She was inspired by reading about the garden next to the African Grove Theatre - "they called it the 'pleasure garden, where negros could have conversation and ice cream.' I never got that description out of my mind." It opens with sweeping shots of two young Black girls exploring a grove overlooking an unnamed coast. Hampton's short film is an abstract companion to the opera. I was calling this 'The Receipts' out the gate, because so often I hear people talking about issues of equity, and I'm like, 'How can you talk on these issues when you literally have no frame of reference?' So I just wanted to provide some receipts for those who might be interested." "There is definitely a throughline to this moment, historically," she says, "and there are tons of receipts if you ever want to look at them. Initially, Tamar-kali was just tired - tired of explaining the long and nuanced history of the philosophical struggle for civil rights in this country to folks who don't share her literacy on the subject. "She wanted to remind America, remind whoever might engage this piece, that we are on a continuum, and that there have been radical movements." Kelly and an old friend of the composer's. "I knew that she was thinking about the not-newness of this moment, she was thinking about the ahistorical way that America acts, as if each moment of racial reckoning for justice is new," says dream hampton, the Emmy-nominated director of Surviving R. This commission gave her a chance to flip the script and have a director set a film to her music. "It's pushing against the grain in certain spots, in terms of the intonation, some rubs, some dissonant things that are happening," she explains, "which I guess represent a manifestation of what it is like to wear the mask."įor the past few years, Tamar-kali has been composing music for films like Mudbound and Shirley. The first is "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, which she set to a demented waltz. Tamar-kali used the opportunity to teach a musical class on the ongoing fight for civil rights, and to do that she picked poems by three Black intellectuals. Her latest intention is a digital opera short called " We Hold These Truths." The 12-minute work for voice, spoken word and small orchestra was commissioned by LA Opera as part of their Digital Shorts series. "I figured out a little while ago," she says, "that whether I want to be engaged this way or not, that for certain people I'm going to be a frame of reference for my people, for who I am - whether it's women, whether it's queer folk, whether it's Black folk - and I can either just lollygag and do it by default, or I can do it with intention.
Music quickly reeled her back, but she remains an educator at heart - especially on tough subjects our country is still grappling with.
Having grown up in Brooklyn, she studied education at nearby Adelphi University. Felix van Groeningen Composer Tamar-kali.īut before Tamar-kali became a singer, rocker, and now a celebrated film composer, she was going to be a teacher.
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