Castle of Our Skins highlights Black artistry from the past, present and future

“Soweto No. 3 for piano and string quartet” was written by Undine Smith Moore in 1987, just a year before she died. Although she’s been called the Dean of Black Women Composers, she is not well represented on record or in the concert hall. Thanks to Castle of Our Skins, a Boston-based Black art institution dedicated to uplifting and celebrating Black artistry through music, we have her works on recordings to enjoy.

Not only does Castle of Our Skins recover lost or forgotten music from some of America’s greatest composers, it creates and commissions new art from Black artists. Castle of our Skins has joined Odyssey Opera, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket, to bring the story of Frederick Douglass to life for local children. Their reactions and voices inspire the upcoming event, called “And Freedom’s Reign”.

The organization’s commitment to community and Black culture is why they are this week’s Joy Beat honoree. Ashleigh Gordon, is the co-founder, artistic executive director, and violist for Castle of our Skins, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk about the upcoming event. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath: To start off, this Joy Beat is kind of personal for me because Castle of Our Skins has brought me personally so much joy. We’ve talked before, you know, what a big music fan I am and how much I love the composers, past and present, you feature and the composers you’ve introduced me to. So thank you for that. And as I mentioned, these composers haven’t historically been well-represented on stage or recording, so I wonder if you could start us off by taking us back to the founding — Castle of Our Skins — when you and others decided to do something about it.

Ashleigh Gordon: Well, I have to say, I receive and I accept that gratitude and that thanks and happy to be the honoree this week’s Joy Beat. It makes me joyful as well to be able to celebrate and to certainly celebrate Black artistry. So, Castle of Our Skins was co-founded by myself and fellow composer, pianist, Anthony R. Green, back in 2013. We met at New England Conservatory. So, we quickly found friendship, we found fellowship, we’ve found musical support to be able to work together during our studies and wanted to continue that relationship past our time at NEC. So ultimately I say Castle of Our Skins is a story about friendship, is about support, is it about finding collegiality, sort of making spaces, owning spaces, creating spaces in a collaborative way. And then ultimately with the nature of our work is really inspired I think by our name which we are very proud of and took a great deal of pride to be able to call ourselves Castle of Our Skins, which is a line from a poem by Nikki Giovanni, the late Nikki Giovanni that references, if we’re all born in the castle of our skins, some of us had said, so be it, let that castle be a point of celebration, decorate it with beautiful things, fill it with with beautiful thing, love to live in that castle. So the idea of joy, which is relevant to this program, celebration, pride, honoring the fullness of ones self is foundational to the work that we do, the work that we started in 2013 and the work we’re continuing to do up until today.

Rath: How have things evolved over the last dozen odd years? I mean, with it being such a collaborative endeavor and that kind of creative churn, has it taken any turns you might not have expected?

Gordon: So many, I mean, we started with the mission of promoting the music of Black American composers and quickly realized that was far too narrow. And so now it’s Black artistry and thinking along the lines of griots or African storytellers who use music, history, movement, community, who use other artistic disciplines to be able to carry narratives and bring them from generation to generation. So thinking of ourselves as storytellers has been an evolution for sure, which is why now I like to say music plus, even though I’m a violist, very much love to learn and collaborate with others who are visual artists, who are dancers, who are in different genres of music, making them what I studied. So the idea of being storytellers for sure is an evolution for our work. So the organization has really, I think, grown organically as the foundational principle back in 2013 as being this shared platform for support. And that platform has sort of grown into this. Continent of sorts. It’s sort of grown to allow for other artistic disciplines intergenerationally to be able to have space to play and shine and grow and connect in I think really beautiful ways over the years.

Rath: And tell us about “And Freedom’s Reign” how will this take young people into the world of Frederick Douglass?

Gordon: So “And Freedom’s Reign” is part of a much bigger project called As Told By, and bringing opera and race and justice into conversation. So it’s a collaborative project that we are providing sort of an educational context to, and other collaborators being Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Odyssey Opera, who will take operas by Black composers and record them, perform them, give them sets and things like this, and concert performance. But, our contribution is to provide some youth engagement work, which is something very near and dear to our mission, to our heart. So “And Freedom’s Reign” for this particular opera year, subject of Frederick Douglass, involved us working with Project STEP students. And Project STEP is a really fantastic organization, over 40 years old, working predominantly with Black and Brown string players to give them high quality education in music and performance and sort of everything in between. So Frederick Douglass’ grandson was a violinist, made sense in our minds to engage with a string youth organization. So over the year, we’ve worked with Project STEP students talking about Frederick Douglass, his history, what does he mean to them, and created a whole sort of word cloud of sorts and a whole music bank of snippets from the students. So if power and strength were words that the students generated. What does that sound like on your instrument? We gave all of those ideas, both narrative and musical, to a really fantastic composer, Yaz Lancaster, to help put together a piece for the students. So Project STEP students, through the course of the year, ended up having a piece that they heavily influenced, written specifically for them to perform, which is an amazing honor and opportunity at such a young age, and our program “And Freedom’s Reign” features them and that particular piece, so a whole year’s culmination for them to be able to bring that to life. It also features a hologram, artificial intelligence inspired experience with Frederick Douglass so you can literally ask Frederick Douglass questions and Frederick Douglass will respond to you and that’s an installation that’s at the Museum of African American History. It involves Frederick Douglass’ iconic “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” speech, excerpts of that speech, as it’s a quite meaty and long speech, read by alums from our Black Student Union Fellowship. And those speeches interspersed with music by Black composers, which a string quartet from Castle of Our Skins, myself included in that, will perform, so things from Florence Price and Trevor Weston and Frederick C. Tillis. And this particular performance “And Freedom’s Reign”, is part of the museum’s Boston Family Days, which is totally free admission for Boston families, thanks to the city of Boston, to come and engage in all these different ways with the amazing subject of Frederick Douglass.

If you’d like to make a nomination for the Joy Beat, leave us a voicemail at (617)-300-BEAT [2328].