Touring Revolutionary America

NARRATOR: Francois Jean-Marquis de Chastellux is a soldier, philosopher, and writer. By the time he arrives in America, he is already well known in his native France for his theories on happiness. A major general in the French expeditionary forces, Chastellux accompanies General Rochambeau to help fight for the American cause during the Revolution. During this time, he writes a diary that will eventually become the book's Travels in North America in the years 1780, 1781, and 1782.

Benjamin Franklin calls him a soldier philosopher who, “Contributed so extensively by his sword, as well as by his pen, to the public happiness of the United States.” Thomas Jefferson thinks him the writer of, “The most flattering account of America that had ever been written.” And to George Washington, as well as these other great men, Chastellux is a dear friend.

Chastellux's famous Travels in North America contain one of the most intimate and personal accounts of Washington during the War for Independence. Today, on the Secrets of Washington's Archives, we'll explore the letters and writings of Chastellux to show you rare, unguarded moments of friendship between these two great men. 

And now your host, Dr. Anne Fertig.

ANNE FERTIG: Today, we’re talking about a very special set of books written by one of Washington's most cherished friends, Francois-Jean de Chastellux. And joining me today to talk about these books and the friendship between Chastellux and Washington is Dr. Iris de Rode. Iris is one of our research fellows here at the library. In fact, she's been the recipient of four research fellowships. Her specialty is in the French-American alliance during the American Revolution, and she's the author of a biography on Chastellux based on her discovery of the unpublished Chastellux archives. So she is the person to have here today talking about the books Travels in North America. So welcome, Iris. 

IRIS de RODE: Thank you so much for having me at this lovely podcast. 

FERTIG: Now, you're one of our research fellows. So before we begin, can you explain what kind of research you do here at the Washington Library?

de RODE: Yes, so I have had, as you said, four different fellowships. So I've been doing a lot of different things here at the library. The first thing I would want to say is, of course, the research of the books that you have here, so the collection of what you call the secondary work, so the books of historians that I've written, of course, of a lot of different topics on the American Revolution, on George Washington, his era, everything you can imagine, which is a great resource for scholars, especially if you're from Europe, because in Europe we, of course, have the books as well, but often they're scattered in lots of different libraries and it's hard to have such a large collection on the topic that I am really studying being of course the American Revolution and specifically George Washington and the French Alliance. And so to have a collection that's so extensive on that specific topic makes research just very much easier, you could say. 

I've been doing some research on the microfilms that you have here of some of the correspondents of George Washington. I've been doing research on the map collection that you have here. And so it's just a large collection that helps to understand George Washington and his era so much better. 

FERTIG: Well, that's such a great point because in this series, of course, we're talking about the books owned by George Washington. And I think when people come here, they think of all of the manuscripts we have written by Washington and his family or a map collection. But we actually do have quite an extensive collection too, of books written about George Washington, including some of the most recent winners of the George Washington Book Prize, and of course our microfilm collection. So for somebody researching George Washington, this is really the place to be. So how did you become a research fellow here? 

de RODE: It's more like a personal story. It's not necessarily that much related to institution or anything, but I started my PhD research based on a discovery of the Chastellux archive.

I can tell the whole story of that discovery, but because of the discovery of the Chateau de Chastellux archive in the family castle called the Chateau de Chastellux, being the castle of Chastellux in Burgundy, where the family of Chastellux still lives. So it started with that. So it really started with the discovery of the Chastellux letters, leading to the family deciding to sell a few of these letters, and then of course, Mount Vernon purchasing them. And so that leads to the fact they're now at the Mount Vernon Library in that special vault with a lot of other manuscripts, but they're like, I think it's eight letters, if I'm correct, of George Washington that are kept here in the collection, which is one of the important things, of course, is they're very well preserved here. So that's good to know and it feels safe. 

