Google Doodle celebrating composer Edmond Dédé, November 20, 2021.
On November 20, Google marked the 194th birthday of Black Creole violinist, conductor, and composer Edmond Dédé (1827-1901) by replacing its homepage logo with a “Doodle” in his honor. On the Google Doodle page, Kyle Bradshaw notes that the artwork was commissioned from Haitian-American artist Lyne Lucien, and “depicts Edmond Dédé conducting an orchestra, with a violin and clarinet behind him.” Born in New Orleans as the son of a bandleader, Dédé was a young violin prodigy. But with few opportunities as a Black musician in the United States, he left to study at the Paris Conservatory, later moving to Bordeaux, where he established himself as a conductor at the Grand Theatre. The ballets, operettas, overtures, and songs he composed were popular in France but gained little traction in his home country. Google reports that many of his compositions are preserved in Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale and U.S. universities.
