Monthly Archives: February 2021

On a Saturday night in early June, Shard Davis, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Connecticut, was sitting on a couch in a rented apartment in San Diego, scrolling through her Twitter feed. She was in California to do research on a project that was funded by a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowshipplans that had been affected somewhat by COVID-19 and the widespread protests for racial justice. Davis herself had gone to a Black Lives Matter protest in La Mesa the previous weekend. The event had started out peacefully but turned ugly when California Highway Patrol officers squared off with thousands of protesters on the I-8 freeway. There were reports of bottles thrown, tear gas unleashed, arson, and looting.

A week later, after attending another protest, Davis still couldnt calm down. As she sat alone on her couch, ruminating about the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and news coverage of the La Mesa protestthe crowd had been mostly white and Latinx, she said, but the media made it seem as though Black folks were the ones destroying propertyshe felt more and more enraged.

She asked herself repeatedly, What can I do? She was already thinking about what it would look like for universities to cut ties with police departments. I think I was just drawing the very obvious connections, she said. Academia is seen as a very liberal and progressive place, but systemic racism is running through all of these different institutions.

Although she was not an avid Twitter user, Davis came up with the hashtag #BlackInTheIvory, thinking it might be a good way for Black people to share their stories about racism in her sphere of influence. Folks tout the liberal ivory tower, she told me. They hide behind it.

She texted a friend, Joy Melody Woods, a doctoral student in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, to see what she thought of the hashtag idea. I love it, Woods replied from her iPhone. Already tweeted it out. Davis followed suit, using the hashtag while retweeting a physician named Shaquita Bell: Black individuals in the United States have endured events in our everyday life without an audience or validation of our experiences.

The next morning, Davis and Woods found their notification in-boxes filled with hundreds of tweets from Black academics and graduate students, sharing their stories of exclusion and pain. By Sunday night, #BlackInTheIvory was one of the top twenty hashtags in the country. #BlackInTheIvory is being asked during your first week of college if youre sure you can handle it, many said, or being asked on campus if youre in the right place or lost. #BlackInTheIvory is having campus security constantly ask for your research-lab badge, residence-hall identification, and/or drivers license. Marc Edwards, now an assistant professor of biology at Amherst College, recalled that, in graduate school, at another institution, a dean suggested he wear a tie to class in response to incessant profiling. #BlackInTheIvory is being thrashed in student evaluations for discussing racial injustice, Danielle Clealand, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote. And my personal favorite: #BlackInTheIvory is being asked to serve on endless diversity committees and write endless diversity reports, without regard for ones labor or time, also known as the Black tax. To drive the point home, Woods and Davis posted Venmo bar codes on their Twitter feeds for anyone who might care to contribute.

The movement took off, with feature stories in Nature, The Chronicle of Higher Education, NBCNews.com, and the Boston Globe. Davis and Woods created a Web site, which sold branded merchandise and launched an effort to match Black graduate students in need with donors. Not the Diversity Hire, read the text on one coffee mug.

Youre finally seeing people opening up and sharing these experiences, Woods said. We had been feeling like we were alone.

When Woods and I spoke in June, she told me the story of her own experience as an incoming graduate student. In the fall of 2016, she was the only Black student on her track in a masters program in public health at the University of Iowa. The college had no Black faculty, and Woods said that professors made it clear that she didnt belong, that she wasnt smart enough. One professor told her directly that she didnt have the skills to be a graduate student.

I was feeling maybe I am dumb, she said. I thought I was going insane. I would just be on the floor crying.

Toward the end of her first semester, Woods tried reporting one faculty member to the universitys Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, but the complaint went nowhere. Its hard to prove microaggressions, she said. Thats why we think were going crazy.

In Woodss second semester of graduate school, a private psychologist tested her for learning disabilities. She discovered that she had three: a reading impairment, a visual-spatial processing disability, and a nonverbal learning disability. The psychologist told Woods that she didnt know how she had managed to finish high school. Yet her professors refused to provide learning accommodations, as is required by law. (In response, a spokesperson from the college said that we have made progress since 2016, but it is not enough. We are determined to do better.)

