Code Switch Mixtape
Code Switch Mixtape is a collaborative project of Derrick Skye and Conor Abbott Brown consisting of a collection of works for wind symphony that often engage with the musical language of two or more musical traditions.
I. Through All That, Beauty (composed by Derrick Skye) references the struggle of marginalized groups in a society. Through a history of intense challenges, people are still able to maintain and create beauty. The piece begins with an open, spacious texture with rhythmic punctuations. These rhythms lead to a section with a long, syncopated melodic line that repeats and builds in harmonic texture. This section also includes an ostinato that draws from the bell pattern found in Bawa,a drum and dance piece originating from the Dagaaba people of Ghana. Towards the end of the piece, an open texture returns, punctuated with text spoken by musicians which reference significant moments in the history of social and political struggle in the United States.
II. How can this be? (composed by Conor Abbott Brown) is a visceral response to the intertwining pandemics of racism and COVID-19. In terms of density over time, the piece roughly follows the curve of COVID-19 daily infections in the United States from March 2020 until the piece was completed in August of 2020. The spoken text in the piece consists of a fragment of a list of dates that documents failures of the United States justice system throughout history to address violence against Black people. At first the dates proceed backwards in time, but they curve back around to the present once again, highlighting the immediacy of this issue:
July 1. 2019: U.S. Attorney General William Barr orders the Justice Department not to bring federal civil rights charges against the police officer who killed Eric Garner.
Jan. 21, 1970: A coroner’s jury rules that the killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark was a “justifiable homicide.” The tactical unit responsible for this killing was organized by the Chicago Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Illinois State Attorney’s Office. Scholars now widely agree that this was an assassination.
June 21, 1921: According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, after the deaths of possibly as many as three hundred people in the Tulsa race massacre and the large-scale destruction of Black-owned homes and businesses, “An all-white grand jury blamed black Tulsans for the lawlessness. Despite overwhelming evidence, no whites were ever sent to prison for the murders and arson that occurred.”
April 22, 1899: In Williamsburg County, South Carolina, the trial in the case of the murder of postmaster and teacher Frazier B. Baker and his infant daughter Julia Baker ends when an all-white jury declares a mistrial, despite overwhelming evidence regarding the identity of the perpetrators.
June 14, 1967: Florida State Attorney Paul Antinori announces that an officer was “justified” in killing unarmed 19-year-old Martin Chambers.
Nov. 22, 2019: In Colorado, Adams County District Attorney Dave Young decides that the case of the death of Elijah McClain, after an incident involving the use of force by Aurora police, will not be prosecuted as a homicide.
III. Perpetual Grit (composed by Derrick Skye) references the perseverance of those who desire to create change. The piece attempts to convey the impulse and absolute will to survive and flourish in the face of extreme obstacles. Perpetual Grit shifts between repeated rhythmic cycles of four beats and 10 beats. This shifting is meant to represent new ideas that may feel strange at first, but then develop into a familiar foundation with time. This piece ends with musicians humming a melody written in five cycles of 10 beats. Although the melody is based on an asymmetrical number of beats, the humming represents this cycle being internalized and embodied by the musicians in a way that feels natural.
IV. The Garden of Merging Paths (composed by Conor Abbott Brown) is named in response to the title of short story El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths) by Jorge Luis Borges, considered an early example of postmodernism in literature. Brown approaches the “merging paths” as a multilayered metaphor; one of those layers is the idea that every human being on the planet is facing increasingly-interconnected existential challenges. Inspired by conversations with composer Derrick Skye, Brown set out when composing this piece to imagine a brighter future where those challenges are being met and overcome. The rhythmic backbone of the piece is a cyclical nine-beat pattern (2+2+2+1+2) set over a massive tempo arc (a long accelerando followed by a shorter ritardando.) This nine-beat rhythm is present in numerous musical cultures across West Asia and the Balkans, associated diasporas, and related music scenes globally, including folk and/or classical traditions of Armenian, Kurdish, Romani, Turkish and other communities. In the classical usul rhythmic system, this rhythm is known as evfer. In folk traditions it may be referred to (depending on where you ask and who you are asking) as tamzara, romany 9, roman havası or yet by other names.
(Audio/video not publicly available at this time.)