How Darley Became the Great Horse, Lexington
In the 19th century, horse racing was America’s most popular sporting event, and the Bluegrass was its center. Foaled in 1850, the horse Lexington became the most famous horse to ever come out of Kentucky. His outstanding career on the track and at stud might never...
The Chronicle of African American Horse Industry
The National Chronicle of African American Horse Industry In the future, this space will feature monthly blogs highlighting African American men and women who had significant careers in the horse industry, and the importance of the Kentucky Association track in the...FROM OUR FACEBOOK
This feeling was reinforced a couple of weekends ago, when I lucked into a ticket for an extraordinary performance at Nashville's Schermerhorn Symphony Center. It was the premiere weekend for The Jonah People: A Legacy of Struggle and Triumph, the newest work by 74-year-old jazzman and composer Hannibal Lokumbe. This epic celebration of the African-American spirit as it has survived from the Middle Passage through slavery and Jim Crow and into the age of bebop is not your usual diva/divo vehicle. Instead of foregrounding its tragic heroines and freedom-seeking heroes, Lukumbe’s scenes unfolded like tapestries, with a booming chorale leading each turn of the harrowing story and an ensemble of dancers, soloists and supporting players raising images of slave auctions, field rebellions and rituals enacted at lost souls’ graves. From the teeming chaos of the slave ships to the defiant dance of joy centuries later in Old Plateau Cemetery in the historic community of AfricaTown in Alabama (where Lokumbe himself joins in the gathering every year that reclaims the souls carried there on the Clotilda), The Jonah People shows how survival relies on connection — with family, with a people, with the spirits that survive the deaths of their bodies through the stories that must be nurtured and passed down.![]()
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The Jonah People featured star turns — particularly by the mezzo-soprano Debo Ray, whose singing as the matriarchal ancestor of Lokumbe’s own family bled beyond classical technique to encompass the historical range of Black vocalizing. And when Lokumbe himself joined the ensemble in a scene set at Minton’s Playhouse, the Harlem club where bebop’s resistance rhythms were incubated, the audience anointed him with cheers. But what it did best was raise that magic Wong had mentioned — the dissolution of even the most brutal hierarchies through the invocation of a multi-generational “we.”![]()
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I needed to feel this spirit of immortal human community right now. So much pain and disorder runs through all of our lives today — random catastrophes, preventable acts of violence, the creeping question of whether democracy will even survive the damage of the past few years. Herron’s composition, Wong’s words and Lokumbe’s epic all point toward a way — not a way out of today’s mess, but a way to endure it. A way that has room for the least acknowledged voices next to the most celebrated ones. Together, those voices can lead a listener toward something new.![]()
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The Jonah People: A Legacy of Struggle & Triumph
www.thejonahpeople.com
Few artists have addressed the complexities of African American history as truthfully, movingly, and powerfully as Hannibal Lokumbe. This spring, the Nashville Symphony presents the world premiere of ...
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Thanks to a great group of kids, and those involved with PAL.
This content isn't available right now
When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted.