The Incident at the Opera
AAPI women stand in solidarity with Black composer DBR.
The Tulsa Race Massacre
Over the course of May 31 to June 1 1921, the Tulsa Race Massacre took place. One of the worst moments of racial violence in US history, a white mob attacked residents and businesses over an 18 hour span in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, a predominantly Black area. Thousands were left homeless and hundreds were killed, but a media blackout resulted in the events that unfolded being one of the least known racially-motivated attacks in America. A highly segregated city at the time, most of Tulsa’s 10,000 Black residents resided in Greenwood, with a commercial center called Black Wall Street. It was one of the most prosperous Black neighborhoods in the country. Tulsa as a whole was a prosperous and growing city fueled by oil money but in the midst of growing anti-Black sentiment nationwide spurred by the resurgence of the KKK, crime rates were particularly high there.
On May 30 a young Black teenager, Dick Rowland, entered Tulsa’s Drexel Building. Shortly thereafter a white female elevator operator screamed and Rowland fled. He was arrested the next morning under allegations of sexual assault. A mob of white individuals assembled outside the courthouse on the evening of May 31 demanding that Rowland be handed over to them; the sheriff refused and the mob made a failed attempt to break into the National Guard Armory nearby. As rumors of a planned lynching gained momentum, several dozen armed Black men arrived at the courthouse to protect Rowland. They were met by 1,500 white men, many of whom were armed. Shots were fired and the Black men retreated to Greenwood. A new rumor emerged that a major insurrection was being planned by Greenwood residents and over the next several hours anti-Black violence proliferated, much by the hands of white Tulsans who were given weapons by city officials. In the early morning hours of June 1, thousands of white Tulsans flooded Greenwood, looting and burning across a span of 35 city blocks; targets included churches, schools, newspapers, stores, homes, and a library. The rioters threatened to shoot firemen who arrived on the scene. The riot ended midday when martial law was declared and some 6,000 Tulsans, many Black, were taken to local fairgrounds and held by armed guards.
Shortly after the riot ended, charges against Rowland were dropped and he was released when the police concluded he must have stepped on the elevator operator’s foot or simply startled her.
Mention of the massacre in history texts remained largely missing until recently, as the front page coverage on the Tulsa Tribune was destroyed and police & militia archives about the incident vanished. Following the massacre’s 50th anniversary in the 1970s, historians began to dig for information on what transpired. A memorial was erected in 1996 at the Greenwood Cultural Center and 14 years later, in 2009, the massacre was added to Oklahoma history books. A bill was introduced in 2012 that would have required Oklahoma schools to teach students about the massacre; it was rejected.
In remembrance of the massacre 100 years later, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission has amassed a team spanning the arts, politics, education, reconciliation, tourism, marketing, and more to create programming and resources in the name of commemorating the massacre’s history and educating Tulsans with events, activities, and actions. Programming runs from March 25 through October 31 2021; the Tulsa Opera performance Greenwood Overcomes is one component of the broader scope of arts programming. Learn more here.
The incident at the opera
In early February 2021, violinist, composer, and educator Dr. Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) was approached by Tobias Picker, Artistic Director at the Tulsa Opera. Picker wanted to commission DBR to compose an aria for Greenwood Overcomes. DBR accepted and requested a librettist for his piece, but was told that there was no additional budget for a libretto and he would need to write it himself. Shortly thereafter he was connected with Denyce Graves, the mezzo soprano who would perform the commissioned piece. In a few email exchanges where DBR sought to gauge Ms. Graves’ preferences, she indicated that she was “very open” and DBR proceeded to write the music and libretto for They Still Want to Kill Us. He completed the aria by the deadline and sent it to Picker and Graves. Two days later Ms. Graves acknowledged receipt and requested an MP3 of the work. Her feedback was that the final words of the libretto, “God damn America,” made her bristle. A few hours later Picker weighed in. Citing his experience editing seven libretti written “for him,” he shared his opinion that “some of the text shoots itself in its own foot” and asked that the last line be changed to one of his own alternate suggestions, rendering the libretto more “elegant” and “poignant.” DBR declined. In his opinion, he was commissioned to compose a work which reflected the Black experience in America, and implementing edits from someone without that lens would be to compromise the integrity of the aria. Later that same day, Ms. Graves emailed Picker directly that she would be unable to perform the piece. Hours later DBR was informed by Picker, “As Ms. Graves cannot perform the work, we will not be able to program it.” The Tulsa Opera announced they would honor the commission fee for DBR, and removed the aria from the program.