So she left. Walked right across the bridge, as she put it, transferring to the College of Education, where she found three Black professors, an Asian-American adviser, and far more Black students in her classes. I was never the only anymore, she said. The course readings also featured more diverse authors, and, because they explicitly addressed issues of inequality, it was easier to have open conversations about racism. In her new program, Woods completed a masters degree in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies with an emphasis on the sociology of education.

But, in many ways, Woods is an exception. Both of her parents have bachelors degrees in electrical engineering, and her two older sisters have graduate degrees in medicine and science. Many other Black students leave graduate programs in despair, but Woods felt that her family simply wouldnt accept her defeat.

She persisted, but her education came at a cost. These experiences are traumatic, Woods said. They can be isolating and emotionally battering. The problem of being the first and the only Black person in any institution is that being alone makes it much easier for white majorities to dismiss ones perceptions.

As a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, I experienced the same isolation and resentment that Black women are now once again shouting about from their Twitter-feed rooftops. I know all too well what #BlackInTheIvory is about. I was already writing about my time in graduate school when I came across the hashtag. It took a moment for its meaning to sink in. For so long, I had recalled my experiences in isolation, pushing them to the corners of my memory and doing my best to make them small. #BlackInTheIvory reminded me that, like Woods, I wasnt alone.

In 1988, I was the first Black woman to enroll in my Ph.D. program in ten years. I was there, really, only because my undergraduate mentor, Elliott Butler-Evans, a Black professor in English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, had insisted on it. He had attended the program and received his own Ph.D. there, some years earlier. He told me about the dearth of Black women with tenure in the U.C. system. In his eyes, getting a doctorate was my civic duty. So I went to graduate school.

There were seven incoming students at the history-of-consciousness program at U.C. Santa Cruz that year: five white men and women, me, and a Chicano from Los Angeles named Raul. One afternoon, the conversation in our first-year seminar turned to race.

Our professors for the seminar, Donna Haraway and Jim Clifford, were two of the most formidable minds I had ever met. The conversation was stimulating, as I recall. Something about how racial meaning is socially constructed, perhaps, rather than strictly biological. I was only just beginning to wrap my head around post-structuralism and theory, and the concepts were still fresh and new. But it soon became apparent that a young woman in our cohort was becoming agitated. Ill call her Mary. She shifted in her seat as though biting her tongue.

Its just that Im Italian-American and... I get really tan in the summer, Mary said. She paused, searching the room. It seemed that no one had a clue what she was getting at. Raul and I exchanged confused looks, waiting for her to complete her thought.

I mean, I get even darker than her, she said, crooking her chin in my direction. And thats when she hit me with it. So... I dont understand, why does she get to be Black?

I wish I could say that anyone had a good response to what Mary had said. If they did, I dont recall. I remember only the silence.

I was isolated in a program in which not a single student or faculty member looked like me, or my mother, or my grandmother, or anyone in my family. All around me were hippie-like surfer students, white kids who found it perfectly acceptable to walk the woodsy paths barefoot on a warm day, or to wear their straight hair in clumped mats. For so many of them, college was an inevitable part of growing up. They treated the privilege with a certain casualness that I, as a first-generation student, did not share.

And, although I didnt think of it that way at the time, I crossed a bridge that year in search of bolstering, just like Joy Woods. I made my way across campus, over to Kresge College, where I found the writer Gloria Anzalda working on a doctorate in literature. Gloria called herself a Chicana-Mexicana-mestiza. She had edited a seminal book for Black and brown feminists, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, that was mandatory reading in womens-studies courses across the country. I also found Ekua Omosupe, an African-American single mom from Mississippi. We three became friends. I was no longer alone.

Im putting together another anthology, Gloria told me one day, and I was wondering if you have any essays or poems youd like to contribute? She did that thing which is so often missing from our lives as Black scholars and academics. Nurturing.

It doesnt have to be polished. Just send me what you have. My essay, which I called Light-Skinnedded Naps, appeared in Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras the next year. It was my first published piece of writing. I was twenty-three years old.

Not long afterward, the literature department brought the novelists Toni Cade Bambara and Buchi Emecheta to campus, as distinguished visiting professors, and my life changed again. I became their teaching assistant, crossing campus regularly to commune with my newfound Black community.

One day, after class, I walked with Toni back to her office. The day was bright and impossibly bluewhich made her next words seem incongruous. She pulled a small AM radio from her pocket. Always carry a short-wave radio, she told me. For when the revolution comes. I loved her commitment to revolutionary ideas, and to Black people, and to me.

I plopped myself down in a chair in her office, continuing our conversation. Mostly, I was hungry for her affirmation, which she gave freely. Years later, I found an old cassette tape of an interview she gave for my dissertation, on nationalist desire in Black television, film, and literature. Playing it back, I was mortified to discover that I had done most of the talking. Toni listened patiently, offering mm-hmms in all the right places.

With Buchi, a Nigerian novelist, one day in particular stands out in my memory. She stood before a class of white students, pausing to survey a Douglas fir outside the window.

For you, the trees and the forest are very beautiful, she said. Beau-ti-ful, she repeated, enunciating each syllable with her thick, British accent. But for me I see something more in the forests.

Uh-oh. I surveyed the room, sensing what was coming.

I see fear and danger. She pronounced this last word dan-jah, allowing it to linger in the coffee-scented air for a beat or two. You just dont know who might be behind those trees. The class considered her words in silence. She was right, and they knew it, although I doubt that a Black person had ever said this to them before in quite that way.

And, if something happens, well, then... Im just another Black woman gone. I wouldnt even get two sentences in the newspaper. Buchi paused, allowing students to sit with their discomfort awhile. One rustled papers. Another crossed and uncrossed her legs.

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How Black Lives Matter Came to the Academy - The New Yorker

ELLSWORTH A nonprofit that helps inmates recover from substance abuse could be allowed back in the Hancock County Jail starting Friday, seven months after the agency lost access over its support for Black Lives Matter.

County Commissioner Bill Clark, Healthy Acadia Executive Director Elsie Flemings and Sheriff Scott Kane met Monday morning.

Clark said Monday afternoon that as a result of Monday mornings meeting, a memorandum agreement is being drafted and should be finalized by Friday.

Sheriff Kane canceled the contract after Healthy Acadia issued a June 10, 2020, statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Kane disagreed with allowing an organization in the jail that supports a movement that he says wants to harm law enforcement.

The Hancock County Commissioners met Saturday evening via Zoom, an online meeting platform.

Fleming reached out to me and weve set a date 9 oclock on Monday morning, that if we can get an agreement, she can start recovery coaching immediately, Clark said Saturday. Im confident we will have recovery coaching by the end of the day [Monday].

Commissioner Paul Paradis said he had talked to the sheriff earlier Saturday. He was a perfect gentleman, Paradis said.

Kane will be making a public statement at beginning of the commissioners meeting, on Tuesday [Feb. 2], said Paradis.Iview this as very positive and I want to thank the sheriff, Elsie Flemings and Chairman Clark for the work in re-establishing recovery coaching.

Recovery coaches, according to Flemings, provide an opportunity for inmates to develop an action plan for their release as well as work on their recovery.

The organization posted statements last summer supporting Black Lives Matter and the racial justice movement and criticizing racism and police brutality. Kane characterized the movement as seeking to harm police.

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Nonprofit barred for supporting Black Lives Matter may be allowed back in Maine jail - Press Herald

Vanessa Newman can remember exactly where they were when they first saw Emory Douglass work. They remember the sound of '60s jazz vinyls playing before heading to the grocery store with their dadan embodiment of their love for Black people as a Black queer kid navigating the world. Douglas's work was integral to the music and, really, every day of their childhood.

