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A slavery-era instrument is on the National Mall, singing 'songs of liberation'
An unusual artwork in the Sculpture Garden on the National Mall also makes unusual sounds: archaic2 and uncanny.
It's an old-fashioned steam calliope, an instrument once commonly seen in carnivals3 and on riverboats many decades ago. But this calliope was designed in 2018 by a leading American artist, Kara Walker, and plays music composed by Jason Moran, a luminary4 in the world of jazz.
The Katastwóf Karavan looks like a circus wagon5. It's decorated with certain images Walker is famous for: silhouettes6. But Walker's work is far from the sentimental7 black and white portraits that used to hang in oval frames in wealthy homes. It shows slavery at its most brutal8 in the antebellum South. Her silhouettes seem cut from history's shadows.
"It's the liminal space – that's what I'm always drawn9 to," Walker told NPR. "The ambivalent10, the liquid, the fluid."
Walker is also drawn to a particular era of American history. She conceived of this project while visiting the New Orleans neighborhood where kidnapped Africans were held before they were sold into the nightmare of plantations11. As she contemplated12 the paucity13 of monuments to the people who lived through unspeakable horror, she heard the music of a steamboat wafting14 down the Mississippi River. The jolly sound, she realized, was unchanged since before the Civil War. Surely it was heard by enslaved people awaiting the auction15 block in Algiers Point.
"How that event translates into wanting to build a calliope is kind of anyone's guess. But it meant I went into an internet rabbit hole of steam enthusiasts," Walker told an audience at the National Gallery of Art, where the piece is part of an exhibition called Afro-Atlantic Histories.
To make the Katastwóf Karavan, Walker collaborated16 with a craftsman18 in Michigan who built this 38-note aluminum19 and oak calliope. But instead of pumping out Americana standards, she wanted the instrument to scream and weep. To protest and dream. Sometimes it sounds like it's singing spirituals. Sometimes it sounds like an alarm.
"Musicians often talk about how sound carries," observes musician and composer Jason Moran. (Like Walker, he's a winner of the MacArthur "Genius" Award.) Like history, he says, sound carries on in waves that go on even when you stop hearing it. "Not only how it passes through you but gets to the people behind you. Gets to the people blocks away. But most of us, we don't think it ends on this planet either."
The name of the Katastwóf Karavan is taken from the Haitian Creole for "catastrophe20." In a brochure accompanying the piece, Walker notes that Americans have never given a name – like "holocaust21" or "catastrophe" — to an event that defined generations. "We simply say 'slavery' as if that were a legitimate22 job instead of what it was, a catastrophe for millions," she writes. (The "Kara" in "Karavan," she also notes, is a deliberate play on her own name.)
Art lover Alysia Thaxton was thrilled to see the Katastwóf Karavan at the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art. She's a longtime Kara Walker fan. But the silhouettes adorning23 the wagon – images of enslaved people chained by their necks or caught in the swamps - are not always easy to look at, she said. Jason Moran's music eased the experience.
"It was sort of a release," she said. "Not to hold it all in, so it could just keep flowing and not get bottled up. There wasn't a stuckness."
The steam calliope works through release, as it happens. Each key releases pressure built up inside the calliope's metal pipes. But Kara Walker urges caution to those tempted24 to use her instrument as a metaphor25 for today's pressures and frustrations26.
"To be released from something, you have to know what's holding you," she observes. "You have to know what's really know what's binding27 you.
But perhaps this musical monument has something to offer at a moment when Americans are struggling with new technology, labor17 and debt crises, ethical28 consumption and a staggering wealth gap, she says. Here is a machine from the past that has learned new music. It's singing to us in solidarity29.
1 transcript | |
n.抄本,誊本,副本,肄业证书 | |
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2 archaic | |
adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的,已不通用的 | |
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3 carnivals | |
狂欢节( carnival的名词复数 ); 嘉年华会; 激动人心的事物的组合; 五彩缤纷的颜色组合 | |
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4 luminary | |
n.名人,天体 | |
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5 wagon | |
n.四轮马车,手推车,面包车;无盖运货列车 | |
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6 silhouettes | |
轮廓( silhouette的名词复数 ); (人的)体形; (事物的)形状; 剪影 | |
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7 sentimental | |
adj.多愁善感的,感伤的 | |
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8 brutal | |
adj.残忍的,野蛮的,不讲理的 | |
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9 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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10 ambivalent | |
adj.含糊不定的;(态度等)矛盾的 | |
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11 plantations | |
n.种植园,大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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12 contemplated | |
adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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13 paucity | |
n.小量,缺乏 | |
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14 wafting | |
v.吹送,飘送,(使)浮动( waft的现在分词 ) | |
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15 auction | |
n.拍卖;拍卖会;vt.拍卖 | |
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16 collaborated | |
合作( collaborate的过去式和过去分词 ); 勾结叛国 | |
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17 labor | |
n.劳动,努力,工作,劳工;分娩;vi.劳动,努力,苦干;vt.详细分析;麻烦 | |
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18 craftsman | |
n.技工,精于一门工艺的匠人 | |
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19 aluminum | |
n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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20 catastrophe | |
n.大灾难,大祸 | |
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21 holocaust | |
n.大破坏;大屠杀 | |
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22 legitimate | |
adj.合法的,合理的,合乎逻辑的;v.使合法 | |
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23 adorning | |
修饰,装饰物 | |
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24 tempted | |
v.怂恿(某人)干不正当的事;冒…的险(tempt的过去分词) | |
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25 metaphor | |
n.隐喻,暗喻 | |
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26 frustrations | |
挫折( frustration的名词复数 ); 失败; 挫败; 失意 | |
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27 binding | |
有约束力的,有效的,应遵守的 | |
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28 ethical | |
adj.伦理的,道德的,合乎道德的 | |
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29 solidarity | |
n.团结;休戚相关 | |
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