‘Purpose, Patience And Persistence’: A Conversation About Amplify With Lara Downes
Plus, there's always a Sade song for how you feel.
by Marissa Lorusso and Lyndsey McKenna
NPR
Last month, we launched a new video series, hosted by trailblazing pianist Lara Downes, that elevates the voices of some of the most innovative Black artists working today. Amplify With Lara Downes is — as Downes puts it — a place to eavesdrop on her “intimate conversations with visionary Black musicians who share what they're making in this time of transformation — of reckoning, reimagining and maybe rebirth.”
The first three episodes feature musical omnivore Rhiannon Giddens, clarinetist Anthony McGill and multidisciplinary artist Helga Davis. To celebrate the series, we asked Downes a few questions about how these conversations came together and how she hopes the series will inspire empathy and honesty in its viewers.
NPR Music: Tell us about the artists you’re featuring in Amplify With Lara Downes. What inspired you to seek them out at this moment?
Lara Downes: I’m talking with artists who are change-makers, leading the way into whatever will emerge from this time of devastation and transformation. We’re sharing the experiences, the awakenings, that are moving us to express ourselves in new ways: to take action, to step into leadership, to redefine the parameters of what we do and how we do it. Musicians are goal-driven and focused on achieving excellence from childhood, always moving forward and planning ahead. But now the world has stopped us in our tracks, and we’re being forced to look inward as well as forward. We’re recognizing new priorities in mission, in message, in music-making — learning what it really means to be artists of our time, in our time.
In your conversation with Rhiannon Giddens, you spoke about the role artists can play right now, by leading a path of kindness, inclusion and healing. How do you hope this series contributes to that conversation?
There’s a Langston Hughes quote: “Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people — the beauty within themselves.” This is a time when we all need desperately to recognize the beauty within ourselves and within each other; to connect and to heal. My conversations between artists show that we are still, in these hard times, trying to interpret beauty and to amplify it. And there’s real hope in the awareness that beauty is still there for the finding.
What do you hope viewers take away from these interviews?
I hope that viewers will recognize some essential themes in these conversations: empathy and honesty, purpose, patience and persistence. We’re talking about listening hard to the world around us, to each other and to “the better angels of our nature.” We’re talking about allowing ourselves to embrace and express the fullness of our existence. To recognize that our gifts have value. To find the places where we can work in concert with our communities. To keep the faith. Maybe these conversations can inspire viewers to pick up their own tools, whatever they may be, and to keep doing their own work to interpret beauty within themselves and within others.
During this time of upheaval and isolation, what music have you been turning to?
Anything that reminds me of hard times before, and of better times ahead. Lucky for me, this world has always been a hard place to live in! Beethoven had something to say about that, and so did Schumann, and Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. And so does Rhiannon Giddens. Weirdly, I’m also just taking comfort in my own music. It’s my self-help and self-care. There are two pieces of music that I’ve been playing so often that tonight my son yelled at me “Get some new material!” “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen,” in Florence Price’s arrangement, and Billy Taylor: “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free.”
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