 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to understanding representation in the historical canon This is first of three part series entitled invisible influences examining absence in Popular narratives. My name is Shakur Ward. I am director learning development and equity at Tulane libraries and it is a great pleasure to welcome you to this event Now the catalyst for the series is the extraordinary life of Joseph Bologna, Chevalier de Saint-Georges whose absence from musical and military History can inspire this series that examines presence and absence in popular historical narratives as well as how they are sustained or disrupted our purpose here today is to create the space for conversation that takes a broad look at Race and representation that is is not present in the popular historical Imagination and now we have a distinguished panel and an experienced moderator who will guide us through the session Before I turn things over to our moderator Lisa Hooper. I'd like to introduce you to our panelists I'll start from my my right Dr. Denise Frazier Dr. Frazier is the assistant director of the Norland Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University a place-based research center that grants fellowships and organizes public programming immersive experiences and collective Contemplation about the bio region stretching from Texas to Florida and its connections with other regions around the world Her research interests currently include the Gulf South and the Anthropocene sound studies and the political Social digital natural and built environments of the Gulf South and Circum Caribbean She is also the manager co-founder and violinist vocalist percussionist of less and an L Did I say that correctly? Yeah. Listen now. Okay, you would you would be able to say it correctly Yeah, listen now it's French word Which is a string? String and technological interfacing and song that performs African diasporic music Through a prismatic lens that honors African and indigenous ancestors and chronicles ecological realities Next we have Demi Ward Demi is a sound artist and researcher committed to the embodiment and insurgent practices of the black creole diaspora Over time Demi's work centralizes well-being through physical and artistic lenses Prioritizing care in an element of black futility futurity next We have Javanna Joseph as founder and artistic director of the Ward winning opera creole Miss Joseph's research on 19th century New Orleans free classical and Operatic composers of color and creole history and heritage has been featured in the New Yorkers Southern Living magazine She was previously honored as a standard bearer of Louisiana culture on the Grand Tour a Documentary for French TV and locally on music inside out Her most recent cover articles are in breakthrough Mac breakthrough media magazine and no the boomers magazine Since 2011 the international soloist arts integration specialists and university lecturer Along with her daughter area Mason opera creole co-founder has received awards for mounting lost or rarely heard operas by composers of color Miss Joseph received the torchbearers award from the New Orleans regional chapter of the National Coalition of 100 black women in 2022 She also teaches a new class for Loyola's College of Music and Media called opera classical music and Race and last but certainly not least we have our conductor for today Lisa Hooper as Head of Media Services Lisa supports the staff and student library worker Student library worker team dedicated to ensuring visitors have access to our extensive media Collections as well as creative technology Lisa also works with the music and dance and theater departments to build collections and provide Instructional and research support. She is also responsible for collecting film across all disciplines I Don't think we could we could have had a better qualified panel and Moderated to address the questions we will raise today We'll have a Q&A session at the end and try to take take questions submitted in the zoom chat if time permits And I won't take any more time. I'll turn things over to Lisa and Lisa I invite you to take it from here Okay, thank you everybody Just a shout out first to everybody in zoomland. I'm actually really Pleased and relieved to see a lot of familiar names and faces. So thank you all for joining us. It's really nice to have you there in zoomland Yes, you are just in time come on in come on in Thank y'all so actually Shakur as Roseanne gets settled in there she is as Roseanne gets settled in do you want to do her quick bio You're not able to see yet in now zoom land, but soon you will see our Final panelists you just arrived dr. Laura Roseanne Adderley welcome Dr. Adderley is an associate professor in the Department of History at Tulane University School of Arts Dr. Adderley specializes in the history of African diaspora the Atlantic slave trade Black enslavement in America's Caribbean history and African-American history Her current book project is tentatively entitled archives of Atlantic abolition slave trade records African lives and the everyday politics of freedom Welcome Dr. Adderley and so with that we'll get started In case you couldn't tell these mics are for a recording which will be available online later So we are going to work really hard to project. So everybody in the room and on zoom can hear us We're doing the best we can And so actually I do sort of want to start perhaps people in zoom can join us using the Reactions and y'all are here in the room. So I'm really curious who in the room and online have heard of Joseph Bonon, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges It's been a long day y'all Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges who have heard of him either before you learned about this event or if you know the movie before you Learned about the movie show of hands Nobody in the room. I actually saw maybe I think I saw up to six thumbs up, which means you guys are all music librarians That's my wild guess Thank you. So Because the majority here do not know or did not know who Joseph Bonon is let me Set the stage, right? So who was Joseph Bonon, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges for all of you who actually speaks French I apologize. Who was he? He was a master fencer by the time he was a teenager he is said to have given fencing lessons to the Revolutionary general Alexander Thomas Dumas who you might recognize his last name He is the father of the Dumas who wrote the three musketeers not coincidentally there's a lot of Speculation conjecture healthy Guesswork that speculates that potentially Chevalier de Saint-Georges was the role model for the three musketeers That book might not have existed as we know it without him He was a master marksman who skill impressed the American John Adams so much that he actually wrote home about him He was the music teacher of Marie Antoinette. He was known as the most talented violinist in all of France He led the most prestigious ensembles in all of France He was a composer who explored and developed the style that we know today as Sanfoni concertante And he did it before Mozart to say in He I just forgot what it's called not the Masons You helped me out on this earlier, and I didn't write it down Freemason Sorry, he joined the one of the major Freemason organizations, and he not only invited many other Brilliant artists like him, but also other people that we know today Cossack is a composer that many of us in music world know today. He was brought in by Joseph Ballon Might not have been without him importantly, he also led Europe's first all-black regiments He prevented an Austrian invasion of the French city of Lille during the French Revolution without any bloodshed He was also the son of a sugar and coffee plantation owner in Guadeloupe And he was the son of a 16 year old enslaved woman enslaved by his father And so by all accounts everybody who knew him That's a good point John what somebody in the chats just noted. We don't actually have his name on the slides. You're right We will take that into note for next time. Thank you right But by by all accounts by everybody who knew him He was the definition of excellence in everything that he did He was very well known and beloved during his lifetime. And so why don't we know him today? Why did he become invisible despite being so influential during his lifetime? so those are the questions that we're trying to answer today and Roseanne if you're ready, I'm gonna I'm gonna call upon you Perhaps so we start at the beginning of his life in Guadeloupe, which is Guadeloupe 1745 He's being raised up as the son of a sugar and coffee plantation owner in the big house And at the time of his birth the code noir was in place And it remained there for just a few years before his death. So actually he was alive when it was repealed the first time And so where am I I'm right This code would have undoubtedly shaped the world that he navigated both as a child and throughout most of his adult life So I'm wondering if you're able and also anybody else at this table who has thoughts on the code noir If you can sort of help us understand what bearing the code noir Also known because I can't pronounce French the the black code what bearing it would have had on the child of an enslaved woman to and already married plantation owner Well, I have You know, you did send me that question in advance and I'll say I'll say three important things I want to quote Courtney Becknell