Joseph Sinnott

Karen Slack is a singer of many tools and skills, styles and personalities, that she manifests to lure us in and hold us spellbound. The voice is bountiful, glamorous, rich. She can easily unfurl it in the operatic manner—except when she chooses not to. She can speak poetic sections, diatribes or silky explications, and she sings ironic asides like recitatives. Then again it peals out of her like a carillon, filling the room with sound, demanding we focus on whatever story she may be telling. She is a natural actress.

She has commissioned songs by some eleven composers for a cycle, African Queens, and last Tuesday presented its New York premiere at the 92^nd Street Y (in the Buttenwieser Hall, a new venue to me, of moderate size and very clear acoustic) not long after her Best Classical Solo Vocal Album Grammy win.

The cycle consists of nine songs and two spoken monologues. Some of the texts are African folk poetry, some the work of young poets, American or African. The theme: legendary, mythic, historic women’s lives and struggles and epics, their invocations, laments and arias of vengeance. As Slack gave them, varying in pace and style and manner, the process riveted attention.

These songs took a different attitude from the usual art song slice of life or legend to feature the solo singer’s varied skills. She wasn’t merely displaying her voice, though she has plenty; she was invoking icons and archetypes, bringing her chosen audience to consciousness of a half-forgotten glory.

Joseph Sinnott

Slack’s appearance is queenly. She wore a gown of malachite green with a golden raw silk stole, and she looked capable of commanding anyone attending her state. She invoked Bilqis (the Queen of Sheba), Amina (not a sleepwalker but a warrior queen from Nigeria), Candace (New Testament Queen of Ethiopia), the Sibyls of Biblical prophecy, Njinga, Ufua, Nandi and Amanirenas, an Egyptian divinity, “Amon’s Child.”

The poetry provided enough context in English, Latin, Mandinka, and Zulu to perceive these ladies in the different contexts of story: mother, daughter, crone, lover, warrior, nurse. How dull if the character had been the same! How fascinating the variation in story and style, and in the tools Slack utilized for each of them: decrees, prayers, lullabies, war-cries of defiance, each syllable sent forth to wound or to soothe.

The chosen composers used a variety of melodic techniques, none of them familiar from academic modern composers. Were they African or Afro-Caribbean? Or just individual? They were all intriguing, wideawake, suitable to the texts. If nothing else, Slack is doing a service getting their names around. She clearly has an ear for quality and individuality.

I was especially moved by Dave Ragland’s setting of “The Queen of Sheba” by Alice Haymer, in which the melody—and Slack’s vocalism—twists as the poetry winds through legend, from Solomon’s reputation, to his presence, to their conversation—“A woman who has fought and earned her respect/ No man will make me cower./ We soon come to an understanding”—to her self-assured return.

“The Song of Nzingah”—Jessie Nzinga Montgomery’s setting of Jay St. Flono’s version of a traditional text: “I have come through tremblin’ waters./ Drowned below, my enemies/ Yearn to kiss my warring feet” uses the percussive piano in the background to intensify its threats.

The moment that stopped me and amazed me came in “Queen Nanny’s Lullabye” by Joel Thompson (dialect text by Mary Ground), which begins as if crooning reassuringly to an infant, “Come here, likkle one/ Come an ress your head/ ‘It won’t be long now,’/ So di baaba said.” The reassurances to Thompson’s gentle tune spread and console … so that I stopped following the translated text … and then realized the words had changed, and the melody as well: “Close those wide and fearful eyes/ As yu troat close up/ And yu lips grow numb,/ I’ll wipe away the blood and you’ll realize/ The end is drawing nigh, enslaver … You will reap what you’ve sown, likkle one ….” An aria that turns, with barely a noticeable turn, to a terrifying cabaletta.

So to a proud conclusion, “Amanirenas” by Damien Geter to a text by Lorene Cary: “Patience –/ I have sent/ Golden arrows to/ Caesar and said:/ ‘If you want peace, take these with my blessing;/ If you want war, you will need them.’”

And as a concession to art song tradition (but a concession from a victorious recitalist, after such a triumph), Slack sang a Spiritual, “Joy to My Soul”—one of the confident, rejoicing ones, not one of the glum, penitent ones.

Slack’s accompanist was Kevin Miller, a pianist of surpassing delicacy of touch. He seemed to flick rather than press the keys. None of the composers competed with the singer in their accompaniments—they were hired to display her and they knew their business—and Miller’s support participated elegantly in the evening, floating on the tide in the voice’s wake. Some of the songs, however, demanded a sure rhythm, and then Miller distinctly reminded us that the piano is a percussion instrument.