Gavin Speeding and Danny Rivera. PHOTO: ANNIELLY CARMARGO
A trio of gifted musicians with Boston and Berklee School of Music roots deliver a reimagined association of African American spirituals to the African Meeting House on Dec. 1. Danny Rivera, Gavin Speeding and Matt Savage created the live performance “Songs of Free Males” to have a good time the wealthy historical past of Black music and to unite everybody nonetheless trying to find freedom.
Rivera and Speeding started working collectively on spirituals in 2020, once they created and filmed a brand new association of “Had been You There (When They Crucified My Lord)” in response to the homicide of George Floyd. That piece garnered greater than 70,000 views on YouTube and impressed the duo to reimagine different spirituals as effectively. The brand new preparations use influences from quite a lot of genres, all of which have roots in spirituals. The “Songs of Free Males” program may also embrace a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“We organized them based mostly off our expertise within the Black church, based mostly off our expertise as performers, but in addition our connection to the music based mostly off of who we’re and the place we got here from,” says Speeding. “There are jazz influences, R&B influences, gospel influences, Black American music. All the things that has influenced us has been put into this music to deliver a more moderen twist and a more moderen taste.”
Spirituals have a wealthy historical past, however Rivera emphasizes that Black People, and plenty of others, are nonetheless not but free. These themes and feelings relate to present-day challenges and are meant to spur rumination about the way forward for American society as effectively.
Produced in collaboration with the Museum of African American Historical past and the Mayor’s Workplace of Resilience and Racial Fairness, the live performance will debut on the First African Assembly Home in Beacon Hill. The group can also be organizing a tour of the live performance with projected performances in New York, Washington, D.C., and Georgia in 2023.
Launching the live performance in Boston’s African Assembly Home, the oldest Black church nonetheless standing in the USA, brings an vital non secular gravity to the efficiency. The live performance shouldn’t be about non secular ideology, however performing it within the house the place so many abolitionists and Black leaders labored, carried out and prayed all through historical past connects the performers deeply to their ancestors.
The Dec. 1 live performance is free and open to the general public, although seat reservations have to be made prematurely. Audiences can comply with the progress of the tour on Rivera’s Instagram, @dannyrivera_.
Rivera hopes that the live performance is a chance to deliver all folks struggling below oppression collectively.
“There are particular tales which can be rooted in religion however really usher in collective entry factors for any and everybody who’s searching for liberation,” says Rivera. “What I hope is that by way of this music, folks can discover freedom inwardly, folks can discover alternative and cause to attach no matter age, gender, creed, perception or race.”
