Last summer, I ran into my friend and composer/drummer Davu Seru and he asked me if I would be interested in singing in a piece he was developing called Dead King Mother.

He called it a blues for chamber ensemble and told me that it was inspired by his aunt Arlene who raised his cousins on her own after her husband, Davu’s uncle, was arrested for killing a white man (John F. Murray) the evening that Dr. King was assassinated.

Davu told me about seeing his Uncle Clarence at his aunt’s funeral. His uncle thanked his aunt for raising their children, stating that he had been way and that some people at the funeral knew where he was. Davu was struck by the fact that his uncle didn’t offer any kind of explanation or apology to Arlene and wondered what she might have said to Clarence in response.

I was particularly interested in the piece because it raised questions about the experiences of the people, especially the women, around these historical actors (King and Uncle Clarence).

…

Flash forward to September of last year and the first rehearsal for the piece. This was the first time I heard elements of the piece and ensemble, which at the time I believe was marimba, piano, percussion and clarinet(?). Davu had outlined the melody I would sing, but the text was not set. He sang the vocal lines for me in a clear, flute-like head voice.

In January, we began rehearsing the piece with the full ensemble. The complete chamber ensemble would include flute, flugelhorn, clarinet, bassoon and tuba, as well as vibraphone, percussion and piano. And Davu would conduct the piece, not perform it. When asked about the instrumentation, Davu said, “I write for the instruments I want to hear. *smile*

…

We debuted Dead King Mother in February and then performed it on the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination. Members of Clarence Underwood and John F. Murry’s families were at all of the performances.

As we rehearsed and presented the work, I noticed that audiences kept wanting the piece to be something other than what it was. Davu had a written a blues, but someone asked him if it was an aria from a larger opera (and when/if he would be writing the “rest” of it). Davu was clear that he was not composing an opera. Someone else suggested ways it might be staged in future performances, leading me to assume they viewed Dead King Mother as a theatrical work. John Murray’s second cousin, Jack, who attended all of the performances, noted that the story felt like a Greek tragedy.

And a number of people expressed a desire for the piece to tell “both sides of the story.”

I thought to myself, “How many women and people of color die or are murdered in how many stories and no one asks a single question about them?” Take the cliched black man who dies first in so many movies. How many of us ask questions about him? And then there’s the myriad murdered prostituted women in movies and TV about whom we usually learn … nothing.

More to the point, Davu had written a personal composition about his family. In one of the talk-back sessions, he was asked why he hadn’t included the perspective of John Murray’s wife. He replied, “I didn’t know that woman.”

…

It was an educational and emotional experience to work on Dead King Mother. I have lived in Minneapolis for a long time and I didn’t know any of this history until I began work on this project.

At the April 4th performance, Arlete Little facilitated a panel that included elder Spike Moss, Davu and Clarence’s daughter, Kelly. Mr. Moss talked about what Dr. King meant to black people living in the Jim Crow north and the impact of his assassination and Kelly talked about her relationship with her parents. One of the things she said during the panel was that on that chaotic night, her mother was always right next to her. Later that even when I sang the line in the piece, “I don’t know how to be a man, just a mother with my babies my side.” I could almost see six-year-old Kelly with her mother on that memorable night.

Meeting the members of these families resonated most for me. My mother is an archivist and my sister is a historian and I thought of them both as I engaged this piece. Davu and Dead King Mother changed my relationship to historical events. As my sister knows and teaches, we create history. We are its actors and its subjects. And, as Davu says in a promo video he filmed for the piece, “I thought I would try to figure out some way to write music as history.”

You can read more about the events that inspired the work and listen to excerpts on Davu’s web site.

It’s a new year; time for a new keyword.

As you know if you’ve spent time here, each January I pick a “keyword” for the year.

I call them keywords because a in the world of the interwebs, a keyword is connected to other words and other ideas.

When you search using a keyword, you get a range of results that are all connected to the keyword. When I pick my word for the year, it helps me to notice occurrences and outcomes connected to my word.

Recently a friend asked me how do I keep my keyword in the forefront throughout the year?

The honest answer is I don’t. *smile*

For me, keywords work kind of like vision boards. In choosing my word, I spend time reviewing the past year and considering what I want to accomplish/receive/explore in the year ahead, but once it’s chosen, my keyword pretty much runs in the background.

Take last year.

…

My word for 2017 was FLOURISH. And flourish I did.

In fact, of all the keyword I have chosen (9 to date), this one manifested the most concretely for me. Just look at my metrics. *smile*

• I spent more time performing. In fact, I performed 32% more than in 2016.
• I worked with nearly 30 new collaborators/musicians.
• I doubled my out of town performances.
• I broadened my range of projects, including singing a contemporary black opera in July and being invited to sing in an operetta which will premiere this February (Dead Mother King, Feb 23 & 24th).
• I filmed and released a video about my artistic philosophy and upcoming recording project.
• I held 30+ songwriting sessions to create/discover the songs for my upcoming album
• I successfully completed my first Kickstarter campaign.
• I went into the studio the week before Christmas to record my solo album, “What the Music Says Do.”

I knew I had a lot to accomplish in 2017 and that I wanted it to be a year of planting seeds for future growth. Now, I have noticed in this self-supervised life of mine that movement often creates momentum, so I worked to perform more, write songs and raise funds.

