Dos Vatos Palabras

By Eren Isabel McGinnis

from Nougat Magazine (Lexington, KY) 

 A creative vortex of wood workers, artists, writers, activists, pundits, and professors swirls around the Bell Court neighborhood.  Peeking out my window I would see Dr. Everett McCorvey, Impresario and Opera Star, dashing off in a tuxedo to perform, or to give voice lessons and sing in Prague, or Vienna.

Throughout the years I discovered Everett and I have a lot in common; we are both Virgos with a love for nice clothes and can remain calm in dreadfully high drama fields. Everett is also a fantastic producer, thinks full-size, and not much stands in his way.  On a porch swing, we would scheme together and strategize about pooling our talents. 

My partner, Ari Luis Palos, and I began a collaboration of our filmmaking and Everett’s music and performance, with a documentary called “Impresario” about Everett’s life work of bringing talent to the stage.  We learned of Everett’s leadership of The American Spiritual Ensemble, a group dedicated to keeping the Negro Spiritual alive through performance.  The spiritual is an indigenous American art form, created in the fields and plantation houses of the American south.  Slaves were able to secretly communicate with each other while singing, giving them the power to console, heal, and resist. “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “We Shall Overcome” are just two classic melodies that continue to inspire.  Our goal was to create a documentary recounting the bitter history from which the spiritual art form arose, and explore what the music means today with The American Spiritual Ensemble. 

Brazil was our first international gig with the ASE and the performers would sensibly go to bed at regular hours, drink herbal tea, and rest their voices.  After hours, Ari and I would go out with Joey Prather, the piano player and Pablo, the Brazilian impresario, to drink passion fruit Caipirinhas while enjoying the samba and jazz clubs.  In Rio we all hiked to the top of Corcovado, where Jesus the Redeemer inspired the down Diva, Angela Brown, to perform an impromptu spiritual for the crowd.   

Raising money for independent film projects is a perpetual struggle.  We went to Spain to document the 10th Anniversary tour of the American Spiritual Ensemble and to witness the effect of the spiritual on international audiences.  We had a grand total of $127 in our bank account when I received a cryptic email from a potential funder, ITVS, an organization who fund projects for PBS.  Ari and I did an impromptu dance in the plaza of a dusty olive tree growing Spanish town to an audience of old men and a gas station attendant.  We later found out, the panel without a vision, had turned us down for funding, which is not really surprising, since the panel only funds about 2% of incoming projects.  We were lucky with this one, because even though the panel had turned us down, a few brave staff members at ITVS felt this was a documentary worth funding!   We then formed a partnership with PBS and KET, a local group with a long history of supporting our work.

Ari and I wanted to branch out stylistically with our new movie and create fictional vignettes to make the viewer understand and feel the history of the spiritual. Our first detailed shoot in Spain was to take place near the water, close to volcanic rocks, on the island of Palma de Menorca.  The inspiration was to have our actors use the energy of the ocean to remind them of their African homeland. Our actors were jetlagged but ready to go; we had all journeyed far to this enchanting spot, only to discover our batteries had been drained by Spanish eletronics, rather than being charged. A film crew is basically dead without battery power.  We decided not to panic or let our actors know there was trouble all around with no solution close by. Ari is a technical genius and quickly determined he could connect his camera to Everett’s rental car as both run on 12 volts.   He cut the cables with the corkscrew in our sound bag and hooked the camera up to the car battery.  I feared our very expensive camera would blow up when Everett started the car.  We did have power again and got the opening shot of the movie.

The next day in Barcelona we walked all over town but could not land any professional camera batteries and were forced to use a couple of heavy moped batteries duct taped in an improvised fanny pack.  Needless to say, we left the ominous contraption behind as we have enough trouble boarding a plane with our ‘mysterious’ equipment.

