Nashville-based composer JayVe Montgomery will present LAKE BLACK TOWN at Darkhorse Theater on Wednesday, May 28, at 7 PM. This performance shares the fruit of a yearlong field recording project focused on capturing the sounds and history of the “drowned towns” of historic Black communities found throughout the Southeastern United States. Click here to purchase tickets.
The concert, focused on themes of displacement and land; identity, spirit, and belonging; freedom and evolution, is produced in collaboration with chatterbird, a Nashville-based chamber ensemble, where Montgomery is Composer in Residence.
About the Project: America’s post-Civil War history is rife with stories of successful Black cities being razed and flooded to create lakes largely used for recreational purposes. The most infamous is likely Lake Lanier outside of Atlanta, formerly home to Oscarville, an African American community with more than 1,000 residents who were forcibly removed after a horrific lynching in 1912. These lakes can be found all over the South, their original stories submerged under the waters.
For the past year, Nashville-based artist, creative musician, and composer JayVe Montgomery has led a creative residency that explores the history of these locations. The creative residency, in progress, has included a tour of lake sites of these so-called “drowned towns,” where African-American communities were forced out by local white supremacists and neighborhoods and towns were flooded to create spaces for water recreation.
At each site, JayVe uses a PlantWave device, which captures and translates the biorhythmic vibrations of plants into sound and MIDI data. Geophones, hydrophones, contact microphones, and binaural microphones capture the sonic vibrations from area flora, fauna, air, and water, and are used as a sound bed and foundation for live, onsite, improvised musical call and response as well as written compositions examining the resonance of emptiness left after a town has been drowned.
Drowned Town Locations:
Ferguson, SC: Lake Marion
Long Island, NC: Lake Norman
Kowliga, AL: Lake Martin
Fonta Flora, NC: Lake James
Little Egypt, NC: Belews Lake
Birmingham, KY: Kentucky Lake
Oscarville, GA: Lake Lanier
TICKETS: Tickets are offered on a Pay-Your-Wage system. Pay-your-wage is a progressive, honor-system based sliding scale admission model for live events. The notion: pay what you make in an hour. With this model, artistic revenue rises as average wages rise, but performances remain accesible and affordable for all.
All ticket proceeds will benefit the Sameer Project, a grassroots aid organization that is providing thousands of meals, fresh water, and medical supplies to families and children in Gaza.
PARKING: Street parking is available along 47th Avenue N, and in various paid and free lots surrounding the venue.
This concert is made possible thanks to support from Alternate Roots, Metro Arts, a now-terminated grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, along with New Music USA's Organizational Development grant.
DOORS OPEN @ 6:30 PM, CONCERT @ 7 PM