Featuring a centralized reading by poet Nikky Finney, At War With Ourselves—400 Years of You struggles to engender a new formula that melds poetry, classical music, and choral singing.
By John Lavitt
Beverly Hills, CA (The Hollywood Times) 02-16-2025
“I imagined a radical libretto made of Civil War history, Black history, and modern American headlines. The voice of the historical narrator begins. The voice of the Black Face Boy enters as sonic soliloquy. The narrator and the first-person voice of the Black Face Boy enter into a radical libretto call and response. Great leaps of time are found in each stanza, and a twelve-page album of faces and geographies is set to the music of battles and human discoveries… The question of who gets to move like a free person and who gets to move in chains remains ensconced in our everyday American lives one hundred and fifty years later.”
— Nikky Finney on How “The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy” Came to Be
When it comes to an artistic project, a tricky question is whether good intentions are enough to redeem a performance. At War With Ourselves—400 Years of You at the Bram Goldsmith Theatre at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, such a question was front and center on Saturday, February 16th, during an innovative melding of performances by the Kronos Quartet, which played music composed by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Abels, poet Nikky Finney, and the choral group Tonality, conducted by Alexander Lloyd Blake. Indeed, from a high culture perspective, it was a star-studded affair with a definite point to make amid the onslaught of totalitarian toxicity and the callous assault on the arts in Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s dark new America.
Featuring a text by National Book Award-winning poet Nikky Finney inspired by her 2013 poem “The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy,” the powerhouse messaging is undeniable. Nikky Finney’s poem delves deep into our collective heritage, addressing the multi-dimensional complexity of race relations in America in the blood-stained shadows of repression and outrage. Commissioned in 2013 by the Clarice Smith Center at the University of Maryland, the poem is a multi-commentary on George Zimmerman being found not guilty of Trayvon Martin’s murder, the shooting of Michael Brown, and the inception of the Civil Rights Movement that is now known as Black Lives Matter. Indeed, the fifteen-page poem heroically takes on the most challenging issues of the day.
In the Introduction to the published version of the work, Nikki Finney illuminates her intentions in detail, “I wanted to write a poem that traveled from the horror of one day to the lifting of our chins the next—that paid homage to how we keep moving; keep stepping forward; inventing whatever is next to invent; constructing, fashioning iron chains into wings; how we continue to fold and shape into a future what has been kept from us, regardless of the brutality that still chases us.”
Indeed, it is a challenging work that travels across the dark landscape of American history with passion and outrage. However, the question that must be asked is whether or not this work is taken to the next level by presenting it in conjunction with the music composed by Michael Abels, composer of the music for the Jordan Peele films Us and Get Out. Performed by the incredible Kronos Quartet and taken on by Tonality as a call-and-response choral work, the singularity and wonder of each individual art form is eclipsed by the awkwardness of them crashing together in the mix.
Given the brilliant opening performance by the Kronos Quartet before Nikky Finney takes center stage, everything else musically felt eclipsed by this beginning. Once the poem took center stage at the Bram Goldsmith Theatre, the Kronos Quartet felt like a second fiddle at best. However, when you have one of the most talented American quartets of the last century on stage, should they ever be forced to play in the background of an awkward call-and-response poetic venture?
Moreover, Tonality is a supremely talented choral group expertly conducted by Alexander Lloyd Blake. Although Nikky Finney’s poetry is moving and profound, it was not written to be sung in such a call-and-response format. In truth, it was not written to be sung, period. As a direct result, despite the valiant efforts of all involved, the struggle to forge a new genre of call-and-response classical poetry with a political message at The Wallis was a mixed bag of tricks. Although the receptive audience gave the work a standing ovation, it is hard to imagine such a reception from a wider audience.
Ultimately, rather than complementing each other and elevating the individual efforts to a new level of performance excellence, the result felt awkward and forced. Although a reading of the poem by Nikky Finney would be inspiring, a choral performance by Tonality is a thing of beauty, and the Kronos Quartet are stunning classical performers, when brought together and melded in this project, none of them received the true artistic justice that they deserved.
