Poetry....Art......Music....

First, Tom Feelings painted the most moving story of the Middle Passage, then Kwame Dawes responded to these images with poems of touching reflection, and then guitarist, John Carpenter allowed these poems to inspire music flecked with jazz, the blues, reggae and rock, to create one of the most visceral reflections on the Middle Passage to be produced. This work continue to move people who witness it.

The performance is based on Dawes' poems  about paintings of Tom Feelings depicting the brutality of the Atlantic Middle Passage. John Carpenter has composed a series of songs in response to the poems, and the result is a performance combining Dawes' words and Carpenter's music on a backdrop of Tom Feelings' artwork.

In "Requiem," Dawes brings several artistic genres together to bear witness to the horrors of the slave trade and celebrate the spirit of those who survived creating a contemporary oratorio honoring the dead of the Middle Passage

"It's not merely a cry of pain and anger, but a triumphant holler of survival, hope, and resilience," Dawes said about Feelings' work. "I hope this performance captures both the reverence and the hope that should mark our encounter with the memory of the Middle Passage." Kwame Dawes