Incorporating spoken word, violin, piano, hip-hop, folk and dancing all together beautifully as one piece of art, spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph and composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, or DBR, are performing their concert, Blackbird, Fly, at NC State. The unique duet is performing at Titmus Theatre through NC State Live followed by an open discussion with the artists. The duo held its first performance Tuesday night at 8 p.m. and will again perform tonight at 8 p.m.
Blackbird, Fly is a touring performance in which both Joseph and Roumain narrate stories about their Haitian heritage, fatherhood, African culture and “black joy,” as Joseph said. Joseph narrates his accounts through spoken word, storytelling and dancing while DBR tells his through violin playing, piano playing and singing.
Beyond their music background, Joseph and Roumain are both educators. According to NC State Live, Joseph has lectured at more than 200 universities and has been an adjunct professor at Stanford and Leigh. DBR is currently the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center ArtistinResidence at the University of Houston and a Center for Art and Performance Resident Artist at UCLA.
Joseph and DBR sat down between rehearsals to talk about their compositions, their Haitian heritage and their identities as artists and educators.
How did you two start working together?
DBR: We have known about each other’s work for probably about 10 years, and we met about five years at a commission piece with the Atlanta Ballet. He did the words, I did the music and there was dancing on stage. So we’ve been working together since 2010, basically with one major commission a year. This is our first duet piece. I’m pretty sure it’ll tour from now until next year, and then in 2017 we’ll have another major opera commission, and then we’ll see what happens after that.
How would you describe Blackbird, Fly?
MBJ: Well, we call it a concert for voice, body and strings, and I think that it’s just that. It’s part concert, but also part revival. It kind of moves at the speed of life, which is to say that whatever it is that you’re reading right now, this concert engages, analyzes and expands upon that. So it’s a hyper-contemporary concert.
You all have been working on bigger commissions and projects, so how did you decide to do a duet?
DBR: I think we both had the idea. It made sense because we were doing these larger pieces, and we clearly wanted to duet. In the theater world, you’re always balancing unrealistic dreams with practical realities. So in a way, we’ve had dreams with big institutions, the Chautauqua symphony piece for example, “Meditations on Raising Boys.” It was me, Marc and a 100-piece orchestra behind us and a 20-voice chorus of young boys for 40 minutes. These are big works, significant commissions, and in some ways, they’re unrealistic dreams. It’s kind of crazy that that even happened. We were very fortunate. We’ve been fortunate to have our unrealistic dreams become very real, practical realities. But we wanted to do something that is practical reality, something that is small, self-contained. In the theater world, you’re always balancing big pieces with small pieces. So this is small, portable, tourable.
MBJ: I would say that it is revolutionary for the two of us to be partnered the way we are.
How did you create these compositions?
MBJ: There was a lot of pre-composed texts in many instances, and Daniel was responding to that text. There’s a little bit of improvisation within the set score for each night and for each performance. So every performance we do, we do just slightly different. I think that’s also part of the premise of us coming together. The partnership enables both of us to be more flexible in our form. It’s like having another instrument for both of us in the band to play off of. I would say we do it with these compositions and with intention and with emotion. I believe emotion is practical, I believe that emotion is tactical. So, the first thing is the intention, the second thing is the emotion. So out of that comes the language, the spoken language. The spoken language gets convened to Daniel, and Daniel ties some pre-composed work and some original work. That’s how it all came: intention, emotion, practice.
How is Haitian tradition and culture important to your art?
DBR: My music is melodic, percussive and tonal, and a lot of Haitian music is melodic, percussive and tonal. My music is built on a lot of beautiful melodies, a lot of Haitian music is built upon beautiful melodies. I think my music is oftentimes in service to something else. A lot of Haitian music is in service to a singer, to a storyteller, a ceremony, a religion. Haitian music is never in a vacuum, I think it’s always being played. It has a really specific role. I think Haitian music is like any folk music, and I think any great folk music is a time capsule, a cultural diary, a cultural pulse, so I think a lot of what I do sounds old and new at the same time. I use a lot of effects and I try to bend the violin into something else. Oftentimes, it doesn’t sound like a violin.
