Daniel Bernard Roumain’s String Quartet No. 5, “Parks”


This February, the Daily Classical Music Post celebrates Black composers and musicians whose music has been suppressed and ignored. All of these musicians should be added to the music history and music theory curriculum.

https://youtu.be/6As16bev638

https://youtu.be/_dx3LXTgADI

https://youtu.be/EwArv7q3wCU


Daniel Bernard Roumain (born in 1970) blends funk, rock, hip-hop, and his classical music training in his compositions and performance pieces. His list of works includes everything from orchestral pieces to chamber works to solo violin to opera to . . . well, the list is endless. He is also highly regarded as an educator. His live performances are wonderful and exhilarating. 


DBR’s String Quartet No. 5, “Parks,” was composed in 2005 and is dedicated to Rosa Parks. DBR said about this work, “As a Haitian-American composer, I was raised by immigrant parents from Haiti, who experienced American life both before, and after, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Their views were informed by life on a free Island nation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; life in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois; and life in the complex diversity of Pompano Beach, Florida. They identified with Malcolm and Martin, Maya and Rosa, and the great Haitian warriors, Makandal and Toussaint. Civil rights, for our household, was global, local, and part of the very fabric of our lives and culture. I created Rosa Parks Quartet as a musical portrait of Rosa Parks’ struggle, survival, and legacy. The music is a direct reflection of a dignified resistance. It’s telling that this work may, in fact, be performed on stages that didn’t allow the presence of so many, so often. I often refer to the stage as the last bastion of democracy, where all voices can and should be heard, where we are all equal, important, and necessary.”


James Manheim says, “In the opening movement of his Quartet No. 5, ‘Rosa [sic] Parks,’ bearing the ‘Klap Ur Handz’ title, he instructs the players to do just that in order to create a semblance of a big hip-hop beat. But that is not the only weapon in Roumain’s arsenal; his second movement, ‘I made up my mind not to move,’ suggests Parks’ act of defiance not with ponderous dignity but with a sharp ostinato that suggests stubbornness and confrontation. It is the final “Isorhythmiclastionistc” movement that brings sustained notes and a tragic mood.”


My classical music post for today is Daniel Bernard Roumain’s String Quartet No. 5, “Parks.”

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