A revolutionary artist and the former minister of culture for the Black Panther Party, Emory Douglas was a formerly incarcerated youth who fell in love with graphic design in trade school and after attending San Francisco City College connected with the likes of party cofounder Bobby Seale. Together, they created The Black Panther in 1967, the newspaper reaching its peak with a 200,000+ weekly circulation. Also a living vessel of Black radical history and visioning, Douglas used printmaking and graphic design to best articulate the Black liberatory politics of the Black Panther Party via comics, illustrations, and visual propaganda.

Its fitting that Newman was so drawn to Douglas's work. This current iteration of young Black queer people building a new visual statement through the Movement for Black Lives looks to the Black Panther Party as a starting point. Designers like Newman and Fresco Steez, the former minister of culture at BYP100, uses the poetics of adornment, a clarity of political values, and a hunger for a new world that many deem impossible. These designers are melding together past, future, and current realities to make revolution irresistible. Douglas and his work have provided the blueprint for that liberatory design.

Joe AmonGetty Images

Anyone dedicated to a future that requires Black liberation must use all the tools available to make the fight visually, linguistically, and spiritually appealing to those invested in their own freedom. As Douglas stated in 1967 of his mission in helping to create the Panthers' newspaper, also with Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, "We were creating a culture, a culture of resistance, a culture of defiance and self-determination."

Like Newman, Steez is a designer dedicated to creating the visual language of this social moment. Born in Chicago, the community organizer is deeply involved with BYP100, a chapter-based organization founded in 2013 in response to George Zimmermans acquittal. Dedicated to advancing the Black communitys economic, social, political, and educational freedoms, BYP100 sees the future through a Black queer feminist lens. Throughout her time there, she designed all the merchandise for the organization, from hockey jerseys donning Lucille Clifton quotes to "Unapologetically Black" T-shirts inspired by Kanye Wests GOOD Friday music drops.

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Steez is also the former lead digital strategist at the Movement for Black Lives (or M4BL), where she recently designed bomber jackets, sweatsuits, and full regalia for fellows that speak to the continued defunding of the police campaign work. Further, she is currently working with Levis for its Black History Month capsule due out this month.

Steez began her design work at BYP100 as a reflection of two vital aspects of her life: community organizing and hip-hop. She thinks critically about what hip-hop culture means for organizing internally and externally. As a teenager doing organizing work, I was required to study the five elements of hip-hop (tagging, beatboxing, break dancing, emceeing, deejaying) and streetwear culture. And while we know that streetwear culture is Black culture, it has been commodified by all different identities of folks in order to build profit. This exploitation is compounded by luxury brands at the expense of Black and third-world people.

Steezs mother, Sheila Rollins, was a teacher by trade and matriarch of design by craft in Chicago. Steez follows a legacy of Black feminist ingenuity that keeps her rooted in the liberatory needs of Black people. My early understanding of how Black folks use visuals, fashion, aesthetics as a culture to resist poverty; to say, 'Despite the conditions we live in in this country, were gonna adorn ourselves in ways that glorify our experiences,'" Steez says. "We know that our clothes can be a vision for what our lives can be around beauty and around the full and expansive life that we deserve.

She continues, The thing that has inspired me in all the work that I do are the political histories and movements. What were the visuals? What was the culture behind them that was intentional? What gave them a visual identity to the community that they were working within?

The type of intentionality and care that Steez puts into her work is a deep nod to Douglas's work in developing a visual culture for the Black Panthers. As the party grew in notoriety and political acclaim in the late '60s, so did the surveillance of its leadership, namely the creation of COINTELPRO, a counterintelligence program focused on monitoring and dismantling the radical organizing work of the Black Panther Party by the federal government. These acts of intentional upheaval through COINTELPRO included everything from disrupting newspaper distribution to destroying the childrens breakfast program. These tactics of destruction are still ever present in the FBI's more recent creation of the Black Identity Extremists designation and the policing of Black activists across the country amid protests against police violence. The legacy of the suppression of Black liberatory struggle continues to this day.

We know that our clothes can be a vision for what our lives can be around beauty and around the full and expansive life that we deserve.

