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Women Make A Way Outta No Way: Vienna Carroll and The Folk perform at Cooper Union

Weds., March 8, 2023,
7 – 8:30 pm,

Frederick P. Rose Auditorium,
41 Cooper Square (on Third Ave. bet. 6 & 7th Sts.),
New York, NY (see directions).
FREE. Must register.

Vienna Carroll and The Folk — whose soulful Afro-Future Roots music presents African American spirituals, work songs, and the blues through a modern lens — perform a special program honoring ordinary and extraordinary women, such as Harriet Tubman, Clara Lemlich, Big Mama Thornton, and Audre Lorde, in celebration of International Women’s Day.

Visitors must register and show security proof of (1) vaccination, or (2) a negative PCR test by a third party (no home tests) within three days of their visit to campus, or (3) a negative rapid test result taken by a third party (not home test).

A griot who mixes song, storytelling, and history, Carroll’s sound takes you back to her roots in the Black church. At the same time, her message examines American history and questions from whose perspective that history is told. Her stirring and powerful performances invite audiences to sing along in the African call-and-response tradition, adding emotional resonance to the stories shared.

Her band, The Folk, features Stanley Banks (George Benson, Esther Phillips) on bass; Washboard XT/Newman Taylor Baker (Matthew Shipp, Ebony Hillbillies, Henry Grimes) on washboard; and Keith Johnston (Jon Hendricks, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam) on guitar. Their latest album, Harlem: Afro-Future Roots, is a special collection of spirituals that honor 31 shackled-and-chained enslaved ancestors who in 1826, on a boat from Baltimore to deep south death, threw their captors overboard and escaped to freedom.

Carroll formalized her musical studies at Yale University with a B.A. in African American Studies and served as an artist-in-residence at the Hudson River Museum. She also received an Audience Favorite Award from the NY International Fringe Festival for Singin Wid A Sword In Ma Han, a musical docudrama she wrote and starred in, about a family escaping slavery. She conceived of and produced the First Annual NYC Underground Railroad Festival Juneteenth Celebration with the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrim, a nationally certified Underground Railroad site and the Brooklyn Historical Society, which WBGO broadcasted, NYC’s premiere jazz station.

This performance is presented by The Cooper Union Black Student Union, Student Affairs, and Public Programs.

Hear Our New Afro-Future Roots single “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”

Release Date: February 10, 2023.

By: Vienna Carroll & The Folk – Stanley Banks, bass. Newman Taylor Baker/Washboard XT, washboard. Keith Johnston, guitar. and Me! 🎼❤️

In honor of 31 enslaved Africans headed from Baltimore to certain Deep South death in 1826 who overthrew their captors and escaped to freedom.

Photography – Jane Feldman @janefeldmanphotography

Lyrics
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Coming for to carry me home

I looked over Jordan
And what did I see
Coming for to carry me home

A band of angels
Coming after me
Coming for to carry me home

Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Coming for to carry me home


If you get to heaven
Before I do
Coming for to carry me home

Tell all my friends
I’m coming too
Coming for to carry me home

Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Coming for to carry me home

Review

Jazz Lives
Jan. 27, 2023,
Reprinted from https://jazzlives.wordpress.com…

The late Sam Parkins used to say of certain powerfully emotional music, “Gets you right in the gizzard, doesn’t it?” We all have our personal collections of Gizzard Music. To them, I would like to add SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT, as performed by singer Vienna Carroll and the Folk.

A friend sent me this recording and I was enthralled. So many recordings are over-produced, tinkered with, and electronically fussed-over, that their essence is obliterated. Not this utterance — deep, unaltered, aimed directly at the listener.

“Swing Low Sweet Chariot” is Vienna Carroll & The Folk’s new single from their upcoming CD, Harlem: Afro Future Roots, a special collection of Spirituals honoring 31 enslaved Africans headed from Baltimore to certain Deep South death in 1826. Instead, they took their future into their own hands, threw their captors overboard, and escaped to freedom.

Vienna is joined by her “groovetastic” band, The Folk: Stanley Banks (George Benson) on bass; Washboard XT/Newman Taylor Baker (Matthew Shipp, Ebony Hillbillies, Henry Grimes) on washboard; and Keith Johnston (Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Jon Hendricks) on guitar.

“We freed ourselves from slavery. We are the center of our own freedom stories. The Spirituals are our liberation songs,” says Carroll.

Now, hear the music: haunting, compelling here.

Keith and Vienna created this passionate sound during the award-winning run of Singin Wid A Sword In Ma Han, Vienna’s musical docudrama about a family escaping slavery. This was followed by Vienna’s first album of the same name, a reprise of Spirituals from the play, in collaboration with Washboard XT. The CD Harlem Field Recordings, recorded with the Folk and released in 2020, celebrates early Black music and its influence on the music of today.

“Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” to be released on Friday, February 10, 2023, will be available on viennacarrollmusic.com, Spotify, Bandcamp, and Apple Music.

Get Swing Low Sweet Chariot (2023)

For more information visit www.viennacarrollmusic.com & https://viennacarroll.bandcamp.com/track/swing-low-sweet-chariot-2.

Vienna Carroll and the Folk will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC, to celebrate the Met’s Seneca Village exhibit with their Afro-Future Roots music on February 24 and 25th, 6-8:30 pm, Petrie Court Cafe. Read more on The Met’s website.