Since the murder of George Floyd in particular, DBR has been vocal in the press and on social media challenging historically white institutions to do better and walk their talk about dismantling white supremacy. He decided to speak out about the course of events with the Tulsa Opera on social media.
He, and all of us in his creative BIPOC family, are floored at the irony of a white Artistic Director attempting to edit then censoring a Black composer’s work about one of the worst massacres of Black people in US history. Doing so on the heels of thousands of Black Lives Matter protests globally, then proceeding to weaponize another Black artist’s sentiments against him have led to an outcry from the broader community of BIPOC Americans and their allies. It should be noted that DBR and all of us on the team which brokered the commission respect Ms. Graves’ wishes and feel strongly that no criticism for her choice should befall her: a number of her performances rest firmly in the vein of “God bless America” and we understand her discomfort with “God damn America” (among these performances is the inauguration of George W. Bush in 2005, and in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg while she lay in state at the US Capitol). The better course of action at the Tulsa Opera would have been to reassign the aria’s performance to another Black soprano, uphold the work’s integrity to speaking truth about the Black experience in America, and extending the platform that was contractually promised. Since his removal from the program, DBR has been engaged by leaders of the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission to remain involved in citywide programming outside the scope of the Opera’s Greenwood Overcomes performance.
“[DBR], and all of us in his creative BIPOC family, are floored at the irony of a white Artistic Director attempting to edit then censoring a Black composer’s work about one of the worst massacres of Black people in US history.”
The libretto for They Still Want to Kill Us can be read in its entirety here.
Solidarity: #BLM x #StopAAPIHate
The intention behind commissioning Black artists to illuminate, honor, and speak truth on Black history is a good one — and is an ongoing necessity. The city of Tulsa’s work to honor the history of its Black community and educate the present-day population of atrocities deleted from history for nearly a century is no small undertaking. In the midst of the rhetoric which has bubbled up and normalized in the mainstream the past four years, the effort is more timely and valuable than ever. The implementation of this intention (within the context of Picker and the Tulsa Opera) had the heartrending consequence of perpetuating the very root causes that fed into the Tulsa Race Massacre itself: white supremacy’s intolerance of and need to silence the “Others”.
The two lines of the libretto which sparked the controversy, “God bless America / God damn America,” pays homage to the prose of one of America’s great authors, James Baldwin. He wrote: “I love America more than any other country in the world and, for exactly this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” Like the love a parent has for their child, love for someone or something urges that person to not only praise and encourage the redeeming qualities, but to call forward the things which need work. It’s the refining and buffing that enables the trait to evolve into something that shines brilliantly. Our country has actualized incredible ideology and innovation; many would argue that the world is better for those contributions. Even so, the fact remains that our entire structure’s foundation places higher value on one race over others. Since DBR was tasked with penning his own libretto (an uncommon responsibility in operatic composition), he knew the task was his own to make They Still Want to Kill Us speak truth to his community’s American experience. DBR’s words presented a further opportunity for Picker: one for allyship and amplification of BIPOC and all marginalized communities in a historically white arena. It’s important to note that DBR does not reside on the fringes of operatic works. One of his recent operas, We Shall Not Be Moved (libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, directed & choreographed by Bill T. Jones, co-commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, Apollo Theater, and Hackney Empire), was deemed “the best classical music performance of 2017” by the New York Times.
“I love America more than any other country in the world and, for exactly this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” — James Baldwin
That Picker chose instead to invoke his white privilege, overriding the artist he commissioned with muzzled language easier for a white male to digest and ultimately trying to mute the artist, is something we as BIPOC leaders in the arts find to be starkly racist. Silencing a Black artist for a work sitting at the center of arts programming about hate crimes against his community is at best breathtakingly egocentric and poorly judged. The reality is this maneuver to censor DBR and quickly remove his work from the program when he stood his ground is to perpetuate the deeply ingrained white supremacy in our country.