who I think is in medical school at LSU now, but she used to be a docent at Evergreen which is Tied up in the same family that owns what is now the Whitney Plantation and Slavery Museum and she said that one of the core lines As the brilliant tour guide she was that she would remind people as there was no such thing as a code noir police And in that sense we can Overthink The impact of the code noir and what it actually said on people's actual practice The other person that I would like to quote that is enormously relevant here Is Melanie Lamotte who was at Tulane and is not the University of Texas Who has a wonderful book coming? I think in the fall about the way that And she's literally mapped it the book discusses it, but she also literally maps the way that French colonial forces of various kinds and I use force for the small F not literally new military That they're writing to one another across an expanding French Empire from the 17th through She doesn't go to the 20th century and essentially saying you know a dear president Madagascar. What are you doing about this? You know this circumstance She's particularly interested in how they deal with people of mixed race and children and these kinds of things So there's this more so than what the code noir said To Courtney Becknell's point is that what were the what were the norms of the society in which? he would have been born and Then beneath that to the point about no code noir police the norms generally Versus what were the norms in in his individual circumstance and that's the bit we're missing and So in that sense One of the things that it's you can't overstate That he would have he would have been born regardless of where he lived where he set his head at night away He spent his hours into a society that was overwhelmingly African. All right, you know, the thing that characterizes enslavement in so many parts of Latin America in the Caribbean is just the sheer scale of it in a way that we we can imagine it in Ascension Parish in Louisiana here But the the presence of that very black world as opposed to a a French colonial world So when people inquire as they no doubt will about the film about his quote-unquote connection to those people It's a bit like asking someone who leaves New Orleans at age 16 Do they remember New Orleans and what it was like and how did it is it is it is a perverse question? The that so and that's that's thing number one. I think thing number two that is And it's hard to read is that there's an enormous amount of power exercised by the small number of people who enslaved others and While it was perfectly normative for even free and wealthy people at age 16 to be impregnated By persons with whom they chose to have sex or not in this era regardless of their status. It's extremely difficult to Envision to unfold What it meant to be that person the thing that is actually certainly true that it was a fraught status You know then one of which he would have been aware one of the A film that goes off the rails eventually The film of Anne Rice's feast of all Saints the actor who acts the role of the mulatto son There's some really brilliant acting without words about the The it's a teenage actor about the fact that they try to render then that film goes completely off the rails What and that actually does spend time in slave society that this film for the most part does not to mind You know that that it is at the at those ages that you become aware that something is a Miss and complicated about the about the way that white supremacy and European supremacy about culture is and and that's the world on the one hand overwhelmingly black overwhelmingly african You know just the whole cacophony of african culture and language around and no way to escape Like that racial hierarchy and his place in it and I I worry I'm eager to wait to see how people read that or whether they they want to sort of completely Put him down in the world in which he landed as if this past Um, and I was just listening there's a new book out called fog about adoptees I was listening to the interview with the author this morning And and even those that were adopted as infants that they're that what the book is largely about us the way that people just Erase that and and the weight of that world was not something that would Adjusted shear like demographic and cultural space was very different radically different from the one This is just not the circumstances of his birth It had real consequences Thank you, roseanne. So, you know when when I reread the code noir potentially last week Uh, I've lost track of time. I think I reread it last week You know my takeaway from just my very 21st century re-reading I think that was a really important thing that we are seeing this through 21st century eyes and frameworks So when I reread that my thought was there was never supposed to be a joseph balloon chevalier de saint-georges There was only supposed to be a joseph But what i'm hearing from you and the comment that you made earlier when we were just informally talking is It's really more about the context of his family circumstance within the larger framework and Even though my initial thought was like oh, he shouldn't have existed because His father was married to a white woman with a white daughter So he should have according to law like gone into the same condition as his mother which would have been slavery And so I think that's that's actually a really important note. And so I'm just highlighting that I think that our 21st century framework is a little bit different from the individual context of every individual and that's powerful I think And I think that's what la matz book is about essentially people asking even in the 18th and the 19th century Wait, this is not supposed to be happening and then something will happen around property or something else and they literally write, you know Dear person in matinik or newisiana or in madagascar. Have you encountered sex? And how should I respond? So can I reframe my question my second question that I had already posed you just a little bit so If his individual circumstance in his lifetime was clearly different from what the law at the time said It was eventually repealed near the end of his life, but then shortly after he died it was reinstated and so I'm wondering if the reinstatement and severe crackdown and and re-empowerment of the practice of slavery Could have sort of contributed to his eventual erasure and invisibility over time or is that my librarian conjecture? um, I think I would I think that it's too I think it's too much to to essentially credit french restoration slavery in the eastern caribbean with um, and I use in scare quotes for the video, but not for zoom the Erasure because what we what on who we know From what historical record? in the weight of their lifetime in weight of anyone's lifetime in our long-term memory is Is one of the things that The historical profession kind of unpopular culture kind of struggles with so I there's so many figures that were terribly important in their lifetime That are and are known to be so and the one the one that that I sort of reference for the u.s. Context that's an easy one is sally hemmings like now we take for for granted how well known sally hemmings Was in jefferson's time and exactly who all those hemmings descendants were completely well known in their in their time and they weren't um, and in certain circles of both academic life of certainly virginia genealogical life and certain kind of Jeffersonian circles and as you pointed out people who know a certain set of 18th century french sort of music traditions So what like what erasure? What erasure means in what context and so I wouldn't I wouldn't credit the The re enshrinement of sort of you know the what they call my students always freak out about that They were like wait slavery complete complete revolutionary ended and then came back and they're like they're just like a gate for like two and a half weeks It didn't know like and they circle back on it because you you know Particularly those of them that don't don't know much about french colonialism It it was a terrible thing and I think something that I don't know the the literature on it in french that really the kind of social history About what that actually meant me like what does that mean? But yet I don't think that's the reason I think it has to do with the way we What we do and don't remember about the circum about the colonial and slavery era generally And how we sort of pick and choose and I'd be super interested um Like within kind of the the people that know kind of the people that within the people that know lesser known Musical figures like you've got people on zoom that know You know that joseph brunone is not news to them. And so in that sense um I think what we're reaching for is I think what's happened in the case of hemi's You know, I would I used to teach a course on race sex and american slavery That it was very much about your question like since all these mixed race people aren't supposed to do this What are we doing? um And but but when I would walk around I would turn the my my hemmings books opposite side out So that like I wouldn't have to start with anyone about like, you know that conversation Because it was somehow politically fraught or like, you know and in this sense so I'm not sure what the reasons for or I mean and like the the thing that I don't know is Well, there's no one identical to him But in terms of like how within what music world does he know? Like as I said the same way I think about what I thought about the hemming situation Like there's always people who knew all the things all the things that are you know, annette gordon reads There were circles of people and it's not it's not taking anything away from the sort of the way she's transformed The mainstream historical discourse and it is a gorgeously written book Within what circles was that what's he known and why and versus Kind of what what is out in what and and in some ways annette gordon reads Climbing on the barricades for hemmings Who climbs on the barricades were just blown and to what audience because with this it's very much a us political audience And I you know, so it's a very different audience Yeah, I think that's a fabulous question and we are absolutely going to dig into his social Um network, especially once he moves to paris. We're going to talk about that in a minute But before we leave leave quite a loop Denise I want to turn to you briefly because I think you've done some really interesting thinking research and especially creative work on the colonial legacies Of sugar and the generational harm of these industries And so what has always fascinated my imagination since learning about him is that Joseph's belongs most formative years as a child Were spent on just such a plantation probably startling both of those worlds. Yeah and so I'm a where am I going with this question I have it written down. Um, so like in my mind, he's among the first of these generations to experience and benefit from from the impacts of slavery very firsthand and so I'm wondering if you can if you're able to at this point help us unpack a little bit the factors That might have contributed and again This is a little bit speculative for all of the very good reasons that road saying just just gave us but sort of speculate a little bit on on sort of this Probably silencing in real time erasure that would have happened during his lifetime while he was actually experiencing these things Thank you. Yeah I just want to thank lisa and alan and dr. Ward for and inviting me onto this beautiful panel Of people who I admire deeply Can y'all hear me? Yeah Yeah, thank you And and just to respond a little bit to what rosanne said i'm very interested in why he is coming up right now I was thinking about livery place and you know Lee circle is now freedom circle how certain things have changed here new orleans We still have signs that um street signs that are Of confederate soldiers right so the history seems to me like a loop pedal sometimes and i'm more interested in understanding The reasons why certain people are coming up Because we all know that people of african descent are entirely complex and we've always had these histories and relationships But why certain people are coming to the surface at certain times? Is completely interesting and when dr. Adderley was talking I completely thought of this You know in a sonic way just thinking of history as this loop pedal that certain sounds are coming up and coming down Consistently, so I just wanted to respond a little bit to what dr. Adderley said and kind of question I wanted to question why you know why as well why should why joseph why now? um Because there's a lot going on right now against you know, um people of african descent We just had what happened in tennessee, you know There's just so many examples that we can think about right now and and to think about locally here in new orleans as well And also just to just respond quickly to dr. Ward mentioned less than l I just want to foreground that less than l. Um, it's a the electoral acoustic group that demi and i are part of We are um, we took that name from the afro creole poets the first anthology of african descent poetry In the entire united states was this group called less than l and so that was in the 19th century And so that's that's where that is coming from So we are kind of a loop pedal response to what they were doing What these group of afro creole poets were doing and how that connects with nationalism at that time in this um In this place and also wanted to There's so many things I already want to respond to before I get to answer this question But I'll go quickly because I have notes and going off the dome is not my strong suit um The the count of mani cristo. I remember reading that and having no idea about, um alexander dumas's Racial history, but when I read that entire book, I was like this person is a mixed race I I immediately knew it just because of the way that the story was told There's just some there was an angst there that um really that I really connected with and and I wasn't surprised when I found out about His situation and his connection with joseph is completely interesting And I sort of had this different vision of joseph after I knew about the the connection with this Literature and dumas But to answer your question I've been thinking a lot about this a lot of the work At new orland center for the gulf south right now is connected with this idea of the anthropocene Which is um this uh scientific epoch that we are in right now where humans have the most influence on the planet And um recently there's a um a wonderful um exhibition of art at antenna gallery and 3116 gallery called art and insurgency And the co-curator shayna m greffin who works a lot of um on black displacement here in the city in a money jacklyn brown Who is studying st. James parish and the environment there has worked with this term plantation of scene So um i'm also thinking about that as I was like thinking about your question um And thinking about this this city and how everything relates to this idea of the planche plantation of scene Our architecture the way we talk the way we interact with each other You know the stratosphere of um positions and jobs and who's on the top and who's on the bottom here It's really obvious in in this place. And so that that's connected with the idea, but um Thinking about the colonial legacy of sugar and the anthropocene, you know sugar is not Indigenous to this region. It's from actually south asia And it was brought in the 1400s when a lot of this expansion with colonialism was actually beginning And um cutting sugar was an incredibly labor-intensive. Um someone mentioned evergreen whitney plantation You know, I just got chills when I went to whitney the first time and I saw those big vats Of liquid around the the plantation and I got sick to my stomach thinking about What it must have meant to have carried those vats of boiling hot water that was used for For cane for reducing the the hot cane water into syrup and and what that process Was for people of african descent And so these boiling houses became more prevalent in the 17th 18th and 19th century And uh joseph was born in 1745 so You know as dr. Adderley stated that he was exposed to that trauma He was exposed to this this idea of the plantation oscene, but he moved to paris when he was really young So that's something that we that, you know, we have to contend with He was cognizant of the dangers of enslavement and the entanglements of What it meant to grow this crop and to reduce this crop into what we know is white sugar And his whole existence is existence is a product of colonial entanglement And so I I I've I've heard his music, but I have to see him in that way as I see myself in that way And so his um his position as the the claims son of this noble planner Afforded him allowances that we can only assume kept him from the gruesome realities of actually doing the back breaking labor But um, that's an assumption that I'm making but we can't assume that he wasn't of course exposed Um to the trauma of um of this crop So I I weren't I wasn't able to find any um any information on records of his life before he was 13 So this is a lot of speculation But he was educated and you know, cultured in that 1800s way, right and raised in a way that was afforded to an elite child in the in the um 17th century 18th century um And thinking of the silencing and erasure of his lived experience is that his story is not easily told with the Tropes of which we are accustomed and so I think that's that's why he's fascinating now um, he was a beneficiary of the colonial project, but That there had to be tons of privileges that he was not afforded that i'm also interested in knowing what those are um because he was of african descent um And he wasn't the child of a legitimate relationship, you know, his enslaved 16 year old mother was not married to this person But I believe she did go with him to paris if i'm not mistaken So there's an interesting entanglement there. Um, that kind of connects with jefferson also um, he also fought for people in the french revolution and fought for the liberation of hady So, um, that's another nuance to his story that separates him from mozart if i'm not mistaken The book that i read called him the black mozart, which was completely unfair and we need to stop that We need to stop it. Um, you know when history has been intentionally erased or forgotten We should ask ourselves what we have to gain through understanding this history You know demi and I are both classically trained musicians and I was I was very shocked that um, this didn't come up at all during my training um I'm thinking about his excellence also as a survival tactic um Yeah, I i'm just curious about um, how we now with more information coming about him seek to Uh, really understand this person a complete holistic