Education & Youth | Jazz | Music | Arts & Culture | New Haven Symphony Orchestra | Arts & Anti-racism
Tyler Goldchain: "So much of this was staking ourselves in improvisation." Lucy Gellman Photos.
The double bass, nearly purring, made its way out into the audience, meeting a sea of tiny, seashell-shaped ears and little arms and legs that were ready to dance. A-nan-si, it whispered, low and close to the ground. Drums and keys rolled in, and the sound felt like a sea breeze somewhere far from New Haven.
A-nan-si! Tyler Goldchain sang at the keyboard, with as much mischief as the trickster spider himself. He smiled at the room, inviting the audience to sing along. Around him, a few tiny voices joined in. As attendees sang, their eyes darted from the keys to the drums to a crankie, where a black, glittering spider sat suspended in his intricate web.
Jazz, puppetry, and a master class in storytelling came to Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Learning Center Sunday, as musicians brought a retelling of "Anansi the Spider" to the New Haven Symphony Orchestra's (NHSO) family concert series. Led by musician and composer Tyler Goldchain (a.k.a. New Haven artist Tyler Jenkins) and artist Isaac Bloodworth, the event centered the West African folktale, creating a template for diverse, polyphonic and spirit-lifting arts education in the process.
As in years past, the concert at Mayo included sensory-friendly adaptations, including tricycles, a play area, and access to ear protectors and fidget toys. Two performances remain, at Russell Memorial Library in Middletown and the Stetson Branch Library in New Haven, on April 12. Performances are free; more information is available here.
Bloodworth: "I would like for Black people to kind of, have a hold on it, and tell it the way we would probably tell it."
"This was really bringing me back to those experiences of music that's made by regular folks," said Goldchain, a graduate of Wilbur Cross High School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts (ECA) and Wesleyan University who now works between New Haven and New York. "This wasn't music that was really seen on the radio or received high distribution. This was music that people were singing just walking down the street, music that people would sing in church. I wanted to bring that energy—something that feels really familiar, but also really exciting at the same time."
Work on the program, which marks the second in the family concert series, began last year, when Bloodworth first connected with NHSO Education Director Caitlin Daly-Gonzales. At the time, the two had met at various community events, and "I really wanted to work with Isaac," Daly-Gonzales remembered in a phone call after the concert. Last summer, the artist joined the symphony for a family concert around New Orleans swing, complete with a brass band and live reading of Troy Andrews and John Collier's Trombone Shorty.
Bloodworth, who grew up in a Jamaican-American home (his mom, Dr. Sherene Mason, is an active member of the Jamaican-American Connection and a trailblazing pediatric nephrologist), knew he wanted to do something based on Anansi the Spider, which comes out of the rich, centuries-old oral tradition of the Akan People in West Africa. As a kid, he'd grown up hearing multiple versions of the Anansi story: the one his parents told him, kissed by Afro-Caribbean history and folklore, and the one in Gerald McDermott's 1972 children's book Anansi The Spider.
He didn't have anything against the book. But the older he got, the more he wanted a story by and for Black people, that acknowledged the weight and beauty of the tale and its many transformations. The Anansi story is itself a document of the African diaspora and of forced migration: it was through the transatlantic slave trades that it made its way from Ghana to Jamaica, transforming into a character who is sometimes called Anancy. Bloodworth, who grew up on those stories, wanted to give them their proper due.
"I'm kind of tired of white people writing our stories, and I would like for Black people to kind of, have a hold on it, and tell it the way we would probably tell it," he said. A UConn-trained puppet artist and budding muralist, he also knew that he had the storytelling skills to do it.
So when Daly-Gonzales connected him with Goldchain, a former house manager with the NHSO, the two clicked immediately. Like Bloodworth, Goldchain is of Jamaican descent: his mom and grandparents hail from Jamaica's Portland Parish. Years ago, he learned to play the drums in his grandmother's apostolic church, a Jamaican-American sanctuary not far from the South End of Bridgeport. As he composed, Goldchain folded in both the rich history of jazz and the music he'd heard growing up. The result sounded like home.
"So much of this was staking ourselves in improvisation," he added. With Daly-Gonzales, he looped in musicians Christopher Johnson, fellow ECA grad Kenijah Georges, and Jesse Hameen II, who was one of his first music teachers at Neighborhood Music School. He thought about how to iterate on well-loved children's songs, like "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and "Old McDonald Had A Farm." Then he and the quartet got to work.
"It's so cool to be able to have so many performances, because then we can take a song or an idea, and through a performance, we can iterate it," he said. "This is a great space for experimentation."
Sunday, that excitement was fully on display as he and Bloodworth welcomed pint-sized listeners into the space, an early learning center that rises off Goffe Street just beyond downtown. Before slipping into the story, he introduced the crew through their music, explaining the role of improvisation and experiment in jazz. As each musician showed off their respective instruments (Johnson on double bass, Georges on sax, Hameen II on drums and Goldchain on keys) attendees settled on the floor and in seats, some walking around the room as they moved to the sound.
