El Bembóm Y Ella by Manuel Palacio

This blog is about the video “El Bembóm Y Ella” it’s purpose, to show the sculptures on-site and to have an idea of scale. For close-up detail see web page “El Bembóm” “Ella.” Filmed in Bermuda at “Camden House”. With its beautiful green and “Botanical Gardens”, at this beautiful home with its plantation feel. It belonged to controversial Bermuda hero Sir Henry Tucker.

Photo of Camden House Bermuda — “Camden House”. With its beautiful green and “Botanical Gardens”

The property was later subdivided, and part of it became the Botanical Gardens now the official residence of the premier a favorite spot for wedding photo shoot and classes. My art class “BermudaScapes” met here for many years. We enjoyed Saturday morning’s fresh breeze, and sometimes the great jazz Mr. Smithy played when he was the curator. He played Miles Davis a lot.

The music is by English composer Frederick Delius born in Yorkshire, England in 1862.

Music is an outburst of the soul.
Frederick Delius

La Calinda from Koanga, an early opera based on the life of an African-American slave. I chose this composer because I appreciate it’s influence: the traditional songs of the black workers their richly harmonized melodies. La Calinda, for me, represents the voices of slaves.

The music of slaves richly harmonized melodies implanted themselves in Delius’s mind and helped shape his unique musical language. Delius’s create something beautiful that spoke to him. A voice he understood.

I love this piece because of this reluctant collaboration of enslaved blacks inspiring classical music. This at a time in American History when dehumanizing people of color was on the agenda of many, who profited from a false sense of superiority. This unwilling collaboration makes Delius a favorite.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass… Frederick on the music of slaves

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
― Frederick Douglass

“…I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.  I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs, I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul, – and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because “there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.”  I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment” and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and the other are prompted by the same emotion.”