Hear Our New Afro-Future Roots single “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”

Combahee River Raid

“Mary Had a Baby” commemorates Harriet Tubman and the United States Colored Troops who destroyed major confederate supplies and rescued nearly 800 people from slavery.

Background of the Combahee River Raid

Vienna Carroll
Sharing the story

Tubman partnered with the Second South Carolina Volunteers, a regiment of the United States Colored Troops to plan and execute this raid to destroy wealthy confederate rice plantations and rescue enslaved people.

First, she forged a relationship with the local enslaved community among whom were the folks who had placed torpedoes in the river to blow up Union boats. They gave her the torpedo locations. She also spread the word throughout the community that folks should be ready to escape to freedom when the raid took place.

On the night of June 1st, 1863, and into the 2nd, Tubman and around 300 men including the Second South Carolina Volunteers and a Rhode Island Regiment set off on three ships: the John Adams, the Sentinel, and Harriet A. Weed. When the Sentinel ran aground troops from that ship transferred to the other two boats.

They proceeded upriver to the plantations where they successfully set fire to and destroyed the houses, mills, and outbuildings; and took or torched the stores of commodity rice and cotton, as well as supplies of potatoes, corn, and livestock

Harriet Tubman rescued to freedom nearly 800 people. 

They then went on to rescue to freedom nearly 800 people. Folks didn’t at first believe, but when the ships actually turned up, they were soon on the verge of being sunk, so vigorous was the response. Ms. Tubman brought order, calming folks with a song. She said about that day:

“I nebber see such a sight. We laughed, an’ laughed, an’ laughed. Here you’d see a woman wid a pail on her head, rice a smokin’ in it jus’ as she’d taken it from de fire, young one hangin’ on behind, one han’ roun’ her forehead to hold on, t’other han’ diggin’ into de rice-pot, eatin’ wid all its might; hold of her dress two or three more; down her back a bag with a pig in it. One woman brought two pigs, a white one an’ a black one; we took ’em all on board; named de white pig Beauregard, and the black pig Jeff Davis. Sometimes de women would come wid twins hangin’ roun’ der necks; ‘pears like I never see so many twins in my life; bags on der shoulders, baskets on der heads, and young ones taggin’ behin’, all loaded; pigs squealin’, chickens screamin’, young ones squallin’.”

Harriet Tubman

Mary Had A Baby

Storyteller Corinthia starts her tale with the 1863 Combahee River Raid. In her story, the song her family and neighbors waited for was the now-classic Spiritual “Mary Had a Baby.” When they heard it they knew “Moses” had really come.

Corinthia follows the trail and trials of her family and community to the Union camps, transitioning to freedom, learning to read and write, getting paid to work, and being granted the right to vote (men). She celebrates the 16 Black congressmen of the Reconstruction era and highlights their accomplishments – roads, public schools, 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, and Civil Rights bills.

First Black Members of the U.S. Congress

Setbacks also are duly noted: the withdrawal of the Union Army troops from the South, the re-establishment of the Southern landowner class, and the Black Codes which practically re-established slavery in all areas of life: land ownership, voting, work and personal liberties.

Spirituals and work songs are interwoven throughout. We had great fun with our audiences singing along at Hofstra University, Gowanus Dredgers, Bayou Theatre, and The Essex and Portsmouth Sea Music Festivals.

Vienna Carroll
New York State Council on the Arts: State of Opportunity

“Mary Had a Baby” is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.  

See Us Perform at The Metropolitan Museum of Art!

Join Vienna Carroll & The Folk for an evening of Seneca Village-era Afro-Future Roots music.

February 24 & 25, 2023,
6 – 8:30 pm (come early, there will be lines),
Petrie Court Cafe, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
1000 5th Ave, New York, NY 10028.

With proof of a New York State residency (NY driver’s license/ID card; IDNYC; current bill or statement with a NY address, NY student ID, NY library card) any sized donation. Read more.

Come on out and sing Afro-Future Roots music with us: the classic Spirituals and work songs you know and love, through a modern lens. Celebrate your pride at Black History Month.

Vienna Carroll and The Folk at the Met!
Vienna Carroll and The Folk
Vienna Carroll and The Folks

Black Sailors

 – ANTEBELLUM FREEDOM AGENTS AND SEA SHANTEY SINGERS

In the 1800’s Black men, both free and enslaved, comprised 22% of those who worked on the water, the primary way to move goods at that time. They traveled from northern to southern ports, throughout the Caribbean, to Europe, Australasia and Japan and returned to their communities with stories of life outside the slaveocracy of the U.S.

Sailors wrote the first six autobiographies of Black Americans. Active agents on the Underground Railroad, their freedom messages were so stirring that after the rebellion led by sailor, Denmark Vesey, South Carolina enacted the 1822 Quarantine Laws/Negro Seaman Acts, jailing these men when they came to port.

Phyrrus Concer, a Black Long Island Whaler at the opening of Japan 1845

The grave marker for Edmund Moody, a US Black sailor who died in Mangonui, North Island, New Zealand, 1864

Dalyce Newby- Black Sailor in the Civil War

Dalyce Newby – Black Sailor in the Civil War

My play Shallow Brown: Thessalonia and the Free Sailor tells of the love, family, suffering and ultimately triumph of these brave yet unsung freedom fighters and how they helped us free ourselves.

Please enjoy a bibliography about our Black sailor heroes I put together for you, for more information.