OKLAHOMA CITY – In the long, rich, and ever-continuing history of activism and organization in Oklahoma City, there’s arguably still no greater or more important figure than leader and educator Clara Luper, who pioneered the sea-changing sit-in protests of the 1950s and fought for Civil Rights for decades.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Luper’s birth in 2023, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic – led by Maestro Alexander Mickelthwate – commissioned a rousing, three-movement symphony in her honor.
The result was “Trials, Tears, Transcendence: The Journey of Clara Luper,” a sprawling cross-genre musical remembrance developed by Hall of Fame jazzman and composer Hannibal Lokumbe and performed by the OKC Phil, Canterbury Voices, The Ambassador Choir, drummer Brannen Temple, Grammy-winning operatic soprano Karen Slack, and Luper’s own daughter, Marilyn.
On May 13th, 2023, that remarkable ensemble took the Civic Center stage to present the work to Oklahoma City.
Now, that night’s performance is available as a new album, “Veils of Justice,” alongside some of Lokumbe’s other musical memorials to giants of action and activism and his epilogue to the work featuring Eastside’s own Jabee Williams, all produced and released by OKC-based Onyx Lane.
It’s a massive work, spanning epic classicism, heady opera, spoken-word narration, gospel revival, and fiery jazz, often all at once, along the way telling Luper’s story, but not by simple chronology or rote.
Instead, the trials and triumphs of Luper’s life are recounted in spiritual conversation, primarily between Marilyn herself relaying the violence and struggle that their family endured and Slack performing the role of Clara as she reaffirms her love for her children and reassures the continuing fight for true liberation.
Lokumbe’s composition is explosive throughout, opening with an appropriately grand fanfare of “freedom!” before unveiling a propulsive, and even grooving introductory build incorporating swirling strings and increasingly dramatic brass as a foundation for a choral call-and-response spiritual paying tribute to early “freedom songs.”
The second movement erupts with an extended, thunderous jazz drumming solo by Temple, making way for a rapturous jazz-infused climax of wailing horns and wild interplay, paying homage to jazz’s place in the movement of the 50s and 60s and to the figures that furthered that most American of artforms.
But throughout the full, multi-movement work, the anchor is always that conversation between Marilyn and her mother, told through an imagined dialogue with Marilyn’s memories of the sit-ins and protest actions recounted in language blunt and blatant, never esoteric or softened by poetry.
She recalls having hot coffee poured onto her as a child, being spit on, and even having a chimpanzee unleashed upon them, while also invoking the lingering and institutionalized racism that led to vile propagandists like D.W. Griffiths and eventually to Timothy McVeigh’s white supremacist bombing.
But it’s the staggering and infinitely versatile voice of Karen Slack that always responds as Clara, always with reassurance and pride in her children and in the continuing work of the modern movements that carry her legacy.
In the much shorter final denouement that is the work’s third movement, this visage of Clara Luper describes an afterlife where there are no more separations or divisions, no more struggle, and no more hate as the voices, instruments, and emotions rise to crescendo.
This sprawling work is followed by two other existing pieces by Lokumbe, “John Brown and Blue” and the four-movement “Fannie Lou Hamer,” themselves memorializing towering figures from throughout the centuries of struggle for equality.
The set is then rounded out with the strikingly and effectively minimalist “When the Peace Comes,” featuring Onyx Lane’s Patrick Conlon in an extended, highly expressionistic violin solo, joined only by the familiar voice of Jabee Williams.
Rather than his trademark fluid rhyming style, Jabee offers a solemn recitation of evocative poetry to describe the utopian joy of a world at peace.
It’s an apt finale, marrying the traditionalist form of classical music to one of the most prolific and most modern voices of activism in Oklahoma City.
It’s all produced, recorded, and mixed by members of OKC-based classical performance, production, and label collective Onyx Lane, who once again prove their technical skills with a recording that not only captures the nuance of the army of instrumentalists, but also the ambience and atmosphere of the Civic Center itself.
This is an album simultaneously bluntly urgent and emotionally timeless, seeking both to memorialize the starkly real struggle and humanity that Luper lived and also to canonize her and her works in the rightful light of high art.
To say that it succeeds is honestly redundant.
The very fact that a collection of such monumentally talented, creative, and widely diverse figures came together to honor her memory is already testament enough to the height of respect paid to Clara Luper’s life and work.
That the music here is moving, transcendent, and endlessly powerful is a testament, then, to the people that made it.
“Veils of Justice” by Hannibal Lokumbe, featuring the Oklahoma City Philharmonic (led by Maestro Alexander Mickelthwate,) Karen Slack, Canterbury Voices, The Ambassador Choir, Brannen Temple, members of Onyx Lane (including Patrick Conlon,) and Marilyn Luper Hildreth is available now on CD and all streaming services.
For more information, visit okcphil.org and onyxlane.com.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