There is a cold eye of intimidation being used now to quell the fight for Black liberationa similar intimidation that killed and nearly wiped out the Black Panther Partybecause of the radicalization power that can happen with visual art. At the height of the uprisings this summer, there was a need for personal protective equipment, or PPE, which many didnt know how to fill. Steez and the digital team at M4BL knew that they could show up and keep people safe with masks, while also getting their bold statement across. These are new conditions to be organizing under, so we really thought about what piece actually supports their organizing work and clearly articulates their values, and the most relevant canvas in this moment was the face mask.

M4BL began sending out needed PPE to activists on the ground in seven major cities during the peak of the George Floyd uprisings, in early June. Masks with the phrases, Stop Killing Black People and Defund Police, were sent out nationwide. However, after shipping the masks, Steez was told that they allegedly had been seized by the federal government and were delayed until further notice. It wasnt until Steez and M4BL took to social media to spread awareness of the supposed PPE steal that the masks were returned to them.

If you have the grounds to seize these masks, then what grounds do you have to seize me? Right, in all seriousness.

The bold black-and-yellow masks were everywhere during the protests. Representative Ilhan Omar was seen wearing one, and former president Barack Obama even reposted an image of the masks on social media. But Steez is remaining focused on her core values of creating political timepieces that have clear principles.

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Like Steez, Newman is dedicated to tracing the connection between the history and principles of design to organized movements. As head of product at Somewhere Good, a digital platform from the same team behind Ethels Club, they are dedicated to creating a social media app that prioritizes a new way of being online.

Newman credits their precision in graphic design and the ability to gain access to resources to the strength of community organizing. I began to see that space making and community organizing are all design systems. Most of the Internet is not meant to build community; it was built to monetize people, they say. "The past two years of building brands, dreaming of flyers, and getting into the nerdiest details of typography always come back to finding what's been lost. I feel like Im always trying to reclaim a history that already exists.

The biggest lesson in a year of isolation has been that the vision for liberation is a collective work. In the midst of the months-long protests over the summer, Newman along with other Black designers began Design to Divest, "a Black-led collective of designers, artists, technologists, and strategists designing equitable futures by divesting from inequitable institutions," as stated on its website.

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However, Newman has no illusions about the visceral labor of dreaming. When youre Black and queer, you have to always be imagining. Explaining further, Newman says, I protect my brain at all costs. How do you do that in this world where you are supposed to stay disconnected from yourself, from your body, and from this world. All of these things are designed to distract us from our imagination.

Radical graphic design, whether it be through merchandise or visual aesthetics, has always been about writing a love letter to marginalized peopleto say without words or dialogue who you are, what you stand for, and how you are showing up for the next fight. It is a call to action after a year of grief and surface-level platitudes. Because of this struggle, Black queer designers like Steez and Newman are dreaming of what our movements must look like for a better world that many refuse to see.

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How the Radical Graphic Design of the Black Panthers Influences the Movement for Black Lives - HarpersBAZAAR.com

By The Washington Post 2h ago

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Caroline Kitchener

Washington - Gymnastics routines don't have official titles. But UCLA gymnast Nia Dennis likes to name hers anyway.

Her latest creation is called "The Culture," a tribute to the Black artists and musicians whose music she samples in the routine. "The whole thing, literally everything, is Black culture," she says. Dennis selected snippets of songs from Missy Elliot, Kendrick Lamar and Tupac, stringing them into an almost two-minute tribute to "Black Excellence."

The routine immediately went viral.

"I wanted it to be a celebration of everything [Black people] can do, everything we can overcome," said Dennis, a 21-year-old college senior. "Amid all the adversity and oppression we've been through, here we are."

In a sport dominated by White women, Dennis has gained a reputation for elevating the Black experience. Last year, it was a Beyonc-inspired routine that captivated the Internet and landed her on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

While Dennis aspires to be an Olympic gymnast, she says, she won't compromise on her commitment to "push boundaries." Her routines will always reflect who she is, she says - the daily joys and struggles of being a Black woman in America.