FERTIG: We're all here very excited about the Chastellux discovery and the research that has come out of that. And especially because Washington and Chastellux were such close friends. And Chastellux in his travel log, Travels in North America, gives a very complimentary portrait of Washington. And we own Washington's copies of both the original French version, as well as the eventual English translation. Both sets of those books are kept here at the Washington library. So to start us off, can you tell us who Chastellux was and what is his relationship with Washington? 

de RODE: François-Jean de Chastellux arrived in America as the major general of the French army under General Rochambeau, meaning that he was second in command mainly in charge of logistics but also of the relationships with the American army. So that's what you call the liaison officer between the two. And then in the same time he was also known as the philosopher of the Enlightenment. He had written a few books, amongst which one that was famous at the time called De la Félicité Publique (Being on Public Happiness). And so what's interesting about Chastellux is that he represented both this expertise of the French army, of which he was part since he was himself 12 years old, but also he represented this side of the French philosophy and the French enlightenment and all these ideals that they had in common fighting for American independence and for democracies, republicanism, freedoms, liberties, all these things. And so the combination of both being a soldier and a philosopher makes Chastellux an intriguing figure of that time period and explains his relationship with George Washington more particularly.

FERTIG: So what was Chastellux’s first impression of George Washington when he met him? How did the two meet? 

de RODE: So Chastellux was doing this first travel he was involved in. He arrived in the state of New York and was very close to what's called the Passaic Falls today. So it's this huge waterfall that he's describing, but he's eager to go further because he knows George Washington has an encampment there with a beautiful home and he's there. And so when he's traveling around this beautiful little river, he sees in the distance, he sees a tall man and Lafayette. Lafayette being his cousin, he recognized him immediately and sees this tall man, he's like, that is His Excellency. And you're right, you can feel his excitement. So he goes closer and then Lafayette takes time to introduce this uncle to Washington, which is by the way an important fact, because of course Washington is interested in meeting the older uncle of his beloved Lafayette.

So then Chastellux is of course immediately taken into the headquarters of George Washington in his beautiful dining room and he's saying that he found the company still at table. So they just had had dinner and so when he came in they brought him new food, they brought him new wine and then he says, “A few glasses of Claret and Madeira accelerated the acquaintances I had to make, and I soon felt myself at my ease near the greatest and the best of men.”

So this of course relates mainly to his pure admiration of George Washington that he already had before meeting him, but that was very much confirmed during this first meeting. And then he describes in the following pages that they actually spent about two to three days together. There was a lot of rainfall, so they had to be together in the same home for a full day, which Chastellux was very happy about because they could talk about all these different subjects. And they discover that they both have a huge interest in agriculture, in the progress of agriculture, the progress of science, discoveries. But also in the same theater pieces, the same music. So all these different topics that they share really lead to a deep friendship. And as Washington would say, at the end of the campaign in 1782, when Chastellux leaves back to France, he writes about their friendship, which he calls, “The real deep friendship that neither time nor distance can ever eradicate.” 

FERTIG: And he was actually friends with several of the Founding Fathers, wasn't he?

de RODE: Yes, he was. He was friends with Thomas Jefferson, very close to him too, which based on the correspondence between the two, they met here in America during the revolution. But then when Jefferson became the ambassador, Chastellux really introduced him to different circles. So that's an interesting and important friendship that will also resonate with the story of the travel diary that Washington had, because Jefferson played an important role in the publication of that book. 

Another friend was Benjamin Franklin. Of course, Benjamin Franklin was in Paris before the French Alliance was signed, and so was mainly responsible for that alliance, of course. And Chastellux and him met quite frequently in the different salons, which you can, of course, understand as being quite this elite within the French society in both the military, academic, but also, of course, aristocratic circles. Another friend of Chastellux was here in America, Thomas Paine, for instance. They met in Philadelphia.

He was friends with many of the officers of the American army, of course, the Continental Army. One may be more surprising because he's not American, but he's of course French. Lafayette, being in the Continental Army, was his nephew, so he was very close to him and leading to a lot of introductions in this Continental Army by Lafayette, who introduced him personally to George Washington. So that's a good friendship too. What's also interesting, another side of the friendship that Chastellux had were not only military or political, they're also academic and scientific. So when he was traveling around, he met a lot of the residents at the time of the colleges. So the College of William and Mary, the College of what's now the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, and Princeton, also when he came back from the American campaign. So you could summarize this, that he had his military friends, the political friends, and then also this more intellectual friends here in America. 