The full force of the creative collaboration came to be during our big shoot at the Roman coliseum in Tarragona, Spain.   We had made this an optional shoot as the performers were really burning it up during the tour of Spain.   The concerts would start at 10:00pm and we would return to our hotel rooms late feeling the spirit of the music. Our Spanish Impresario, Juan Diablo, would have us up frightfully early to catch a plane, bus, or the infamous Mediterranean boat ride where most of the passengers hurled during a freak storm. There was of course the ubiquitous drama associated with having access to the coliseum and it was raining. The cultural context is different in Spain. Ari and I work all over the world and are more accustomed to the Mexican mantra that “everything is possible’, whereas in Spain the credo was, “NO! It is impossible”.  But just for today, the weather cleared, and each and every performer got off that tour bus, the opera divas in their fabulous glittery gowns, and the men in their tuxes.  I almost cried watching the women negotiate the crumbling 2,000 year old coliseum steps in their high heels and sing Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho and the walls come a tumbling down.   The motivation for the performers was to be strong like their ancestors and they looked magnificent!  This was a tribute to the goals of the project, to actively participate in the creation of a documentary, and to celebrate and acknowledge the contributions of African Americans to the canon of America music.

This filming of the documentary inspired a series of creative collaborations and helpful hands all over Spain and the American South.  People believed in the spirit and historical importance of this project and wanted to be a part of and contribute to making this film better.  One of the few roadblocks that we encountered was with the Woodsongs folks.  One of Michael Jonathon’s hysterical henchmen wanted to throw me out of The Kentucky Theatre lobby for trying to secure an interview with Odetta, a legendary perfomer, who sang spirituals during the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom back in 1963.  This was a rare example of ego and unnecessary attitude getting in the way of creative expression and all the more shocking being that we had already and would continue to receive so much support along the way. 

We were rolling into Montgomery, Alabama, Everett’s hometown, and our actor called to cancel, she had thrown out her back.  We had to scramble and found two young actors from Alabama State and secured period costumes.  Ari and our still photographer were setting up the shots at the kudzu infested crumbling southern mansion.  The rain was coming down so hard on my drive to the location that I could barely see that this was part of the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.  As I pulled into our location the rain lifted and in its place was this soil hugging fog, the type that Hollywood studios spend big bucks to recreate. Shooting around the slave quarters threw us all back in time.  My friend Claudia Michler, of Michler’s fame, told us that one way to find the slave quarters was to look for the daffodils, which the slaves frequently planted to beautify their surroundings.  

To reach the in use roots of the Negro spiritual we journeyed to Gastonia, North Carolina to record music with regional hymn choirs.  We were welcomed to a multi-congregational hymn choir sing fest. One choir would start up with the leader doing the call and the others falling in with the response.  It was three hours of an improvisational wave of singing and foot stomping.   

The world premiere of The Spirituals documentary will take place in Lexington.  We will be joined by the entire ensemble who will be watching the film for the first time.  A question and answer session with Dr. Everett McCorvey, Ann Grundy, and our Editors, Lisa Molomot and Jacob Bricca, who are flying in from New Haven, Connecticut, will follow the screening.   The Spirituals will air on PBS and film festivals throughout the country and Spain.

TO ORDER DVDs of THE SPIRITUALS please visit:

www.dosvatos.com 

by Christopher Blank

The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) 

 When famed sopranos such as Denyce Graves or Kathleen Battle perform recitals, there comes the eagerly anticipated part of their programs in which they offer what playbills still call “Negro spirituals,” to which primarily older white audiences respond with the usual burst of rapture and applause.

Why women renowned for their portrayals of grand opera’s greatest heroines would lend their voices to the songs of cotton-field slaves is still an evolving issue, not just for the black professional singers who regularly sing them on demand, but for the spirituals themselves, which are becoming more and more the property of the old musical establishment.

The issues can partly be seen in the PBS short film “The Spirituals,” airing at 9 p.m. Thursday on WKNO-TV Channel 10.

Many of the early Negro spirituals were created during American slavery by people who couldn’t read or write down the lyrics. Many songs contained secret messages that slave owners would mistake for purely religious ones.

“Follow the Drinking Gourd,” for example, told escaped slaves traveling at night to move in the direction of the constellation the Big Dipper, or northward.