We were further upset that Picker and the Tulsa Opera chose to weaponize Ms. Graves, co-curator Howard Watkins, and all the other Black artists involved against DBR. Based on the timeline of events covered in email exchanges but not in press coverage, Picker was intent on decommissioning DBR when his more “elegant” wording was declined and was looking for irrefutable grounds to do so. Were this not the case, he could have segued Ms. Graves’ preferences toward shifting the soprano role to another Black artist — there are others who are also beautifully talented who would have been happy to accept this role. Instead Picker chose to use Ms. Graves’ wishes against DBR and make it the grounds for his dismissal. It’s a common play from the book of systemic racism: drive a wedge between individuals within the same community (“I’m not racist because your people agree with me”), or between individuals across different communities of color to distract them with “man vs. self” conflict while the bigger picture quietly devolves farther into disenfranchisement and disempowerment. Another play is to deflect, which is exactly what unfolded. In an article published by the Associated Press on March 22, Picker stated, “It is extremely disappointing that Mr. Roumain has turned an artistic disagreement into a racial debate.” The reality: Dr. Roumain was commissioned to create a work about the mass murder of Black people and destruction of the most prosperous communities of color in America at the time. The very premise of this entire sequence of events is about race, but the distraction is to point at the other, claim moral high ground, and cry that the other hit first.
Our team of predominantly AAPI women, who have a decades-long friendship and history of business partnership with DBR, can’t overstate the importance of solidarity across racial communities. We know firsthand that the gains (and losses) of one group carry over into the next.
The history of racial oppression in our respective communities has overlapped since the first Chinese indentured servants were brought to the US following the Emancipation Proclamation. Anti-Black and anti-AAPI racism are symptoms of the same illness: white supremacy. The muscle that is needed to treat not just the symptoms but the illness demands the alignment of all marginalized communities; for our part at Sozo we’ve long been committed to producing, booking, and amplifying artistic works steeped in social justice on a global scale. Zooming out, in the past year mutual support has manifested in AAPI support of BLM, and BLM support of #StopAAPIHate.
We stand behind DBR’s refusal to censor his libretto for They Still Want to Kill Us: it is these exact moments in the grander scheme that either affirm or invalidate the value and contributions of people of color in America. If white supremacy as an ideological construct is an army, then Sun Tzu’s The Art of War dictates that for the army to win its battles, it must isolate its enemies from one another. We refuse to splinter into isolated pockets marked by different colors or classes and allow white supremacy to prevail. We call upon not only our fellow AAPIs but also our white allies to not only speak up about the wrongs committed against protagonists like DBR pushing for a more just society, but to be collaborators in empowering the marginalized. As MLK Jr. articulated, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If we allow one of our allies to be silenced, we all suffer for it.
What we witnessed with DBR and the Tulsa Opera is an antiquated iteration of white supremacy that deserves no place in our lifetime, let alone in 2021. Beyond calling forward the wrongs, we encourage you to see through the wall and focus on points further along the spectrum of progress. If you are a white ally, we urge you to fold in BIPOC individuals at every level of your organization. Center inclusivity and empower those individuals to be heard. There is no shortage of talent among faces which are different from yours, and having different lenses looking at the same problem will only fortify your end product and expand your reach. And once you’ve created this kaleidoscope of lenses, as it’s been displayed (but not necessarily learned) in the case of Tulsa Opera, resist the urge to reframe what they see into the context of what you can see. For our fellow BIPOCs: it is imperative we avoid allowing wedges to be inserted between us and other communities of color. At the end of the day we all want variations of the same thing — a more just society — and to be successful we have to remain united.
To commissioners, presenters, artists, and community organizers: please visit TheyStillWantToKillUs.com to partner with DBR and our team as we lift this work beyond its original scope.
DBR’s acclaimed work as a composer, performer, educator, and activist spans more than two decades, and he has been commissioned by venerable artists and institutions worldwide. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (NYT), DBR is perhaps the only composer whose collaborations span Philip Glass, Bill T. Jones, Savion Glover and Lady Gaga.
Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic, urban, and African-American music influences, DBR takes his genre-bending music beyond the proscenium. He is a composer of chamber, orchestral, and operatic works; was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Musical Composition for his collaborations with ESPN; featured as keynote performer at technology conferences; and created large scale, site-specific musical events for public spaces. DBR earned his doctorate in Music Composition from the University of Michigan and is currently Institute Professor and Professor of Practice at Arizona State University.
An avid arts industry leader, DBR serves on the board of directors of the League of American Orchestras, Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) and Creative Capital, the advisory committee of the Sphinx Organization, and was co-chair of 2015 and 2016 APAP Conferences. He is deeply involved in APAP’s REDI campaign for DEI.
DBR’s forthcoming operatic collaboration is with Anna Deavere Smith.
Sozo Artists is a collective of global change-making artists & creative producers based in New York, Oakland, and Los Angeles — focused on providing general management, booking, & creative production services. Sozo Artists is a sister company of Sozo Vision.
Warm thanks to Sozo Artists colleagues Rika Iino, Ichun Yeh, Dana Greenfield, Joanna Bowzer, and Annie March for their feedback on this piece.
