Mr Baptiste (2023)

for wind quintet and narrator - 30'

music by David Kirkland Garner poetry by Ishion Hutchinson

 

Two small, yet profound pages from the 1707 book Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica by Hans Sloane contain music notation for five melodies and songs preceded by a short paragraph:

 

Upon one of their Festivals when a great many of the Negro Musicians were gathered together, I desired Mr. Baptiste, the best Musician there to take the Words they sung and set them to Music, which follows. You must clap Hands when the Base is plaid, and cry, Alla, Alla.

 

This paragraph and the music that follows offers us a unique fragment of early African diasporic music (indeed, perhaps the oldest music notation). It provides a glimpse into life for enslaved Jamaicans in 1688, insights into the sparse archive of early Afro-Atlantic music, and raises many questions. Who were the musicians? How was this music performed (what instruments, accompaniments, tempos, and timbres)? What do the lyrics (like “Hobagnion”) mean? What do the song titles reference (“Angola,” “Papa,” and “Koromanti”)? And, importantly, who was Mr. Baptiste?

 

These questions have swirled in my mind for years. In 2016, I helped scholars Mary Caton Lingold and Laurent Dubois create a website and digital humanities project on these two pages called musicalpassage.org. Lingold has since published research on Mr. Baptiste in particular, arguing that Mr. Baptiste was likely a free person of colour and perhaps the earliest known published Black composer.  This piece, led by Ishion Hutchinson’s poignant poetry and accompanied by expansions on Mr. Baptiste’s music, is an exploration, reimagining, and reverberation of Mr. Baptiste and his life

 

Premiere performance by Imani Winds with Ishion Hutchinson on October 1, 2023 at Duke University. This concert was part of the 2023/24 season from Duke Arts Presents. Learn more at dukearts.org. Recorded by Mark Manring Recording.