way or flatten his experience as an exceptional person of color Um, when his life of course contains its own complexity and richness and distinction um And also who else are we erasing when we lift him up? Um, there are classical musics all over the world not just in western europe and we all know that So why aren't we lifting up other classical musicians from the continent of africa or india? Who are those exceptional people? Who we still need to hear from But erasure and invisibility have a purpose and are part of the colonial project and are part of this plantation as seen um To disregard how some people of african descent have navigated colonial history. So I think understanding how he navigated his specific colonial history is Is um, so vital and important and interesting and and now we can sort of tease out who else Who else who are we are we missing? When we when we make these comparisons I don't want to interrupt, but I think the important you said something so brilliant there about the black motzart thing Because I didn't have articulate what's problematic about that That there's there's all kinds of people of color all over that colonial world in which he's in And this the framing him suggests that okay, there's two There's this motzart and then there's him and you point you to what you said about the elite education to which You know, there's there's people of color from these colonial entanglements all over that world And we're we're sort of motzart becomes the standard then there's then there's a black and then and then all these other people There's a there's a there's a new erasure and that's it's it's an exquisite point Yeah, do you want to go ahead and jump into i'd like to jump in on a couple of things my brain is just kind of running First of all, I have For people who are not as familiar with code noir make me think about that It's a it's a set of laws in how you exist If you your condition of your birth you you are and if you're an enslaved person You inherit the condition of your mother, but it was where you could go how you could dress And we defined All of those rules in some way or another when they said if you if you look white and you have long hair When you go in public you have to cover your hair because we want to be sure that you have one drop of black blood Right, so they said okay So they piled the their beautiful fabrics up very high and put jewels in them and came out even more beautiful than before But they were following the rules but not following the rules So it's important to talk about these laws because by the time they come to new alliance The laws even include jewish people And if you were jewish you arrived in in louisiana you had x amount of days to convert To christianity or leave So it was of people. They should have called the the code of anybody different Right so And so it's it's a crazy existence because we defy Certain laws in the way that we do them, but we're living in this crack and joseph lived in this crack and I like to give credit to his father Which most plantation owners would not have taken their child into A royal society and and educated and men raised them in in such a way And so it's one of those areas where I say We when we do write things good things happen But over the centuries, we not only had the black Mozart. We had singers Sister reta-john was called the black patty Samuel colridge tale was called the black Wagner they they've they've done this for many years because It somehow boggles the mind that we are excellent on our own So It's a it's a real issue for me But joseph lived kind of in that middle now what's interesting For me now. I hope the movie will talk about a little bit. He lived in that crack But when 200 of the aristocracy of royalty of of all of that were all beheaded He was the only one that wasn't But yet they determined that because he had been a part of that world His music was not to be played And that was something that definitely came from napoleon when napoleon rose to power And in his process of reinstating slavery, so Was it would it be worse to have been? You know Or to watch to live and watch yourself be removed That's what's powerful for me that I want to know more about that but it's you know, he Just like in new allians. We have our Apocryolas dedicate to our free composers of color Edmond Dede Chalucion Lambert by zeal baree all of those people that defy the code noir and are still My mission is to get them to also be unlost but what has happened In covet the the the advantage to covet after the george floyd event is there are lots of meetings and lots of conversations The opera world. I'm on national diversity committees. The opera world has really been talking about what are we doing? and His name of course has come up and the you know black composers names are coming up and then bridgerton hits And because it becomes this big hit of this period piece and you've got this black queen and people are like what? so The success of that I think helped but I first learned about the chevalier de san george when I was education director for the the weasley and the philharmonic orchestra in about 2001 And I have been saying his name since 2001 And to and when opera creole made his debut We included one of his pieces 2008 before that when I went to paris I broke my neck find in the street that was named after him because it was concrete reality So there are there are those of us that have continued to speak his name Or because you said you first learned of it was that your initiative because of your interest or did someone else? Because I think that's important. Yes, it's different from you taking that initiative From someone else saying hey of the things you should know right no no you you didn't find it out. You found it out Okay, that's what it is different. You're not giving yourself enough credit there. Yes That's one of the things I was wondering like who is who is not talking and right So I had some hope that the music folks were but they were not Hey a comment a conversation that I had just yesterday or maybe this morning with Dr. Ward over there was this idea of yes people existed But we need to do the work To be able to sort of start promoting them start recognizing their works start performing start reading It's just about doing the work Before I sort of let you off the hook Denise. I am really fascinated by the work that you've done By the work that you've done about essentially mapping presence and absence in spaces And so you recently collaborated on a really powerful play with go in the road and gall your house I don't think it was that long ago. It feels like it was just yesterday But maybe it was longer than that and you had a conversation With Diane Mack on wwe know about it And in that conversation you spoke about the spaces that black bodies could and could not be In these houses like gall your house, which is a very famous house locally here in New Orleans And so I know Joseph Ballon was in Guadalupe was in Paris in late 1700s the second half of of the 18th 18th century and your work was set In the 19th century New Orleans, but what is striking is the architecture is identical The culture is pretty similar because of all the french colonial influences And so I'm wondering if you could help us understand through your your much later work if you could help us understand The idea of presence and absence and sort of negative space where black bodies were not supposed to be Where we very much so see joseph was very very present Thank you for bringing that piece up the piece before that I worked I'm a company member of goad in the road, which is a local theater company that does immersive theater here in the city The stranger disease was a production on the yellow fever pandemic. And so that is a part of this This series of reconstruction plays that goad in the road has been doing And it was a weird case of art imitating life because it debuted in 2018 and then two years after that pandemic happened So in this show more so than in the subsequent show, which you're referring to which is the uninvited Which took place in 1874 When New Orleans was on the heels of resurrogation in the schools so the the uninvited Was a kind of playing with that theme and it goes back to what I had said earlier about this loop pedal of You know, we're desegregating and now we're segregating again And then it's the civil rights movement and now we're back to You know, schools are basically segregated now, but we're not calling them segregated So the stranger disease took place four years later in 1878 and that was the show that I was actually in and it told the real life of A woman a creole woman of african descent called Adeline Stringer who Had a boarding house and She was a manager for other boarding houses and her lover was actually german creole And his name was joseph mathis and it's a real life Story, you know, there's documents about her correspondence to him Wait, his correspondence to her, but I don't think we have a lot of evidence about her replies But we know from the nature of his correspondence that she replied to him. So she was also literate and um And yeah, they had a complicated but open love affair in the late 1800s here in new Orleans and that translated And how that translated into her trying to be the beneficiary of joseph's state was a Was a huge deal and it ended in a property battle with joseph's brother Um, who um, you know who was racist by our standards. So stories like these are Implem emblematic