In 2021 I posted content related to celebrating the commemoration of Junteenth as an official federal holiday. I would like to continue this discussion one year later by offering readers of this blog more resources that they can access both to put this holiday into greater perspective and as part of Black Music Month. It is especially important to note the global impact of Juneteenth. The investigative research that I have conducted over the past few years on the Gullah Geechee and Afro-Latin diasporic  musical and religious connections, for instance, demonstrates shared histories and struggles concerning emancipation and equal rights… including moments where obtaining these freedoms and rights meant physically fighting back against oppression.

 I must also add that, like the opera Omar that I discussed in my last post, musical perceptions of African American musical identity are constantly changing to promote greater visibility in performative spaces often deemed socially excluded. Consider works like Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2017 rap album DAMN and Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop: the Pulitzer Prize-winning and 2022 Tony-winning musical that openly explores Black Queer identity and trauma. Consider, too, the importance of the efforts behind the Los Angeles-based group the Re-Collective Orchestra. Since their establishment in 2018 by Matt Jones and Stephanie Matthews, the ensemble aims for greater inclusiveness and representation within both the classical and popular music realms, as many of the orchestra members had initially collaborated on the film score to the 2018 Marvel film Black Panther.
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One must also not forget the constant musicological research concerning Black and African diasporic composers to expand the knowledge and repertoire beyond Scott Joplin and William Grant Still. In many instances, that involves searching for works from farther back in time beyond the twentieth century. Musicologists have recently rediscovered pieces of the musical legacy from the Afro-Portuguese Renaissance composer Vicente Lusitano (born circa 1520). In addition to composing choral works, serving as a Catholic Priest, and later converting to Protestantism, Lusitano also wrote extensively about Western Music Theory and Acoustics. His sacred choral pieces, like the motet Inviolata, integra, et casta es from 1551, employ the polyphonic vocal writing of the era while still maintaining tonality: in this case, using a musical texture of eight voices. Several compositions by Vicente Lusitano, which have been restored and notated by Samuel Brannon, are currently available to the public via the IMSLP musical score website.  

Over the years since I started this blog, I have discussed the impact of the African American, BIPOC, and African diasporic musical connections across the world and across myriad genres. Kicking things off with Black Music Month, I must expand upon my discussion of the role that contemporary classical music plays in these cultures: specifically, how BIPOC composers in the twenty-first century apply classical music genres like opera to not only demonstrate inclusiveness by fighting against stereotyping and historical inaccuracies, as have been the case for works like Porgy and Bess and a recent opera about Emmet Till.[1]  These composers also explore previously overlooked facets of history or social struggles and directly communicate these audiovisual experiences with audiences.

Such has been the case with the opera entitled Omar, a new work from Rhiannon Giddens and Micheal Abels. As a Grammy-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist, Giddens uses her musical talents to explore the African diasporic relations to European and American folk and popular genres. Abels is best known as a film score composer for the critically acclaimed Jordan Peal Horror films Get Out (2017) and Us (2019). Their collaboration on Omar (with Giddons as the librettist/musician and Abels as the composer) presents an important work about preserving enslavement narratives, in addition to addressing religious belief systems as forms of communication and hope through struggles. Listening to Giddons and Abels speak with Martha Teischner at the 2022 Spoleto Festival USA, Giddens and Abels set Omar Ibn Said’s life story to music by basing the libretto on his recently recovered autobiography, which sheds light on both his decades in captivity from Senegal to the United States in the nineteenth century and the impact of his devotion to Islam. The collaboration proved both a challenging and important experience in helping to elevate the operatic genre and help to erase the stigma of exclusivity. It does not sugarcoat the horrors and pain of African enslavement through tense moments in the music via depictions of cruelty and physical violence. Even though Omar is presented to viewers primarily through Western orchestral and folk instruments and sung in the English language through rhyme schemes, Giddons and Abels still maintain cultural respect by incorporating chanted passages from the Quran in Arabic to stress the significance of Omar as an enslaved African, as a Muslim, and above all as a human being.


[1] The backlash, petitions, and boycotts behind the Mary D. Watkins opera Emmett Till, A New American Opera (2022) had more to do with the libretto by Clare Cross, which included a fictional character and suggested a "White Savior/Guilt" narrative in the work.