What to Listen For

The music of The Jonah People is inseparable from the opera’s other layers: the poetry and drama from which Lokumbe fashioned his libretto, his network of symbols, the many-faceted design elements intended to realize his visualization of the story. All of these reinforce the total effect. Like his story, Lokumbe’s score amalgamates a lifetime of wisdom: it brings together his experiences with various jazz idioms and other American musical vernaculars, with the expressive power of the Western classical chorus and orchestra, with the vitality of African traditions.

This is music that embraces the depths of despair and the heights of ecstatic liberation. As Lokumbe writes, the “womb” in which the Africans were kidnapped also became “the ultimate music classroom of the Jonah People. No music since the sailing of the first slave ship is unaffected by that which occurred in that wooden womb room of horror and of hope.”

Pay special attention to the theme stated at the very outset, prominently placed in the composer’s own instrument, the trumpet: a mere four notes (first descending, then rising, then descending again), it’s the central cell of the opera and corresponds to the revelation that the Jonah People are “of three wombs made”—the revelation that also brings healing at the end.

Lokumbe uses the large orchestra sparingly, at times singling out a solo instrument against textural backgrounds. The percussion section is especially extensive, allowing for a cinematic spectrum of atmospheres and impressions. One of his signature effects is to lay out a repeated pattern that becomes mesmerizing, like the surf drum representing the ocean crossing. At the end of the first half, Lokumbe’s orchestration pays tribute to Grand Master Flash and Tupac Shakur.