of the fluidity of race and class in new Orleans. And so the the story of joseph kind of connects with with that show But um, what I wanted to say a little bit about um that question is What joseph's story opens up for us is the need to understand the complexity of black freedom and black agency despite the plantation as seen I want to go to uh, dr. Jessica marie johnson who I know dr. Adderley appreciates in her new book wicked flesh. She mentions this concept of black femme freedom Which i'm very very interested in learning more about This concept provides a deeper understanding of the survival tactics that have been used to allow specifically african descended women But um, we might be able to apply some of these theories to african descended men Indigenous people to support their survival under repressive regimes And this is a quote from dr. Johnson Black femme freedom of fluid plurality describes actions expressions and excretions that move beyond the fractional flesh Of the traverse and the container of the manumission act in the practice of refusal whether in rejected labor or demands or sexual advances And even refusal to concede in officials to manumission disputes Black women and girls claimed ownership over themselves and she also goes on to talk about queer sexual identities As fomenting a type of black femme freedom that dare to form intimate bonds with women And also mentions becoming black also healed as women children and men cast nets of chosen kin and community And relationships over and around each other despite the cultural and linguistic differences in the nature of the plantation as seen So the type of slavery in which an african descended could be engaged could be as diverse as urban versus rural Contract workers for wage versus full-time laborers and sharecroppers and owning other individuals Which we see of course here in louisiana People of african descent owning other people of african descent here too and indigenous people as well as the case in louisiana perhaps in other places even enslaved africans maroons All represent a wide variety of different ways An african descended person could take up space in the colonial Caribbean and louisiana and in this in this culture Um, and so I actually thought of phyllis wheatley too because I was trying to think about people who I actually learned about when I was in school Um So, uh, yeah, she was born a little bit after um, joseph and senegal And she of course went on to be the first african-american woman to have a published work of poetry and I believe it's still uh poetry month So I just want to say that. Um, there was also I thought about frederick douglas christmas addicts Estebanico all of these firsts. I was trying to think of all of the firsts as I was like preparing for this panel or all the people who I Was uh trained to think of as these first Um, so these are some examples and we can be assured that we are still only like skimming the surface of fully acknowledging and recovering These stories of strategies of visibility and resistance. Um, so, uh Yeah, so what what do we lose by flattening our histories? Um, what does white supremacy gain through these flattening of histories is um, interesting is an interesting, um I guess thought thought process that I have. Um So this country would not be the capitalist machine that it is if it would not for the displacement and genocide of Indigenous people exploited of extractive genocidal practices of enslaved african descendant people's free labor The raping of our natural environment and ecological resources And how does that connect to how we think about, um Black bodies in space for the uninvited for that specific show the actors actually Um, we're traumatized by having to stay in certain places in the galley or house So, um, all of these issues that have translated over centuries live in Cell you in the cells of our bodies, you know, it's related to um, how we eat how we interact with each other over time And so, um the absence, um in our classrooms and the way we are trained classically um is also, um Is also really traumatic and for and for a lot of people of african descent to enter the classical world And I know miss joseph can speak to a lot about that. It's an exercise in resistance Um, and you and I know I constantly questioned, you know, why am I here? You know, I have I I was Six years old when I had this old white man actively try to stop me from playing the violin And um, but I was attracted to that instrument and it wasn't until later in life that I learned Look at all these people playing string instruments and you know in africa Look at all these people bringing the violin, um in enslaved, um colonial contexts is here in the new world You know, this is not something new. I'm not special because I play the violin I'm I'm a part of this long tradition. I'm taking up space My my african descent body is taking up space unapologetically But I had to face a lot of trauma and resistance to get there And I think every african descent train classical musician can talk about the uncomfortability in the body When we're in these places I mean you can even look at you know advertising for the lpo and you know, it's you know I just see a lot of white people in those efforts and in those advertisements I think connecting to what not to you know say That this is a person that moves between spaces and I fear the film will trap him In certain spaces that will look like it helped you add Well, you know, one of the things that that sticks out for me my class at Loyola starts in the 1500s And There was a free man of color who was a royal trumpeter to kings. Henry the seventh and Henry the eighth We talk about the moors how the moors left africa made their way into spain france england Our fingerprints are on every kind of music there is And for little kids to learn that and to know I'm I I was telling my lectures. I'm really glad that I was okay being weird I'm What the reality is I wasn't And what that feels like, you know, this this missing of information What would it feel like for a kid coming up as we were To know that we were standing on all of these shoulders that we weren't stepping out and doing something that was odd or unusual But our fingerprints are everything and that royal trumpeter to king. Henry the eighth Managed to negotiate a raise from the guy who was beheading his wives He must have been very good at what he did right, so We need to get this information out. We need to talk to our children and let them know Be who you are And i'm blessed that I had parents that felt that way. My father said to me you right now you live in the ghetto The ghetto's not in you we got a civil rights movement going so you can be whoever you want to be And whoever you want to be we got you that's the parents I had And that's the real risk of this film that what you both are saying, which is a world I know nothing of is is going to get erased and it's going to be great And he's going to be exceptional and there's going to be one of him That is well your parents sound like amazing people they were And if I can turn to you I mean there was so much in all of those comments that I want to dig into but I know we have More ground to cover So i'm gonna turn it to you givona. So Let's take it to the point in his life when uh balon family moves to france Can you sort of give us a cliff notes version of the social circles that the Young joseph balon would have been running in so who are the people he met he studied with perhaps And what were those relationships like so far as we are able to know from the history left behind Well, that's a another interesting piece frances One of the positive things is there's always been some faction of acceptance That we still see today. There's this, you know, we still can go over there and And fill a certain level of acceptance and so he would have had those people Um, uh, his father had him, you know training with the fencing masters. They could have said, oh, absolutely not I'm not but of course They were accepting him and they were able to help him to well, you know, allow him to excel as he would right Um, but in the movie they also deal with the fact that there were some people who said, you know in another world You would not be this person. You would not be dressed this way There is in the movie when he is the king of england himself of france himself wants joseph to take over the paris opera And the and the women of the the major singers write a petition saying their conscious could not allow them to submit to the orders of a mulatto So there were so many ways that he was in these cracks and crevices where he was able to excel Um, but yet at the same time that was always the pushback of no, let's let's put you back in your place. Put you back in your place. Um, so Um The fact that marie entoinette accepted him So beautifully Also later, I think in the movie becomes a problem for her that she gets pushed back And in if I recall the this The moment in history about the french opera which was for those who don't study french music was very important opera At that time it was growing and thriving and incredibly important, but they the director moved on So they needed to place a new director Joseph Boulogne by this time already chevalier des Saint-Georges was Considered the obvious choice and a shoe in marie entoinette was advocating for him to have this But as you said it was the three Female singers who said they couldn't and so the end result was that Nobody was