MBJ: 1804 marked the triumphant military success of the Haitian revolution. So, Haiti was the first country in this hemisphere where slaves rebelled against the colonial power, in this case, France, and successfully won their independence. So there’s a tradition of not just the military instruments, but the cultural and the spiritual instruments being tools of liberation among Haitian people, and I think part of the vitality of the work is that it’s drawn from that spirit. There’s a way that we advocate art in the public realm, in the public space as a means of education and perhaps creating other avenues for access across culture. So I would say that part of this music, austere as it might be or as elegant might be, it’s also liberation music. There’s a sense that I get from the two of us together of yearning to be free, and that to me is another way the art forms connect to Haitian heritage.
How would you describe yourself as an artist? How would you describe yourself as an educator?
DBR: They’re very related. As an artist, there is questioning, exploring, wanting to learn, wanting to remain relevant, challenging myself. Part of the job is to grow, evolve, deepen and twist. There’s nothing static about being an artist. Art is change, art is challenge, art is pain, and after all of that, hopefully, art is love, and comfort and enough. But there are no promises in art. Art is a bi—. It will kick your a–. It will try to kill you, and some people have died for their art. To be an educator I think is to do those same things but in the service of something or someone else. So you’re challenging the classroom, you’re provoking them. In the best sense, education is synergetic. It’s unilateral, not bilateral, in the best sense. We’re learning from one another. It’s challenging. It’ll kick your a–. The best teachers I felt were trying to kill me. There were no promises; then get to the end, there was beauty, there was love and there was more than enough. Maybe that’s the difference.
MBJ: I would say that in terms of being an artist and an educator, I really do collapse the two. I actually think more of myself as an educator, and I think of art as a means. Honestly, I think more of myself as a culture maker. My graduate work is in education; I believe in liberatory pedagogy, there’s a Brazilian educator, Paolo Freire, who is extremely influential in my life. Freire really teaches the gift of affording language to others. Hew says the way that we find ourselves in elevated states, or the way that we culturally evolve is to land language in the mouths of the oppressed so that they might speak their existences on their own terms. So the way that I found that is most able to happen is if I’m doing less telling than asking. So both in my art and my educational practice, I try to tell a little bit and ask a lot.
Why do you think story telling is important?
MBJ: it’s very oppressive to be in an environment where only one story is being told, only one story, one point of view, one culture, one standard of beauty is being affirmed. So we tell multiple stories because there are multiple realities on the planet. In fact, the more we limit our capacity and the freedom of speech that we enjoy, the more ecologically dangerous it is for all of us, and the more socially dangerous it is for all of us. So storytelling doesn’t just keep the self alive, it responds to the natural call for diversity.
Let’s say we were at a pond, and there were 10,000 species at the pond, and we wiped out everything but the frogs. Eventually, the frogs would die out too. Like when you take out one part of the ecosystem, there are ripple effects all down the ecosystem until eventually the ecosystem dies out altogether. So think about this in terms of our stories, in terms of our humanity. Every time we lose a language, every time we suppress a cultural story, we impact the broader ecosystem. So it’s not just my life that’s impacted when I’m silenced, it is everybody’s life that is impacted.
What stories are you telling in Blackbird, Fly?
DBR: We’re in a theater; we’re surrounded by it right now. A story is being told from the stage. That’s why it’s so great that this is piece is here. Marc is brilliant in telling a wide range of stories. We’re starting with our own Haitian ancestry and expanding out all the way into outer space and back again.
MBJ: We’re telling stories of fatherhood, global travel, immigration, prayer, religion. We’re telling stories about our hometowns, about our children. We’re telling stories about the country that we live in and the country that our parents were born in. We’re telling stories about love.
Why did you choose to perform at NC State?
MBJ: We were very, very privileged to perform at NC State. NC State and Daniel have had a longstanding relationship. He’s been coming here and performing here. I think this might be the sixth or seventh time in the course of 10 years. So this engagement is part of a continuum, part of a natural trajectory. We are actually honored that NC State has chosen to maintain the relationship with us.