As conversation rose and fell—it never quite stops during family concerts—the quartet eased into the heart of the concert, a composition that Goldchain finished earlier this year with lots of space for improvisation woven delicately into it. As keys bounced gently in, Hameen joined on drums, Johnson strumming along until it felt like the bass had laid a rug out beneath the quartet. Georges, the sax hanging by its strap, shook a maraca in one hand and a tambourine in the other.
To the sound, Bloodworth began to work the handles of his crankie. A multicolored spider web, then a little boy appeared at the center of the paper. In the audience, around three dozen kids sat transfixed, several mouths already ajar. Somewhere around the third row, someone cooed with delight.
"Throughout time, there have been many tricksters and storytellers, but Anansi stands tall amongst that vivid history," Bloodworth read. "Now trying to find the origin of Anansi was difficult because it was very twisted, knotted and tangled with so many myths, but I have been doing lots of research and … I …. think … I've found it!"
In the story, Anansi was a young boy with a knack for trickery. It often landed him in a heap of trouble, particularly with other villagers. And one day, they decided they were fed up. As Bloodworth read, a stream of illustrations appeared one by one: Anansi playing tricks on his neighbors, Anansi making ear-splitting noise and hard-to-clean messes, Anansi with even a thought bubble that looked like chaos.
"They decided on giving him a quest not even the strongest of warriors could complete," Bloodworth read of the villagers, and something shifted in the room. The musicians fell into the background, letting Johnson step into a solo. As the bass dipped and vibrated, low and almost nasal, there was Anansi again, this time looking up at a sheet of paper before him. On each side of him, black spider webs peeked out from the corners of the page. Before he set out, Bloodworth read, an elder named Nyame offered to accompany him.
On stage, musicians shifted again, letting each other ease into the flow of the story. Turning the crankie, Bloodworth moved to Anansi's first task, telling the audience of his triumph over the fierce and fearsome python known as Onini. When he had captured him—through trickery and teasing, of course—he moved on to the leopard, Osebo. Again, he summoned his love of a good prank, luring the animal into a net hidden by banana leaves. Then he was on to catch Mmoatia, the forest spirit, with puppetry and tree sap.
"With the final trial accomplished, Nyame revealed himself to be the original story telling god," Bloodworth read, and sax and drums swirled around him. A few small attendees giggled and leaned in with delight, a few stood to walk around the room. "He acknowledged Anansi’s courage and cunningness and bestowed on him not only immortality, but shapeshifting, and the ability to hold onto the world's story."
Ambria McDonald and her daughter.
In McDermott's book, Anansi is already a spider, with six sons who, with Nyame, save him from trials and tribulations on the road, by air and in the water. When he tries to decide which of them to reward, he is conflicted, and Nyame brings the prize—a great, shining orb of light—into the sky. The book ends there, with the moon amidst the blue velvet of night.
But Bloodworth, meeting the moment as he spoke, looked to the long history of Anansi, including the rich and often undervalued contributions of Black people. Looking out into the audience and then back down to the crankie, he urged attendees to think critically about the myth, the history of Black people in what is now recognized as the United States, and the history behind the folktale itself.
"Ya see now, my people have a wonderful history but you wouldn't know that they way it was erased," he read, his voice gaining momentum. "I'm not just meant to be a trickster but a north star to remind them they are more than the plantations and shacks they were forced into, more than the segregated towns, and more than the imagery that this rude empire has painted of them."
In the audience, listeners of all ages held on to each word. As he read, sewing poetry into the thick web of music the quartet had created, the words echoed and soared over the room, turning it into an impromptu history lesson, poetry slam and pint-sized arts salon. On the crankie, Bloodworth rotated to the image of three young, smiling faces, then let the audience soak it in.
Remember us / As you sing and dance to our rhythms
But leave us in our blues
Remember us / Cause without our backs
This country would have no foundation
Remember us / When you enjoy your ice cream in the summer
As this country continues to scoop from / Our collective intellect
Remember us / By the color of our skin
Remember us / And see us in our full humanity
Even as families headed back into the bright afternoon, the depth of the piece seemed to linger in the room, strains of music mingling with children's laughter. At his drum kit, Hameen beamed, inviting attendees to come up and gently feel the instrument. Goldchain greeted young listeners, many of them excited to meet what felt like a musical legend.
Ambria McDonald, a water quality expert and doctoral student at the Yale School of the Environment, took it all in as her 3-year-old daughter Remington made a beeline for the play area. As a transplant from Mississippi and Texas, McDonald often finds herself looking for family-friendly things to do on the weekends, and spotted the concert on social media. She's thrilled that she made it out.
"I think it was beautiful!" she said, adding that it was her first experience with the NHSO. "I loved the improvisation in the beginning."
For Daly-Gonzales, who is herself a mom and an educator, that's part of the hope. When she helps build events like the family concerts, she's thinking about how to engage the next generations of listeners, who may interact with live performance differently than did their parents and grandparents.
"The audience is not one specific demographic," she said. "I think of our audiences as birth up to, like, 150 [years old]. And each demographic has different needs with how they want to interact with the NHSO. With young kids, I'm in it for the long haul. These are our youngest audience members, so I just want them to have a super positive interaction with the NHSO ... to hear live music and to fall in love with it."