FERTIG: Very well-connected man, and very well-regarded too. Very popular. One thing I love about the friendship between Washington and Chastellux in particular is when, you know, Washington is typically characterized as a very reserved man, and you can see that in a lot of his letters. He's very cautious about how much sentiment or how open he is. He's very cognizant that people might be reading his letters, and yet his letters to Chastellux are always so warm and friendly, and I believe when Chastellux got married, Washington's letter to him is one of the most ebullient letters I have ever read from Washington. He's very excited, he's congratulating his friends. So you can always really read the kind of warmth and friendship between them. 

de RODE: Mm-hmm, very true. And it's indeed quite the unusual tone for George Washington to be warm, to be friendly, to be even funny, because he makes a lot of jokes in the letters to Chastellux. One of the first jokes is about wine, because apparently they just like drinking together, and Chastellux was sending him some French wine, and Washington makes jokes about that. You could expect that they just talk about military details, as Washington is doing with all the other Frenchmen. If you look at all the other French officers he's writing to, it's most of the time really purely military. But with Chastellux, there are some military details, but it goes very fast always to the fun jokes about wine, the jokes about what they've done together, what they've discussed. They discuss a lot of politics, their common dreams. They have a common dream for world peace that they discuss in the different letters.

So Chastellux gets married when he is himself 57 and he falls in love, you could say badly, with this woman, madly in love with a younger woman who is herself 28 at the time, so quite the difference. Washington makes jokes about the fact you can only get it, just like the smallpox, you can have it only once in your life and so that kind of jokes. But so what's interesting about George Washington and Chastellux's relationship beyond their military cooperation they find a lot of common interests. And I think this is one of the reasons the French-American alliance in general works so well, is that some of the officers found common ground. They find more than just their military reasons for being, let's say, friends, or at least being close. They find that they have so much more in common, which of course at the beginning is not that clear because they're from such a different cultural, social, linguistic backgrounds.

And Washington and Chastellux, as soon as they meet each other, they realize that they're interested, of course, in their cause, the military defeat of Great Britain. But they're also very much interested in the development of agriculture, the theater of the time. They're interested in music. They're interested in enlightened subjects overall and scientific improvements in progress of humanity, all these different things. So that really binds these two different men together, and they just really like to talk to each other.

FERTIG: Just to read a portion from the letter that George Washington sent to Chastellux on his marriage, Washington writes in this letter, “A wife? Well, my dear Marquis, I can hardly refrain from smiling to find you are caught at last. I saw by the eulogium you often made on the happiness of domestic life in America that you had swallowed the bait and that you would as surely be taken one day or another as you was a philosopher and a soldier.” So you do get to see a little bit of that humor sneaking through the letter. 

de RODE: Yes. And I think that really tells you a lot about this friendship that the two men had. As I explained, the different types of things that they had in common. That is quite rare for the French officers, because for instance, Rochambeau and Washington, of course, are quite close because they have to cooperate for their military common cause. But there's not much more to that. First of all, they can’t speak together because Rochambeau doesn't speak English, Washington doesn't speak French. So there's that big language barrier that is very hard to overcome to have a sincere friendship. 

But Chastellux speaks English fluently. So that's one of the main reasons that he is the first actual general of the French army that can directly speak to George Washington without intermediaries. And their friendship develops quickly over time. They meet quite frequently. The first meeting they have is in November of 1780 when Chastellux is traveling around and so Lafayette introduces him to George Washington. They spent about three days together then, but then they meet over the course of the year after they meet about, I would say, five times for a few days. So they get to know each other seriously quite well. 

FERTIG: So let's talk then about these marvelous books, the Travels in North America, of which, as I said before, we have both Washington's French copies that Chastellux sent him, as well as the English translations that he purchased for himself once they were available. These books in particular have a very interesting story attached to them. How did they come about? 

de RODE: So we have to go back a little bit to understand the specific books. So first of all, it was not the first book that Chastellux published. Chastellux published a lot of books in the course of his life. His first book was when he was about 20 years old on inoculation against a small box, and then he started to write many different books about topics such as opera, music, theater, but also poetry. And then made a lot of travels and published already about some other things he's done. And so when he was in America, he arrived of course in July of 1780 with Rochambeau's campaign with all these like about 6,000 soldiers. And so as soon as they got into Newport, Rhode Island, in their encampment, Chastellux realized that he had to do research to understand where they were. Rhode Island was of course quite far from a lot of the other states and especially he did not really understand who the ally was, what they're supposed to fight with.

