Staff Picks

DBR at UMD
February 11-13 and March 13, 2008
Jermaine Lewis, Program Coordinator for Campus and Community Engagement

Behind the scenes:

"JAM"
"More Outrageous"
"Conduct Me"

When thinking of Daniel Bernard Roumain's new work, One Loss Plus, which is coming to the center next spring, I think of the process of evolution. When I first read the title, One Loss Plus, I was slightly bewildered and didn't quite know how a violinist would portray loss, grief, isolation, hope and optimism in a multimedia performance piece. However, after my director, Ruth Waalkes, gave me a copy of DBR's new CD, Etudes for Violin and Electronix, it all started to make sense. Listening to DBR's chilling and eerie tunes, "Resonance" and "The Need to Belong," I thought of the incident on our campus where a noose was hung from a tree outside the Nyumburu Cultural Center in the middle of campus. The noose, which is an historic symbol of racial hatred and legalized killing of African Americans, has reappeared in our 21st century landscape, not just at the University of Maryland, but at New York's Columbia University and in parts of the south, where Billie Holiday once sung the ever famous, Strange Fruit (pictured below). While listening, I also began to think of last year's VA Tech massacre where innocent students where killed by a young man who never felt a part of the greater community and lived in a mental and emotional state of isolation. And from continued listening, the memory of other acts of devastation, such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, reentered my mind.

As human beings, we can't always make sense of such natural or man-made catastrophes, but fortunately, we have art. With an inherent desire for understanding, art can help us grieve through insensible acts of destruction and uncontrollable forces of nature. How did Billie Holiday make death by a noose such a painfully beautiful song? Through her natural human instinct to express grief over the countless dead bodies swinging in the southern breeze, loss evolved into art. Conceptually speaking, if evolution can be defined as the "gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form," I think of the circle of life or on a political level, how leaders are replaced, voted out of office, in order to make room for a new order, a new way of being, a new ideal to strive for. And herein may lie a fraction of the meaning of Daniel Bernard Roumain's new work, One Loss Plus – the ability to remain faithful and hopeful, to maintain one's character while in the midst of a world full of hate based murders, catastrophic destruction, natural deaths, and broken relationships.

While attending a student speak-out against the hanging of the noose on our campus, I heard several inspiring speeches by students and staff, and I also received buttons that read "Terps As One" which were handed to me by Asian American students who could now identify and connect with another community that was affected by loss, grief, and isolation in a different, but similar way. And ultimately, the concept of Daniel Bernard Roumain's work manifested itself through such acts as students supported each other. In these moments, I notice the plus of loss, the endearing optimism that human beings create in the face of mindless destruction in order to keep the process of life as we know it alive through building and creating community, which I believe is a form of art in itself, as well as a science.

Furthermore, Daniel Bernard Roumain's One Loss Plus touches us not only on a societal level, but on a personal level, as individual people need always reconsider situations, circumstances, and relationships that impede our personal evolution. Perhaps, Daniel Bernard Roumain is inspiring himself and mankind to embrace liberation and the positive effects of evolutionary, artistic, creative destruction as he rebuffs his traditional, classical violin training in order to create a new form of musical expression–a symbolic catalyst for personal and societal growth through his new work, One Loss Plus.

To see his YouTube video on One Loss Plus, click here.

For all the rest about DBR, visit his website.

back to Staff Picks Main Page