I spoke to Dennis about her latest routine and her plans for the future.

She has many.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What inspired this routine?

A: The Black Lives Matter protests were pretty much the foundation. This summer, I had shoulder surgery so I wasn't going out. I was trying to heal, trying to prepare for the season. But I was definitely out there in spirit.

Q: How did you channel Black Lives Matter into gymnastics?

A: The subject of Black Likes Matter is so heavy. It is difficult for people to talk about - and sometimes you have to meet people where they're at, with a celebration. Every single song is a major Black artist, musician, from different time periods. They had a huge impact on Black culture, which has also had a huge impact on me. So I'm just literally celebrating what they've done and having the time of my life.

Q: What is it like to be a Black gymnast in a very White sport?

A: When I lived in Ohio, it was me and maybe two or three other Black gymnasts out of the whole gym. I was surrounded by White gymnasts all the time, and a lot of the things we do are not the same. Hair was always a thing. People would ask, "Can I touch your hair? How does it stand up like that?" I had to deal with things like that my entire life.

Q: What else have you had to deal with as a Black gymnast?

A: Literally, body image. Body image is already huge in gymnastics - looking fit, looking lean, looking skinny. And I was always considered fat because I'm a more powerful, explosive gymnast. There is a certain style, a certain look, that people are looking for and I never fit the look. I got told my lines weren't pretty.

Q: Your lines "weren't pretty"? What does that mean?

A: So for example, on bars, you do a handstand and you're in a perfect line. Your ribs are tucked in, you're squeezed super tight, toes are pointed, everything down to a T. Clean lines. People were always telling me my lines were not clean because my legs were strong.

It's been a struggle trying to find myself as a Black woman in America, for real. I was constantly told I wasn't good enough, and I'd be trying to change to fit into the ideal image of what everybody else wanted me to be. Then I came to UCLA, a place where I can celebrate Black Excellence, celebrate me. I can't imagine any other place where I could be me, the way I am here.

Q: You've used the term Black Excellence to describe this routine. What does that term mean to you?

A: It's a highlight and a celebration literally of Black greatness, things that have had an impact on Black culture and the Black community. Every musician in my floor routine has had an impact, whether it was dance, whether it was activism, whether it was stepping, whether it was Greek things. That was just great. That was just excellent.

Q: What comes next for you? Are the Olympics in your future?

A: I tried out for the Olympics in 2016, and tore my Achilles just three months before. I was devastated. I really wanted to quit gymnastics. That being said, my Olympic dreams have not died. I have been training some elite routines to kind of prepare for the Olympics this year, just in case.

Q: Are Olympic gymnastics different from the routines that you do?

A: [Olympic gymnastics] have been so cookie-cutter, very ballet, very classical. I'm really pushing boundaries by doing things that are modern, new, urban. In college, you have the opportunity to show your personality through your dance and through your music.

There's already been a push of boundaries with Simone [Biles]. She uses music that changes a lot. It's really upbeat, high tempo. That's already a huge push of boundaries, and I just want to push it even further. I want to bring that to the even bigger stage.

Q: Why do you think Olympic gymnastics are so cookie cutter? Obviously people really respond to the kind of routines that you do.

A: That's just the culture of elite gymnastics. That's always how it's been. When I was doing elite gymnastics back in the day, it was like, "Don't smile, don't laugh, don't talk." It's so intense, so strict. When we're out there and it looks like we're robots, it's literally just because there's no emotion behind it. There's no feeling.

Q: Do you think Olympic gymnastics could change?

A: I hope so. I want it to. I want it to be an enjoyable place for literally every gymnast.

I want to inspire young Black gymnasts because it's really rare to see us doing this sport. I want to let them all know: You can do anything you set your mind to. No matter what people tell you, go after it, and get it.

Q: After gymnastics, what do you want to do?

A: I love dancing. In my free time, I'm always dancing. Honestly, in the middle of practice, I'm dancing.

Q: In the middle of your routine, you're dancing.