There were a lot of prejudices from before. They had their religious differences. All these different things led to a very complicated alliance. They had been enemies in the previous world, the Seven Years' War. So as soon as the French arrive in Newport, they realize that they're not very welcome by the people from New England, at least, and they are really wondering, what can we do to make this alliance work? And one of the solutions that Chastellux proposes is actually to start doing a research trip, a reconnaissance tour throughout the different states in order to understand, where are we? Who are we fighting with? We're fighting against, but especially, who is our ally? And this is an enlightened approach that Chastellux has, and the fact he's gonna do all these travels he's writing about after, is not just sort of a leisurely trip. It's really research for his army and for the campaign he's part of. But if you dive a little deeper into Chastellux's actual motivations, it's really because he needed to understand where he was in order to wage the war. And he's collecting. all the information he can, so on religion, on culture, on different customs, the differences between the different states, the differences between the state constitutions. He's wondering about the future of all these states, all these different elements he's writing about in his private papers, and he's not publishing at all everything he's done. So that's the background. 

FERTIG: And I have to say, just to cut in here, it is a very deep text. Like there's a lot of information there, and it's really one of the best glimpses you can have into what was life in society like at that time in this part of America. But at the same time, even today, it's intensely readable. And it absolutely is the type of book that if you're out there listening to this and you wanna pick it up, you can pick it up and you can read through it and you can really enjoy all of those same observations and get a sense of how Chastellux was trying to understand the American people and American culture as it existed at the time.

de RODE: It really gives you this peek into this early republic. He calls it the nascent United States, and he's fascinated by what he's seeing. He had imagined a lot of things about this new country, the new world when he was in France, based on a lot of the other travel diaries that were often invented in France. A lot of information about the United States was circulating that was not necessarily based on facts or observation. It was more based on people imagining how that was. So for him to be able to actually go there and observe this new nation was extremely interesting to him, and especially also to understand the differences between the different states, the different backgrounds of those that were living in the different states, and he is really describing that in great detail. Indeed, it feels like you're traveling yourself, especially because he's recording all these little details, such as what they're eating, how they look, what they're saying, what their interests are, and so on. And so, the travel diary, in order to understand what it was, so he does three different travels, they're separate travels.

Chastellux travels, so the first one is in the winter of 1780 and 81, so from November to January. And then the whole Yorktown campaign is not included and he continues later because he does two other separate trips afterwards through a lot of different states. So in them what he's doing is describing the people he's meeting, the towns he's visiting, nature that he's observing, the different state constitutions as I said, the political side of the story. But he's also very observant of military details, he describes a lot of older battles. So he describes the battles that have been fought by the Americans against the British in previous campaigns when the French were not there yet. And these are details that are maybe not the most inspiring for most readers of today, but of course, they're extremely important at the time because he was understanding what did the Americans do before the French arrived? What can we learn from the losses from the battles that were actually won? What can we learn from all this? So it's a research mission for him that leads to a very interesting picture for us. 

FERTIG: And what's even more interesting is he is gathering all of this information, and this is information for the benefit of these French allies who are here. But he didn't exactly intend for these to be read by the general public, is that right? 

de RODE: Yes, well that's a debatable question. So the first thing that I would answer is I think there's two sides to the story. He did intend it for a very restricted audience.

FERTIG: So he wrote the three different voyages or different travels at different times, of course, because he wrote them really on the spot, which is, by the way, one of the reasons. It's a more vivid picture than you could have from other journals of the same time period, because a lot of the soldiers or officers that wrote them wrote them 40 years after their travels. Chastellux did the opposite. He wrote it exactly at the same time, and he sent it around to his friends almost immediately. So the one that he wrote from the first voyage specifically, he decided to have 23 copies printed on the Newport press, that was a military press that the French had actually brought with them. So he published 23 little booklets in order to spread to his friends in France. So this means that he sent letters, and these are all kept in this private archive, so you can totally retrace to whom he sent them. He sent them to his family just to inform them of what he had done, because that was interesting for them to learn about their relative traveling around in this new mysterious country.

But he was especially sending them to his friends, the philosophes, the salons that he was part of, of the Académie Française he was also a member of, because everyone was so curious to know more about America. They were interested in the French campaign, but they were especially interested in, what is this new country? And so the fact that Chastellux is one of the very few of these philosophers that actually is able to travel in America. You have to imagine, of course, it's a very hard, complicated trip at the time. You have to sail for about six to eight weeks to America, so it's not something that people usually did. So for him it's very special to be there, and for him to be able to report everything he sees to his intimate circle, that was his goal of his travel diaries. 