That said, I did not wake up each day thinking “Okay, time to flourish.” In fact, it felt like a number of the opportunities in which I participated this past year simply “showed up.”

(In truth, I was being invited to participate based on work I had done in the past, but the fact these projects came this year, I attribute to the power of my keyword.)

…

So on to 2018.

While it no longer feels original to tell you that I had trouble finding my keyword for the year … I did.

Having come off a big year with a big ending (three days in the studio with a dozen musicians), I spent the first weeks of January napping and getting ready to go back to school. I began to listen to all the audio recorded in December (twice as much as most projects my engineer told me *smile*).

So while I knew it was time to pick a new word, I felt too busy and too tired.

I jotted down ideas as they occurred to me:  visible, up, clear, rest, self-care, balance, learn, appear, savor, etc. I even briefly considered if it was time to reuse a past keyword. But, given this is the 10th time that I’ve chosen a keyword, I had faith that the right word would come.

It took longer than usual, but my keyword for 2018 is REPLENISH.

replenish — v. to make full or complete again, as by supplying what is lacking, used up, etc.

v. to supply (a fire, stove, etc.) with fresh fuel.

v. to fill again or anew.

Looking for your own keyword? Here are some ideas:

share, focus, explore, allow, release, start, finish, relax, birth, flourish, savor, simplify, balance, create, dare, prosperity, plant, discover, nurture, wellness, nourish, creativity, discipline, perform, shimmer, power, present, authenticity, beam, be, embody, imperfect, willing, rejuvenate, unpack, …

This post first appeared on Dec 4, 2017 in The Spoke published by The Albright Institute.

When we name something, we create it — a reflection on cultural identity and authenticity in music

I have not named very many things in my adult life. I do not have children and my pets have usually arrived with names already firmly in place. As a black, African American, biracial woman, however, I well know the importance of language and names. Ours is a history of being unnamed, renamed, and mis-named. We personally and keenly understand that the names we give people, animals, even things, inform how we view, receive, and interact with them. Therefore, when it came time to name my album, I knew that its name had work to do. It needed to hold this group of songs individually and collectively. It also needed to speak to its genre, jazz.

I have been working full-time as a singer for a decade. In this time, I have learned that as an artist, I have the responsibility and privilege to create art. My most recent artistic undertaking — writing and recording an album of original jazz songs — stems from this understanding. As I began work on my project, I resolved to write the songs that “arrived.” In other words, I did not decide to write an album of love songs, or songs about the seasons, or songs in certain keys. Instead, I chose to work through each of my song ideas as it presented itself, in the way that it presented itself.

Some songs came easily — a lyric and melody would arrive and I would follow them down their musical path until they reached their destinations. Others came in pieces or in dreams. Some were insistent. Others were reluctant to be revealed. In the end, I have written a collection of songs about my love for family and friends, about expressing — and being — one’s true self, and about living as a woman of color. To say that this collection of songs is varied might be an understatement.

So. How to name such a project? Names like “Songs I Wrote” and “Untitled” don’t do the work. As important, they cannot convey the rich complexity of what jazz does. For me, jazz sits at an intersection of the sounds, history and feeling of its many, many icons and the tones, stories and needs of present day jazz makers and listeners. The history and formation of jazz include combining the familiar, the new and the available in inventive and alternative ways.

My album’s title needed to hold all of this, to name all of this.

…

I am not quite sure when I came up with the title “What the Music Says Do.” I know it was not my first idea for a title (or my last). I kept the name to myself for weeks, but the more time I spent with it, the more convinced I became that this was my title. It captured my experience of creating the album. My belief that an answer can always be found if I simply listen for the music and then, without ego or agenda, do what it tells me to do.

But names are funny, and sometimes they do things we don’t expect. When I launched my Kickstarter to crowdfund support for my work, the album’s name became public and people started to ask questions.

“Did you mean ‘What the Music Says’?”; No, I didn’t.

“Did you mean ‘Do What the Music Says?’”; No, not really.

“Should the title, perhaps, have a comma? As in, ‘What the Music Says, Do’.”

This last gentle query was from my mother, a former writing instructor. I am grateful to her for posing this question because in our conversation, I discovered that I was absolutely certain that this title has no comma.

As a black woman writing songs in an African American musical genre, it feels important to honor the syntax of the name of the spiritual that inspired my album title — “I’m Gonna Do What the Spirit Says Do.” My choice of the name “What the Music Says Do,” pays homage to one of the African American musical traditions from which jazz descended, spirituals, while resisting a frequent desire of dominant culture to tidy, correct or anglicize black language. I see the same desire to tidy, correct and anglicize jazz. A black art form, jazz is rooted in oral and aural traditions. This is not because black people were not or are not educated enough to write this music down. It is because this music (jazz) is a language in its own right. Dissecting it or notating it, often results in subjecting this language to a Western, European idea.

Jazz is transmitted from mouth to ear; from instrument to body. When I perform, I am sharing the jazz language with you — a language with its own syntax, semantics, and lexicon that cannot fully or faithfully be transcribed. The songs on my album are quite literally my voice. I have done what the music says to birth this album.

And I am the one who names it.