A: Exactly. One day I want to be somebody's backup dancer - maybe for Janet Jackson or Missy Elliott. I've felt like gymnastics has always defined me. But over the years I've learned that there are so many things I can contribute to this world.

I don't have it all figured out, but I'm getting there.

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WATCH: This Black Lives Matter-inspired gymnastics routine is going viral - IOL

In retrospect, the zany-keen ideas behind productions spawned by indie opera company Heartbeat Opera appear to be no-brainers. Celebrate the 250th birthday of a classical music composer who lost his ability to hear (yes, Beethoven) with the sound of revoked-by-incarceration and often-silenced voices of singers and volunteers from six prison choirs? Simple concept!

But the concept goes deeper than that. Engage professional vocalists and dancers to join the choirs and an exceptional eight-member band (with instrumentalists from the prisons featured in given selections) to create nine interconnected music videos? Yeah, sure thing! Add a contemporary slant by curating the cast and crew with an ear to young talent and eyes aiming to rectify historical imbalances when it comes to presenting people of color in classical music? For repertory, choose excerpts from Beethovens Fidelio, Negro spirituals, and musical works or words by Harry T. Burleigh,Florence Price, Langston Hughes,and Anthony Davis andThulani Davis?

Certainly, we could have thought of all of that ... except we didnt, and Heartbeat Opera not only thought of it all, they made the visual album project titled Breathing Free happen during a pandemic that had the artists rehearsing remotely on Zoom. The cast recorded individual audio tracks and videos that were filmed in separate locations. A music team compiled the recordings and a team of cinematographers led by filmmaker Anaiis Cisco collaborated on the videos that complete and connect the nine episodes forming the 45-minute work.

Presented with support from Santa Monicas The Broad Stage in a series of West Coast virtual premieres during Black History Month, Breathing Free is directed by Heartbeat Opera co-founder Ethan Heard. The song cycles Black voices arrive unfiltered and emerge without pretense from the rubble of events in 2020. Speaking raw truth to power, the lyrics and texts echo most unforgettably with the pain of George Floyds murder or arrive textured with the reverberations of a contentious political environment. In other sections, powerful unity demonstrates a people equipped to counter the forces of systemic bias perhaps these voices strengthened by the Black Lives Matter movement and how it spread around the world yet the music is rarely without grief-stricken tones lamenting twin pandemics COVID-19 and racial injustice that continue to disproportionately devastate the lives of black, brown and indigenous bodies. From the guest artists, the singers inside these six prisons and the voices of protest and resilience heard in traditional spirituals and newer compositions, the song cycles themes include strength, pain, dignity, honor, protest, betrayal, grace, and most hopefully, future dreams of justice and equity.

The program is presented Feb. 10 and 13 by The Broad Stage, and Feb. 2027 by the Mondavi Center. Follow the venue links for more details.

Each screening of Breathing Free is followed by a live panel discussion with the artists and advocates speaking on themes introduced by the film. Prison choirs participating in the project include Oakdale Community Choir, KUJI Mens Chorus, UBUNTU Mens Chorus, HOPE Thru Harmony Womens Choir, East Hill Singers and Voices of Hope.

Repertory presented in Breathing Free includes:

Balm in Gilead traditional,arr. Sean Mayes

Lovely Dark and Lonely music by Harry T. Burleigh, words by Langston Hughes

Malcolms Aria from X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X music by Anthony Davis,libretto by Thulani Davis, story by Christopher Davis,arr. Sean Mayes

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child traditional

Songs to the Dark Virgin music by Florence Price, words by Langston Hughes

Four excerpts fromFidelio music by Ludwig van Beethoven, libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner and Georg Friedrich Sonnleithner,arr. Daniel Schlosberg

Abscheulicher! (Abominable one! Leonores aria)

O welche Lust (Oh what a joy prisoners chorus)

Gott! Welch Dunkel hier! (God! what darkness here Florestans aria)

Euch werde Lohn (You shall be rewarded Act II trio)

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Beethoven Meets Black Lives Matter in Heartbeat Opera's Breathing Free - San Francisco Classical Voice