However, they very quickly started to spread, and this is where I would say you have to be cautious as a historian, he was writing to everyone, I don't want to publish this, but he knew very well that letters or travel diaries at the time would spread very quickly, because letters, first of all, were not necessarily private, as they are maybe today. They were quite often public. They were read aloud. They were spread. They were copied. They were sent through different circles. He knew with his letters. And it would especially happen with the little travel diary that he had written. 

FERTIG: And why might he not have wanted people to widely read these little travel diaries? 

de RODE: Well, he would himself say that he does not want to be famous. He doesn't want to be openly recognized for playing an important role in the American Revolution. For him, a military duty is something that, as an aristocrat from a very old family, it's just your duty. It's not something you boast about, you don't talk about it. He does not want to be portrayed that way. He wants to be remembered for his ideas, not for his military deeds. Another reason is that he's not necessarily as positive as you might hope or think. Of course, he became close to a lot of the people that he met. He admired many Americans, but he also really despised a lot of them as well. 

He is from an aristocratic French background. His culture is all about following all these strict aristocratic rules. He's grown up in that world in Paris, at court, in the different castles. And so arriving here is a shock for him too. He's imagining this beautiful American republic of which he finds a lot, by the way, lots of pieces. But at the other hand, he sees a lot of poverty, which he did not expect. He sees different cultural values and ideas and ways of people getting along with each other, that's for him, totally shocking, because again, he's looking through his lens of an aristocrat with the high values of the Parisian society and considers people here quite backward, or for instance, he thinks their language is a very poor language. There's a funny passage in the travel diary that he's comparing the beautiful words the French had invented for many different birds, and here in America people say bluebird, redbird and yellowbird, for instance. 

And that is shocking to him. He's like, why are they not putting more effort in the beauties of nature or culture, and why are they so interested only in money? He says stupid or idiot people often, and that can be shocking for us as a reader, but it can be understood in his historical context, but it might have been that he did not want all that information out. He's describing some people very specifically, just saying that they're very ugly, like physically not very attractive in his opinion, or that they're not interested in anything else besides money, so they're just terrible for him. 

For instance, Thomas Jefferson writes to him about that problem. He's like, some people are commenting that you're being too negative about people specifically. He calls it one of the best accounts of America of the time, but he's really encouraging him to take off a few passages where it's being too negative. 

FERTIG: And yet he's very honest throughout. And yet he writes about George Washington in a very complimentary fashion. And has this beautiful description of Washington in which he says that Washington is “Brave without temerity, laborious without ambition, generous without prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous without severity.” Which is just such a beautiful way of encapsulating Washington. 

And I know Washington did receive these books first in French, and he had to have a friend, David Humphreys, translate part of it for him, because Washington did not speak French. And that's another one of my favorite letters from Washington, because he says to Chastellux that, first he says, “I've been unavoidably betrayed into speaking of myself, and wishing not to resume that subject.” So he just starts off with me like, I don't want to talk about myself. We know that Washington was very uncomfortable sometimes with the grand displays of pomp and the parades that celebrated him. And you can see him shying away from it here. But he thanks Chastellux. He's very complimented by the account that Chastellux gave him. So what is that story of the books that we now hold here? How did they find their way to Mount Vernon? What makes those particular books so special?

de RODE: So these particular books, Chastellux published them first in French, in French language. And so he sent a few of his copies specifically to people. So he sent his own copies to George Washington to inform him of what he had written on him and on his campaigns and everything. He sent another to Jefferson. He sent some around. And so they were circulating quite widely, because everyone was intrigued by these books. Then, of course, quite quickly, the English translation came. I have to admit, I don't know how George Washington got the English version, but I would assume he bought them himself. 

