradition he learned in Paris with his Creole and American roots. Long considered lost, the score of his four-act opera Morgiane ou le sultan d’Ispahan was rediscovered in 2011 in the collections of Harvard University Library in Cambridge. The opera was performed for the first time in January 2025, at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, where Edmond Dédé had been baptized nearly two centuries earlier. Morgiane ou le sultan d’Ispahan carries historical, cultural, and social significance that goes far beyond its score.
“If the score was rediscovered, it’s because Edmond Dédé quickly understood the importance of publishing his music,” notes Marguerite de Bourgoing. And with good reason: in thirty years, he composed no fewer than 150 dances, 95 songs (including “Cora la Bordelaise”), ballets, and operettas.A belated recognition
This year, Marguerite de Bourgoing is in residence at the Villa Albertine in New Orleans for her research on Edmond Dédé. Her goal: to bring recognition to the composer. “The only reason the Alcazar of Bordeaux is known on the other side of the Atlantic is because of Edmond Dédé. So why is he so little known here? The Washington Post, The New Yorker, CBS — in the United States, all the major media have covered the rediscovery of his opera.”
In 2027, it will be the bicentennial of Edmond Dédé’s birth; he died in 1901 in Paris. Marguerite de Bourgoing’s documentary will be ready by then.
Produced during the 2025 Villa Albertine residency in New Orleans
Dir: Marguerite de Bourgoing
Voice over: Melissa Laveaux
Additional cinematography: Zac Manuel, Oren Paley
Photography: Camille Farrah Lenain
Archive: Amistad Research Center
Featuring: Patrick Quigley, Mary Elizabeth Williams, Sultana Isham, & Givonna Joseph