assigned to lead the french opera and needed this to say it did not survive Much longer after that which is really interesting and instead Joseph Boulogne just went on to form his own ensemble Which was fabulous by the way um And so but you also mentioned there are people who are pushing back like those three singers And I have this big memory of reading this when I was reading up on his biography that you know He was not just any old fencing school. It was the best fencing school in all of france And when he was like selling there were some rather for our time And their time rather racist people who are like, I do not believe that this person can be better than my very white self I'm paraphrasing you know Apologize or apologies for that. Um So they would try to challenge him. Is is that does that sound about right? Absolutely they challenged him. They you know, they thought well, you know, we've got to deal with this mulatto We've got to put him back in this place and they just thought you know, he's a party trick He's just this you know exotic person that they want to say is something and um, and of course he beats everybody He beats all the best in france And that's why he's like, well, you know, I have nothing else to prove so I can be head of paris opera um Right um Yeah, and it wasn't just in the fencing arena There were at least three attempts that we know where people More or less in modern terms jumped him as he was walking down the street So he was just fighting them off and then he would go on to his main stage performance like nothing happened Um true stories told by his friends and their own Yeah Own memoirs. Um, and so This is a bit of a jump But this will help me understand the way some biographers and people when I read Liner notes in recordings or sometimes introductions to some of his musical scores people question his financial prowess because by the time he passed he did not have any money in the coffers so far as we're aware of and so I want to understand that narrative of Was he really bad at managing his finances and wasn't such a great person after all because of all the stigma that goes Dying broke. Um, or was there something else going on? And so I'm hoping you could help us understand this a little So chevalier his financial status and also that of his father and frankly all of france Really ebbed and flowed throughout his lifetime, right? So france france underwent a severe economic crisis that ruined many very wealthy elite His father well the estate the family estate under circumstances that i'm still a little unclear on Wound up going to his white daughter. I feel like there's a story there Um, so essentially there was no estate that went to jossef bolon and so By the time he oh, he also never held an official post with a steady income. He always had patrons Um, so by the time he passed um, and he was in Later in life, he did not have bankable income that were able to tell in history, right? And so When we look back at him Um through the lens of history he can be and many people have described him as living off of somebody else's fortune And other peoples other white peoples financial Skills i mean first um living off of his father, which is sometimes framed as a negative and i'm like dude We all rely on family wealth in many ways, right to get on so i find that one a little curious But then as he he came into adulthood he lived off of various financial patrons over time And i have seen many people Sort of be a little bit critical and hyper critical of that lifestyle of having a patron Provide you a home provide you income provide you the financial resources, right to live a very lavish Lifestyle as he did and so what is shocking to me is that we do see we see this rapprochement Against joseph ballon chevalier st. George, but not against anybody else and so this is where i really want you For people here and in zoom really drive home What was it like to be any musician any composer during this time period in france? What what is it? What does it mean to have a patron and how normal is that? It was very normal to have a patron. Um, I wish we had a little bit more of a patronage situation In the united states right now So they're actually critical of that on liner notes because like we got that We got that in high like literally in ninth grade music It was I was very excited when one new score was just recently published and i'm like Yes, i'm getting this for the library and as soon it came and I like stole it back to my office So I could look at it and I read the introduction with great anticipation is like my first Deep introduction to who this person was and they were like He died broken penniless and alone. So this is a new score. Yes, and I was deeply disturbed. That's the 21st century racism problem Yeah The air if we can newly transcribed scores are coming out. Yeah, let's clear the air on this So let me say this there's there of course His father provided for him and and I think that's a great thing. We should we should acknowledge when people do the right thing um and uh, there are two stories one is that the father did leave money for joseph and his mother but the but the family said that he was illegitimate and um, it was not acceptable and so They determined that the daughter from the marriage would be uh, would inherit the money. So My understanding was that the father did have the right intentions in leaving him money There was a time when when joseph lived in the home of the son of the duke de olio our patron person And mozart lived in the same house with him For a while, right? So what I was just telling my students at Loyola yesterday Actually boulogne was in better financial shape than mozart mozart was poor his whole life. He had patrons You know and I I told them to go back and watch the movie amadeus because in the end He got dumped in a mass grave mozart did It it was not he was not um on On some of the levels that actually joseph boulogne was So that was at the time that was it, you know It was that was the way the arts were handled at the time that you had the patron or or the king Would you know would would uh finance an opera and then tell you you wrote too many notes You know things like that um And so it's important to kind of put that in in the context now after the beheading of maria entoinette and the king and all of the aristocrats and The the new order was taking place in france. People wanted nothing to do with those of the Um, uh aristocracy and so His dying penniless came from watching himself getting rejected even in his music And he moved from paris into a small country area He you know, he did fencing as he could he played with other groups as he could but But his his status was severely diminished and when the cold war and all that came back in He just was kind of silently fading away. And of course, it's not his fault that he died penniless It's not a lot of artist's fault that they died penniless We're out here trying to do our thing, right? But this is the reality of Of of what happened, but we have to put that in context of mozart being absolutely penniless himself so Is that a us or our french-based author of the line of notes because I think what they're doing To something givanna said that certain of Just look balloons contemporaries wanted to treat him as a party trick to be kind of taken down a peg and I Honestly feel that that is precisely The same thing and to your loop battle thing that what is going on in that liner notes is oh look the party trick is getting Popularity again, right? So we'll find we will find a way to kind of diminish yet to diminish. Thank you absolutely And france and the u.s. Have their own different versions of rising anti-blackness in this moment and hostility to their colonial anti-blackness being yeah absolutely So I was Interesting sorry. I'm looking at my notes. I think I just asked that question already um So to me if I can turn to you before we you know have to move too quickly into q&a You do some really really I'm looking for my questions again some really interesting work as we're saying during your introduction in um black insurgency and so I realize your work is A lot more contemporary focused But because you do so much thinking about black, um insurgency and I think uh denise you also referenced not necessarily insurgency, but resistance um So I'm wondering if you could sort of think out loud for us a little bit to me um And sort of maybe see if you could find a way to frame the life of jocef balloon that we've been hinting at already in our conversation um one that sort of frames him as like embodied representation either in his life and actions of just being present in spaces where he wasn't supposed to be in Excelling and leading in ways that our 21st century minds think he wasn't supposed to be Can you sort of help us understand how that? Existence and way of life itself is a form of black insurgency yeah, um I think that you know this time period that we're talking about 17th century circumcruvian and europe we're talking about a time in which blackness was tied to um a sense of output or like a sense of things that could be extracted from a person um whether it was labor or labor in another context um, and I think that jocef balloon uh Is we're talking about someone who output was What he did like what he did was be exceptional what he did was um operate within this system that's still going to extract out of him, but just giving them something different um and I think that when we talk about hegemony