FERTIG: I believe he did. He bought them himself. He made a point of going out and getting them. 

de RODE: Yeah. And what's interesting about what you're saying about the complementary tone, because as I said before, some of the passages are negative about some other people. For instance, Martha Washington is portrayed as a wonderful woman, but her physical appearance is not what Chastellux particularly likes, to put it mildly. He's calling her fat. He's calling her plump. He doesn't really understand why George Washington is with a woman like her, because he is particularly sensitive to the beauty of women, as a Frenchman would, you would think. And he's himself always surrounded by these beautiful Parisian ladies and commenting a lot of American women that he considers very beautiful too. And so you can see him being a little bit shocked almost by how George Washington the general can have someone that is not that attractive.

He does call her the German princess, though. So he considers her as something aristocratic or something nice, but unfortunately not for his beauty standards, at least. But that was, of course, censured. So he didn't put that in the actual publication under strict guidance by Jefferson, who was saying, get that out, please. 

FERTIG: I believe Washington makes a remark in one of his letters that kind of alludes towards saying, “I hear that you made some corrections to some of the unauthorized versions out there. And I think that was wise.” And he doesn't say it directly, but you do get the sense that he's probably alluding to the remarks made in the book, perhaps about his wife. 

de RODE: Probably. From that point of the negative descriptions, when he's positive about someone, he really is. That's sincere. Chastellux is not someone that would just write something positive about someone if he doesn't mean it. You can see that in his whole life in all his letters.

But especially in George Washington, it goes beyond admiration. He is very heroic in his ideas, and he is representing an ideal for Chastellux that he was hoping to find in Europe, actually. So you can see the descriptions of George Washington can also be read as this mirror to French society, where most of the generals or those in high ranks in the army are not necessarily very talented or very good at what they're doing. They're mainly selected by, for instance, money or their family names. And then when he sees this really talented general that does this for the cause of his entire country and for the nation that they're building, he really sees him as a symbol for hope of progress of humanity, for the fact someone has to be talented, has merit, like the meritocracy, all these kind of ideals are represented for him. He was not an aristocrat, of course, he was a farmer. 

Of course, a lot of things to say about that farmer, it's not just a small farmer of course, but overall for Chastellux that represents a lot of hope for the future of humanity that a farmer can become a general and can be such a leader. So you can understand it in that way too, it's not just he likes the man, he likes the symbol and for him Washington really represents this leader and someone who is above all the rest and represents more something that he would imagine for an enlightened future and that is Washington to him.

And so at the end, when Chastellux writes a letter to George Washington, announcing his departure back to France, he's very emotional about it and writes a beautiful letter to George Washington to tell him about his deeper friendship and his relationship and how that evolved and how he admires him as a general, but also as a friend. And then George Washington replies in a beautiful letter too, in which he says about the role that Chastellux played and about their friendship. And then he says, “I truly say that never in my life did I ever part with a man to whom my soul clave more sincerely than it did to you." 

And this is very sincere. This is not just one of these formulas of the time. It is a sincere letter because you can base it on the other letters that they write to each other, that this friendship is indeed a special one for George Washington and Chastellux themselves. And they write later on too, that they really hope to see each other again. Washington has hopes to go to France, which he never does, but then Chastellux also hopes to come back, which he also never does. But you can see this friendship continuing even after their military mission. That often, by the way, is not the case for the other French generals or officers that Washington writes to because their correspondence quickly fades away after the war. But with Chastellux he continues quite a few letters to continue this friendship. 

FERTIG: And it's a friendship that has been immortalized in both manuscript and in print. So thank you so much, Iris, for joining us today for a fascinating talk about the friendship between Washington and Chastellux and these books. And if you would like to see these books for yourself, you can check out the video companion. Iris has joined me once again to show off both the French and English versions of the books, including the maps and prints inside of the books. And you can check out this video series also called Secrets of Washington's Archives at georgewashingtonpodcast.com or on our YouTube channel. 

NARRATOR: The books featured in this podcast include both the English and French versions of Travels in North America in the years 1780, 1781, and 1782 by Francois Jean-Marquis de Chastellux.

The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon currently holds both versions in its collections. The French volumes were purchased in 2013 with funds provided by Karen Buchwald Wright. The English volumes were purchased in 1942 by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. The Secrets of Washington's Archives is a production of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Hosted by Dr. Anne Fertig. Researched by Dr. Iris de Rode.

Narration and audio production by Kurt Dahl at CD Squared. The music featured in this podcast is from the album No Kissing Allowed in School, produced by the Colonial Music Institute. You can listen to more from this album and other productions of the Colonial Music Institute on Spotify.