DreamTrain

DreamTrain is a work for installation with an orchestra and vocalists that invites participants to dream together. It builds on the work we began with our piece Four Electric Ghosts (2009) at The Kitchen. At the Sonic Festival, DreamTrain will be presented as a concert piece with a finite ending. In the installation version, DreamTrain would exist as a perpetual sound and video installation, framed by periods of live performance. The songs in DreamTrain call listeners to a journey through the dreamscape, a place of communion with ancestors. The three vocalists in DreamTrain, whom we call singer-sayers, act as conductors or guides through the land of dreams. The piece pulls on both Igbo cosmology (from Nigeria) and African-American mythology. The title DreamTrain points to the long history in African-American culture of trains as vehicles of spiritual transportation. The lyrics in the music of the past tell us that these spiritual vehicles deliver one to freedom, heaven, or spiritual revelation. Anyone familiar with gospel music and spirituals might know song titles like Gospel Train (Fisk Jubilee Singers) and This Train (Sister Rosetta Tharpe). Gospel music often has a mirror image in the world of the blues, where we find songs like I Hear My Train A Comin, When the Train Comes Along, and the work song Prettiest Train. And in the world of r&b and soul music we find transcendent trains in Curtis Mayfields People Get Ready, the O'jays Love Train. And of course there is the classic 70s music TV show Soul Train, whose title might also be a nod to Tadd Damerons (with John Coltrane) ballad Soultrane. Lastly, in the world of visual art, the theme is explored in works like Rose Pipers painting Slow Down Freight Train (1947), John Biggers painting At The Railroad, (1988), and of course, Romare Beardens oeuvre, which includes Train Whistle Blues (1964), The Train (1975), and Moonlight Express (1978). Bearden ascribed this thematic recurrence (images of trains, but also moons, and even birds) in his work to an interest in journeying things. But where did this notion of spiritual transport come from? This themes relationship to the blues and gospel is quite apparent. But these spiritual journeying things are a much older tradition in African diasporic culture. The Structure of DreamTrain This notion of spiritual transportation is rooted in many African spiritual practices and beliefs including the Igbo system, Odinani. An Igbo creation myth begins DreamTrain in the 1st movement entitled Night Visions. In this myth, a sacred bird, the hornbill, travels over the expanse of a world covered with water while carrying her parents in her head. The hornbill in this creation story serves as a symbol of resurrection. In our piece, this story is reflected on as a memory and underscored with droning strings and pulsing percussion and woodwinds, which operate in a conversation with the vocalists. The piece shifts into a musical portal, a cycling harmonic progression, leading to the dreamtrain. The second movement in DreamTrain is a lullaby, Somniloquy. This piece is grounded in the rich sounds of the harp, and in it, the dreamer enters a mystical realm. In DreamTrain the land of dreams operates in a world parallel to our waking one. This piece is followed by an Interlude in which there is a lament, a reflection on a dream about a dying tree, a sacred Ofo tree, one typically used to make the staff of a leader or king. This is followed by the delicate Onwa Bridge, a torch song to the moon. One vocalist and vibraphone trace a silken melody over a gossamer-like piano and a warm bed of bass and percussion. Onwa means moon in Igbo, and this piece is a meditation on repeating lunar cycles. The last movement is Agwu Blues. In Agwu Blues the dreamer slowly awakens while still being pulled by a feeling received in the dream. The Igbo spirit Agwu is in some ways a parallel to the African-American concept of the holy ghost. It is a spirit that can sometimes act as a messenger from the spirit world. The piece tells its tale over a kind of double blues form and then builds to a full awakening. We hope you enjoy the journey of DreamTrain. Mendi + Keith Obadike