A tune ostensibly about death, such as “Steal Away to Jesus” - “My Lord, He calls me/He calls me by the thunder/The trumpet sounds within-a my soul/ I ain’t got long to stay here” - might indicate to fellow slaves that someone was escaping that night.

Spirituals are often considered the first original American music. The complex harmonies brought from Africa, used in glorious songs, helped lift the spirits of the truly downtrodden.

The music gave birth to jazz, blues and gospel, and later became the soundtrack of the civil rights movement. Spirituals were often quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last!”

Today, however, there are children who have never heard spirituals (not to be confused with gospel music sung in church), and the songs now live almost exclusively in concert halls, kept alive by professionals paying homage to their history.

Makers of “The Spirituals” followed the American Spiritual Ensemble as it toured churches and concert venues in America and Spain. Even in America, the audience for spirituals is primarily white. Arrangers have turned these spontaneous group songs into lush, intricate choral works.

The American Spiritual Ensemble’s repertoire is amazingly complex and meticulously rehearsed.

Kenneth Overton, a regular performer with Opera Memphis whose recent shows include “Porgy and Bess,” “Don Giovanni,” and “La Boheme,” is a member of the ensemble and makes a brief appearance in the film.  He said professional opera singers often have conflicting views about spirituals.  “I always include them on my recital programs,” he said.  “They have served me well.  ‘Deep River’ was the first one I ever learned, and I used it to get into conservatories.  At the same time, you don’t want to be stereotyped.  That’s especially the case with (Gershwin’s blues-based opera) ‘Porgy and Bess.’  You can end up doing that your whole career.”

Overton said he had an eye-opening experience in Spain, where the concerts were routinely sold out and people sat on the floor.

Overton said: “The first thing I was asked after a concert was, ‘Do we as Europeans appreciate the spiritual as much as they do in your own country?’ In America, we would have to have been Michael Jackson to get that kind of turnout. Americans have gotten away from the education of the spiritual. A lot of young people don’t even know where these songs came from.”

This article is (c) 2007- Commercial Appeal, The (Memphis, TN)

Commercial Appeal, The (Memphis, TN)

Contact performing arts writer Christopher Blank at 529-2305 or

blank@commercialappeal.com 

TO ORDER DVDs of THE SPIRITUALS PLEASE VISIT:

www.dosvatos.com

by Christopher M. Pate

Lexington Herald-Leader

 Television viewers across the nation are being introduced this month to a Kentucky-made documentary that tells the story of lyrics that were strong enough to carry a people through slavery and into freedom.

The lyrics kept the slaves’ hands moving as they toiled in fields, picking cotton under the blazing sun 100 years before the March on Washington, singing, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.” The lyrics kept their eyes on the prize as they prepared to escape their masters, singing, “Steal away home.”

And the lyrics spoke of pain, suffering and overcoming it all with such versatility that filmmakers Eren McGinnis and Ari Palos, both of whom “lived in Kentucky for a very long time,” McGinnis says, were compelled to produce and direct The Spirituals, a documentary tracing the birth and development of “sorrow songs” among African-American slaves.

The Kentucky Educational Television production, which also features the Lexington-based American Spiritual Ensemble, is having its national premiere on PBS stations this month. Although KET has shown the film several times, it will rebroadcast The Spirituals this week and next to coincide with the national broadcasts.

The Spirituals reveals the history of the art form and follows the ensemble as it travels the world in hopes of keeping the musical legacy of the African-American slave alive.

McGinnis, the producer, and Palos, the director, spent a year researching, touring with the American Spiritual Ensemble and traveling the South “in search of the home-grown sound,” McGinnis says.

On one trip, McGinnis and Palos found Central Baptist Church in Gastonia, N.C. The singing “was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen,” says McGinnis, who thinks anybody who listens to American music can find the Negro spiritual of value.

“The whole process was amazing and enriched our lives in many ways,” Palos says.

While traveling with the ensemble, the duo also heard the group sing live. McGinnis says everyone should have that experience.

