“Singers are storytellers,” says Roberta Gumbel, “but rarely do we get the opportunity to help create the stories we are telling.” dwb is constructed out of two interwoven strands, one personal, one external. In the central narrative, we meet the Mother: a baby is born to happy parents; the Mother frets at the father to put the all-important car seat in the back seat of the car properly. From here on, she relates to the child first in its seat facing backward in the back of the car, then facing forward, then eventually the child sits next to her in the front seat on the passenger side. This is how time is marked; the car is ever the center of their lives. The Mother scenes move forward in time from the beginning to the end of the piece. Threaded between these scenes, punctuating them, are telegraphic vignettes of contemporary news bulletins or personal stories introduced in spoken words by the musicians. They have a different instrumental color and texture from the Mother scenes, as if a channel has been switched. The singer sheds her role as Mother and, taking on different characters (young, old, male, female), relates specific but generic events. These all describe, without comment, the dangerous world beyond the Mother’s control, and the increasing anxiety building up in her mind as her “beautiful brown boy” approaches age sixteen and his much-desired independence. How does she summon the courage to hand him the keys to her car and let him go?

(from Susan Kander’s website:  http://susankander.net/works/dwb-driving-while-black/)