Tenor Victor Ryan Robertson had just finished performing at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, when an audience member came backstage to send him in a new musical direction.
In a moment that seemed to come straight out of an old mystery thriller, the music lover handed the Metropolitan Opera singer and Victory Hall Opera favorite some mysterious sheet music. Long out of print, the songs had no accompaniment, just lyrics and some spare melodies for a cappella singing.
What Robertson found in his hands were rare 19th-century Gullah spirituals. Songs of faith, long silent, once had soared to the heavens in the praise houses of the Gullah people on the barrier islands off the South Carolina coast, capturing the strength and beauty of a proud culture.
“I grew up in the South singing spirituals, but I’d never heard these before,” Robertson, a native South Carolinian, told The Daily Progress.
Outside the isolated Black community that treasured them, almost no one else had, either.
Robertson dove into historical research and joined forces with composer and pianist Adrianne Duncan to flesh out the musical documents, and they brought their own languages of jazz, opera and classical music to the journey. The result is “Gullah Meditations,” which Victory Hall Opera will present Saturday afternoon at Charlottesville’s University Baptist Church.
Joining Robertson and Duncan will be dancer Fana Minea Tesfagiorgis, a former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater soloist. She and Robertson will be collaborating for the first time. Miriam Gordon-Stewart, Victory Hall Opera’s artistic director, will direct.
“The music met me at a crossroads where I was trying to figure things out spiritually,” Robertson said. “It grounded me more as a musician and as a person.”
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Robertson spent time interviewing Gullah elders, a process he will expand before launching a national touring version of the piece. The more he learns about Gullah and Geechee culture and its west and central African roots, distinct language and storytelling traditions, the more he marvels at the tenacity of the people.
“This is a well-preserved culture that thrives in Lowcountry South Carolina,” Robertson said. “I want people to discover a people they have never heard of.”
The spirituals came from a largely forgotten book of more than 100 songs compiled in the early 20th century in an attempt to preserve cultural artifacts in the face of a looming threat. The authors “collected these songs because they thought jazz was going to ruin America,” Robertson said. Duncan’s strengths in jazz, however, give the forgotten music a vibrant new voice.
“She was perfect,” Robertson said. “A great collaboration. She has a deep history in jazz and classical music.”
To keep “Gullah Meditations” welcoming to listeners from many backgrounds, Robertson said he took care to include songs that weren’t overtly religious.
“I did not want to have it too heavily based on the Christian side,” Robertson said. “For the most part, I wanted to have it more universal. They deal with daily living, the struggles and triumphs.”
In addition to enslavement, those struggles included famines, illnesses and abuse, he said. “Back in the day, children would disappear,” he said.
Robertson was elated when a Gullah audience received a concert version of the project warmly. All the research and rehearsal time he has invested in the project has given historical artifacts renewed life.
“The music is really earthy,” Robertson said. An eventual goal is to perform “Gullah Meditations” in Africa “without sacrificing any of the original intent.”
“I hope to give back to this music what it has given to me,” Robertson said. “It really is a dream. I’ve been wanting something to come into my life that I could bite into.”
Jane Dunlap Sathe (434) 978-7249
jsathe@dailyprogress.com
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