Everett McCorvey, professor of voice at the University of Kentucky since 1991 and director of UK Opera Theatre, founded the ensemble in 1994. The group began touring in 1995 and performed its first concert in Spain.

McCorvey formed the “very, very special group with some amazing singers,” about one-third of whom are from Lexington, to perform the songs after noticing that “traditional Negro spirituals were not being performed as much” and feeling it was “too important a tradition to be lost,” he says.

Since its inception, the ensemble has toured 11 times and performed more than 100 concerts, McCorvey says.

He says he is excited about the broadcast of the documentary and is “very excited that the art form of the spiritual is featured in this way.”

Ensemble member Ann Grundy, who says she considers singing with the group “an honor of honors,” agrees with McCorvey.

“For a number of reasons, we have lost these songs,” she says. “Until the world, specifically America, gets a handle on this incredible history, then none of us will ever move forward in a healthy manner.”

She adds, “The story of America cannot be told without a thorough examination of the African history, and at the center are the spirituals: a gold mine of the African presence in America. … This is an incredible work on the part of the filmmakers and Dr. McCorvey.”

“The film provides a great service in terms of shedding light and understanding.”

TO ORDER DVDS of THE SPIRITUALS PLEASE VISIT:

www.dosvatos.com

Cineasta mexicano filma parte de su documental en Tennessee

Mexican Filmmaker Shot Part Of His Documentary In Tennessee

Por Gaelle Llambi

La Prensa Latina

MEMPHIS, TN — Aris Luis Palos aceptó dar una entrevista a La Prensa Latina durante la cual explica su pasión por los problemas sociales de la comunidad hispana y afro-americana. De padre mexicano y de madre “gringa”, como le gusta decir, nació en Los Ángeles pero poco después se mudó con su familia a Oklahoma. No conoció a ningún otro mexicano hasta la edad de 14 años, cuando se fue por primera vez de vacaciones a la Ciudad de México.

Su primera experiencia con el mundo del cine empezó cuando estaba en el liceo. Encontró un trabajo en una estación de televisión de Fox y poco a poco empezó a trabajar en la producción. Sí estudió un poco el cine en la Universidad de Oklahoma aunque le hubiera gustado más estudiar sociología porque le encanta las relaciones con la gente, tratar de entenderla. Por esa razón está fascinado con los mexicanos. “Tienen ese realismo mágico en su vida cotidiana que adoro”, nos dijo Ari. “El espíritu, el fantasma están en la tradición mexicana. Se ve con varios cineastas mexicanos tal como Del Toro”.

Actualmente trabaja con otra cineasta, Eren Isabel McGinnis, también de padre mexicano. Su meta cinematográfica es la de alcanzar a la comunidad hispana y afro-americana. Él dijo que tienen diferentes fuerzas pero las mismas luchas, los mismos problemas. Quiere que las dos comunidades se unan para tener una vida mejor. Por eso decidió darle la oportunidad a jóvenes cineastas de la minoría para unirse a los proyectos cinematográficos de su más reciente producción “Dos Vatos”.

En el último documental llamado “Los Espirituales”, un joven mexicano ayudó en su realización. Varias escenas fueron filmadas en Tennessee y entre los actores hay dos personas de Memphis.

Transmitido en el canal de PBS en julio, este documental trata de la herencia de la esclavitud: los espirituales o canciones del alma. Explicó que esas canciones eran una forma de resistencia, que permitían compartir informaciones.

Durante generaciones, fueron transmitidas hasta los sesentas con el movimiento para los derechos civiles. La famosa “We Shall Overcome” fue cantada en el mundo entero incluso en Oaxaca, México durante la huelga de los profesores. “Es una canción que une a la gente, que les da una voz común, activa. Es lo que faltaba en las protestas de inmigración del año pasado,” nos dijo Ari.

Para más información sobre el documental o Ari Luis Palos, visita la página de Internet: www.dosvatos.com.

TO ORDER DVDs of THE SPIRITUALS visit:

www.dosvatos.com