SFX MUSIC – Jazz, heavy in the blues direction, period specific 1966. Voices are deliberately collaged, choppy, overlapping, unidentified– rhythmic bits adding up to one whole – reflecting the collaged nature of this piece
ROMARE BEARDEN (Archives of American Art):
… if I’m doing a collage… I might paste a photograph, say, anything just to get me started,
SFX MUSIC: Blues riff
BEARDEN:
maybe a head…just to get me started
NARRATOR:
That’s artist Romare Bearden.
BEARDEN:
a hand or a little landscape…
BEARDEN:
The type of photograph doesn’t matter at all —
NARRATOR:
I wonder what he started with here?
(Bearden in background): maybe a head…
NARRATOR:
And what came last?
BEARDEN:
a hand or a little landscape…
NARRATOR:
Maybe one of those eyes? Maybe that cigarette?
SFX: Sound of cigarette being lit
BEARDEN:
— the photographic image… if you saw it in a magazine, when it’s put in a different space, can have another meaning entirely.
SFX: Music shift
BEARDEN:
The type of photograph doesn’t matter at all. If I tear anything, I tear it up and across.
SFX: Tearing paper.
BEARDEN:
always moving up and across.
SFX MUSIC: Music, torn paper adds to sense of rhythm
NASHORMEH LINDO:
He worked to the sound of jazz from the very, very beginning…
NARRATOR:
That’s artist Nashormeh Lindo.
LINDO:
And when he had his studio in Harlem over the Apollo, he constantly heard music. He didn’t have to have his radio on; the music was playing. Not only from the theater, but also because there were other musicians that lived in the building.
BEARDEN (repeats):
Always moving up and across.
LINDO:
The rhythms and the breaks, the moods – it was inevitable that it would work its way into his art.
BEARDEN:
If I tear anything I tear it up and across. What I’m trying to do then is establish a vertical and a horizontal control of the canvas.
SFX MUSIC: Music Riffs
LINDO:
He used blue quite a bit in his work. And I believe that that was one of his ways of talking about the blues from the perspective of color.
BEARDEN:
…a few dissonant accents
LINDO:
I think the color and the rhythmic forms he uses in his compositions all give you the idea of the blues — you get that sense that the music is made visual.
SFX: Music punctuates & closes
