Black Metropolis looks at the way in which culture is constructed through music. It creates a musical language connected to the social movements and sonic atmosphere of our time. Interweaving a dramatic narrative - from scenes of modern urban culture to red-as-fire-no-nonsense sermonizing from a prophetic protagonist - the tragic and heroic testify in ecstatic celebration of Black Culture.
Music, Poetry, and Spoken Word have coalesced into what I hope to be a transformative act that instills a sense of joy, redemption, and dignity. Four Tableaux or “Scenes” serve as a framework or an audio guide as the work journeys through varied aspects of Black Culture or as I like to say, its dressing up human experiences with style and elegance.
Black Metropolis is deeply rooted in the American Mythology. During the Great Migration, African Americans settled and created enclaves in major U.S. cities... New York, Chicago, Washington D.C, and Philadelphia among others.Black Metropolis attempts to shed an artistic light on this rich history using music as a tool to address social issues, building an architecture of sound around the feeling of Black Culture.
Formulated as a Ballad Opera, Black Metropolis uses American musical forms and genres to storyboard our collective struggles through the power of story, music, and culture. Transcending boundaries of geography, class, and race — all the universal concepts present in all cultures — Black Metropolis is a sonic meta-culture; culture that is about culture.
These objectives are stylized and coded within the music. From spirituals to Hip Hop/Rap, there is a connection between coded musical communication and resistance. African American music is a form of political, economic, and ideological empowerment. Black Metropolis advances this tradition by transmitting sonic perspectives on important social issues— a model of freedom through sounds, words,and movements in the body coded by the black community, all speaking to the’“figurative nature in black culture,” in the words of Henry Louis Gates.
While the work showcases a dazzling fusion of musical styles and genres, Hip Hop as a cultural and art movement becomes a central, stabilizing force in Black Metropolis. Its ascendancy to the mountain top of American popular culture reflects its broad reach socially and its potential to gather around the table a new generation in pursuit of our ever elusive More Perfect Union.
When we engage with Hip Hop, as an artist or a listener, we’re making an affirmative and hence exemplary and heroic response to the complexities of life and humanity. When we play, dance or design, or speak in the language of Hip Hop, we are also contending with all the possibilities and solutions of our existence.
When we embrace the dynamics of heroic action and aspirations, we create inspirational works, transform communities, and ultimately bring people together.
Hip Hop, Fight the Power, don’t stop!
Hip Hop, Walk it-Talk it, won’t stop!
That heroic chant is our Lead-Sheet for the evening!
— Darin Atwater, composer