and counter hegemony it's a It's an interesting thing like thinking about like how does someone fight back against the system? There's no one way to do it, right? I think that it comes to people in different ways depending on your circumstances And we've seen this like over time with black art and music forms that address counter hegemony through different avenues you like you know like you could have Joseph balloon like taking on this like bra coupé like type of like Idea of like this, you know, maybe machete voting like revolutionary, but like that necessarily wasn't the cards that he was dealt Um, and I feel like he approached it in his own way. Like yes, it was instead of a machete. It was a you know, he was fencing But I think that Thinking of Joseph balloon as like this this figure that was done up that had the coin You know that was out there. I think of him a lot in the same way that I think of You know like famous rappers today that like boast about how much money they have like in this same way of You presenting to the hegemony that you can use their tools Even better than them in some in some aspects Um to position yourself in a way that doesn't make you Feel or seem like you're in a in a power structure that is unequal um I think we've seen that over and over and over again Um, and I think Joseph balloon is just one of many historical figures that have Addressed counter hegemony in a way that doesn't necessarily have to look like What history oftentimes oftentimes tries to paint black insurgency as which is like the machete voting like Haitian revolution Like, you know, and like that is a very valid way of revolting against um Against oppressive and like violent structures, but there are other ways as well and I feel like that's what he was doing Could you could you give the quick bracu pay because we have an this will live online and you're speaking to new or lenient pay uh bracu pay is a Historical like folkloric figure in Louisiana history Much to my understanding of besuro in brazil, uh, the story of an enslaved individual that um takes up Insurgent anti-colonial um action In their own means like it's very like it's a very maroon very revolutionary um view on on counter hegemony And both figures in brazil and here embody that and sometimes like have like the mythology of like, you know Being blessed by god or the gods or whatever in order to like, you know, because you can't like Operate as an agent for black resistance without, you know, having some sort of divine intervention You got to be blessed to be able to resistance white folk. So So, yeah, that's what I could be Thank you for that An anecdote from his biography and maybe you can help clarify or correct But listening to you talk about this a little bit also reminded me of this anecdote during his lifetime Chevalier was known as the black foltaire. He didn't become the black motar until after he died So during his lifetime He was known as the black foltaire who you know, was his contemporary and who absolutely hated black people He was a firm believer in slavery Voltaire I believe in the same apparent like you're hating black people and believing in slavery aren't those Well, yeah, actually, maybe thank you for making that correction. Maybe we do need to have a little more We'll have a whole different series on black on Voltaire on race But what but I thought was just this thing that sort of ignited my imagination. Maybe go Was understanding that that chevalier's joseph polo and chevalier de saint-georges was Called the the black foltaire foltaire did not really like him Chevalier de saint-georges was accepted into the free mason group first He is said to have written the initiation music for foltaire And to have been an intrinsic part in the whole initiation process And foltaire was blindfolded. So he did not know That this black person whom he did not like Was deeply part of his initiation process. Have you heard that it was in one of his biographies like a big biography that I read This is fascinating. So if anybody is doing research on free masonry in paris Please dig into that a little bit more because I would like to know more about that for our local musicians I feel like there's got to be a gig here if there's to be if you to have individual initiation music I mean, we still have a lot of free mations. That's that's that feels like that's work Since we lack patience Right, so okay, so we're at 246. Oh you wanted to add something. Please do one thing that I that i'm really Curious as to how the movie Will handle this and in talking about, you know, his Resistance being the sword The fact that he was part of this aristocracy and all of that living as a free person You know in the cracks Somehow he turned and said I need to do something different I need to be a part of the resistance. I need to form My own battalion. I need to go out here and change france for My people I'm I don't know that was his words, but something turned And he was a force for the french revolution And and a force later on that would lead to the ending of slavery um I really wanted to know more about that turn and maybe he just felt it all along that he was you know Trying to do something different to break through And did it with his violin and with his sword and then ultimately and he did it with with other black men Which so we know that there was uh other influential people who just said who else are we stories? Don't we telling so there's a lot to a lot to unpack There is so much to unpack um from again from what we can understand of the historical record He did not necessarily think of himself as a black man. He thought of himself first as a frenchman second as a creole And so all of these labels that we've applied to him over time Sort of are more a reflection upon ourselves. I think then upon him, which I think is interesting and so um, we do I'm gonna I want to leave time for q&a, but I want to leave on a positive note so We know that chevalier has long since been sort of forgotten in many ways made invisible in many ways And many people is like, uh, his music doesn't exist anymore, but it does exist. It's being performed. There's a movie We are having this whole conversation So he's being made visible again And I want I want to leave on a more positive note. See if you all have Any reflections or word of encouragement or guidance to all of us here and in zoom um on on how On returning even more extraordinary characters back into memory Yeah Well, we have many of them. We have many of them right here in new allians Um, as a matter of fact, I'm um in the process and have been in the process For a few years now trying to put uh, never performed opera by a new allians free composer of color Born here free in 1827 of non-mix race But he wrote this this last opera was written in 1887 550 pages fully orchestrated in french And was never performed And he is One of the very first American born black opera composers born right here in new allians Edmond de day City of new allians uplifting him the way they should know and if we never we've never performed it here It's never been performed in the world. It's in his original handwriting. It's never been performed anywhere Right, but he has he has other operas that were performed and we do some of his music his his art songs and And those things but it is a project and i'm trying to get the city to talk about this legacy of of these free people of color who Were so impactful in new allians not just artists but when when when reconstruction was ending and Jim crow laws were coming in and those artists were kicked out of the french opera house They filed a lawsuit one of the first lawsuits in 1869 to integrate a performing arts space And the people free people of color Revolta to the point they stopped buying tickets and the french opera house could not afford to bring To send their french singers back to france. We impacted the economics of opera in new allians in 1869 and so this has been our legacy that Yeah, we want to we want to share that and celebrate it More and more I think that's the context of why this one has not been performed because it comes from the moment It comes from the moment when the city and the united states Decided that you know what we've ended slavery, but we will have white supremacy back and because we performed others of his work I think you you put your finger on it that that is the reason This piece almost cannot be performed because then it requires us to confront the moment Yeah, I like it any other brilliant reflections on returning people to memory or you already I have I have I have a quick one um the The one thing that I worry about in terms of this conversation And this figure I do think and I was I was looking on there's these people on youtube that take like black figures and translate how we would talk about them in um You know someone who's almost 60 in what I think of the I guess the everyday vernacular of people who are in their 20s To try to get them to embrace. I'm like, yeah, we need that I do worry a little bit because there are Um, think about what Denise said there are kind of concentric circles of people and y'all are still told You are the one black odd person doing this classical thing where in fact there are there are many others But I do worry a little bit. I want this film to blow up huge because I want all the black things to succeed See there. I've said it. It's a basic standard. Um, but I worry about the the extraordinary figure narrative because the the circles get wider and wider and wider and uh to This idea of black insurgency in the everyday and what demi was saying is that And something that our brilliant sociology colleague Dr. Cory. Miles says that, you know, there's this black all-rightness And we mustn't forget that but the the the the circles of it is what's wrong with being the black old tan the black Mozart it's not just that you're excluding the multiple people in those circles, but you're also Oh, thank goodness. There are there are these people in these exceptional spaces and one of the things I was one is like, you know um Everybody these people have a circle still in Guadalupe and I was like, hmm. What's that conversation like? All right in terms of you know, I don't know for example number one whether there are other whether there are other siblings That was one question. But also, um When when they leave this family and it is a family go to Paris They don't leave a plantation. They leave a community and I was like now that's if I had a creative bone in my body That's the play I would write it'd be a whole series of conversations with news of him among them And so that's the thing I want us to keep Is that people the same way here that it's one of these people were a secret like, you know Exactly we treat today like the the you know the people that your work brings to light But people knew people at all ranks knew they were Oh You should google boulogne rum rum in french r-h-u-m Family still exists plantation still exists. They make rum Learned that yesterday from a student who's actually from Guadalupe. She happened to stop me and say hey this family still exists Are they singular or is it like the only boulogne is that like his cousin's room? It could be family there There were two lines of the boulogne family in Guadalupe living next door to each other at the time So i'm not too sure which line of the family this is they're making opera funding money, you know Speaking of creative bones and potential plays I desperately want to know more about his mother nano So it didn't seem steering at you as our creative person here and to me as well are two creative people and three We are all of us all of you Do something about no, right? No. No. Oh my goodness. That's brilliant. You look a plan All right, we have we I We're almost at the end and I absolutely want to give folks a few minutes at least for questions Otherwise, we will keep talking about all the wonderful things. So are there questions? Um from chat. Are there questions in the room? Can I just Actually, can I can I ask you to use this mic so we can also All right, so my name is inna and most of the panelists know me well What fascinates me is where you come from matters because the educational Institutions in various european countries reflect on the whole black and white issue completely different So for instance, I have an afro centric phd from temple university And there I was a strange person where everybody asked me how is it you being born in germany I have to say in an international family of refugees where my grandparents were enslaved in russia So anyway, but that I wasn't aware of at the time. So they asked me how is it that Only german literature always places egypt in africa while all other all other europeans don't do that And I said well germany also never had slave had slavery They had colonies in africa, but the institution of slavery never made it to what is now germany So anyway, it reflected but back to our hero here the chevalier I actually did hear from him as a child Because I grew up in a music city in a Mozart city and we were taught in high school We were taught Mozart and Beethoven and of course before Haydn, but right afterwards we had two years of jazz history Where they taught us that jazz was just as important as Mozart and Beethoven and the blues was just important So it does matter where you're born and my introduction to the chevalier Is never coming up in the discussion here in the united states. He was very close friends with Beethoven And I thought Beethoven was friends with him not the other way around Mozart apparently was his beneficiary in some ways Of no where they were not Beethoven did have a black composer friend, uh, george britch tower Oh different one different. Oh, so see I've even I got the wrong information but There that he existed and that there were black composers is definitely a fact And and one more thing I want to throw here in the ring is Shakespeare we're all familiar of Othello and testimonia And they were legally married, please. Okay, and that was acceptable But that he was discrimination created that jealousy that that uh, shakes were dramatizes But that jealousy that he kills his wife is acceptable in the united states But it's not acceptable that he was very wealthy and that they were legally married, please Okay, so and that was the reality of Shakespeare. So we kind of twist our history a little bit over here So, all right, I have to say I'm american citizen now. So I included in this twisting I distance myself of course as best as I can but it's a constant process of what you say you have to constantly resist to the dominant Speech because it's insane It's insane. It is insanity here and the constant racialization is insanity that constant I mean our history. I'm a historian. You cannot make it up You know when when I'm sorry. That's my last I take everybody's time here So my last comment is when I read the book about the brothels in The 1850s in the united states by Judith Schaefer I was stunned. You can't make this up We had brothels where the enslaved person was the manager and the prostitutes were irish young ladies Hello 1850s New Orleans Uh, and the manager was the enslaved person who had more freedoms than the prostitute who was of irish descent This racialization is a bit crazy right now and we project Jim cool reality in the history that where it wasn't there Though that's it from from and and for the for the benefit of the zoom in a fan Right on many things but on voodoo in new orleans and we did actually we started off You know, I wish you were here sooner about this conversation like in what circles Is he known in different ways and that you brought up sort of the way people in germany might have talked the known And it is very much So much. Yeah a different conversation Always in my mind John james order one was born to an illegitimate relationship But the lady was apparently the mother was more light skin She was maybe a quadrant or an octagon, but the mom died He took his baby boy that looks just like his dad and mommy who had no children in france Adopted him. So that's how he became white And there is still white historians that claim him as white black historian that claimed he was black and he was definitely easily adoptable in everybody's world because Legitimacy made a huge You know, I'm working on pirates right now. So the pirates we still know who got accepted all had legitimate white wives The one who had illegitimate free black of free black ladies All of them are evil right now in our history books. Isn't that interesting? Legitimacy has a big I'm sorry. I'm feeling Thank you Thank you for those notes on a fun note. I want to um In with something it is perfect that chevalier is being played by An actor born in new allians So he has he has that context of what new allians is And our french colonial history that he brings to that He is the the son of a classical musician kevin harrison senior And he's the nephew of donald harrison jr. Our jazz artist and and chief of the Guardians of the flame So he's got this great history, but hilariously the other day on the today's show and he was thinking how to Personify this person how to he he was inspired by prince. He said prince You know, so he wanted to have the bravado and the and the presence of prince and doing it So i'm really excited to see How he how he how he does this at this acting so it's hilarious to me So please go and see the movie amc theaters all around the country opera creole is doing a performance tomorrow night before our private showing but We don't want anybody to miss it Y'all are sold out already. Yeah. I'm so sad And to me you have a performance coming up Oh, um, not really i'm you know I'm not performing. Um One of your works is coming up. Yeah, i'll i'll be um, sharing a new work with anthroposonic with newland center for the girls south um, based on the ecologies of southern, louisiana When is the when where? Um on monday evening at 76 Roger's memorial Roger's memorial. It's not just me. It's um, chorea. Diane is a brilliant composer that's also exhibiting some things and This is the second in the anthroposonic series. So there will be some continuations on things that have happened last year as well Thank you all chicore. Can you wrap us because we are at time? Yes, I just wanted to um, really show my appreciation to the panel The moderator the guest those who took the time to come here as well as those who joined us on zoom And um, I would love to speak to y'all about this like off-camera You know, I mean I was just fascinated with the amount of knowledge that was coming from here today and I really appreciate you I want to remind everyone that this is part one Over three part series. So I I hope you can make it to The other two remaining parts and I love to see you there And can we just give uh, I'll show our appreciation for the name Thank you. Thank you so much And I guess we're we're off and now and I'll see you at part two