Lake Black Town Receives National Endowment for the Arts Funding to Create Sonic Memorial of Historic “Drowned Towns”

JayVe Montgomery, a Nashville-based composer, and chatterbird, a Nashville-based chamber ensemble, have announced further details surrounding a year-long field recording project focused on capturing the sounds and history of the “drowned towns” of historic Black communities found throughout the Southeastern United States.

Titled Lake Black Town, the project is funded through the National Endowment for the Arts and will take place throughout 2024. A premiere live performance of the project will be held in Nashville in late 2024.

 

Montgomery will also serve as chatterbird's Composer in Residence for 2024. Throughout the year, chatterbird will feature Montgomery's past and current work through their channels; support Lake Black Town as it develops; and provide administrative and production support for each of the lake visits and the creative processes surrounding them. This is chatterbird's fourth Composer in Residence, with past composers including Bryan Clark, Wu Fei, and Mark Volker.

 

About the Project

America's post-Civil War history is rife with stories of successful Black cities being razed and flooded to create lakes largely used for recreational purposes. One of most infamous is Lake Lanier outside of Atlanta, formerly home to Oscarville, an African American community with more than 1,000 residents who were forcibly removed after a horrific lynching in 1912. These lakes can be found all over the South, their original stories submerged under the waters.

 

Montgomery will lead a creative residency that explores the history of these locations. The creative residency will include a tour of seven lake sites of these so-called “drowned towns,” where African-American communities were forced out by local white supremacists and neighborhoods were flooded to create spaces for water recreation. A full list of these locations can be found below.

 

At each location, field recordings will be gathered as part of sonic memorial ceremonies. Using a PlantWave device, which captures and translates the biorhythmic vibrations of plants into sound, the team will gather at sites of displacement and use the resulting sonic vibrations from area flora and fauna as a sound bed and foundation for live, onsite, improvised musical call and response. Field recordings will be captured at each site.

 

During each visit, the afternoons will be spent engaging in local history research, exploration, and connection with community elders. Supporting Montgomery in this residency will be musical partners Ben LaMar Gay, and Lisa E. Harris, along with members of chatterbird.

 

Drowned Town Locations

 

Ferguson, SC: Lake Marion

Long Island, NC: Lake Norman

(Kowliga) Benson and Susannah, AL: Lake Martin Fonta Flora, NC: Lake James

Little Egypt, NC: Belews Lake

Birmingham, KY: Kentucky Lake

Oscarville, GA: Lake Lanier

 

 

Of Jamaican and Louisiana Creole descent, JayVve Montgomery was born at Ft. Hood, TX and raised in Berlin, Germany. Montgomery received a double BA in Japanese Studies and Anthropology from Centre College of Kentucky and studied sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was Senior Program Specialist for the Chicago Park District's Inferno Mobile Recording Studio (2006-2013), a collaborative sound making program for youth and people with disabilities. Since moving to Nashville, he has become an integral member of the improvised and experimental music scene of the city and region, earning Nashville Scene's solo performer of the year in 2019. He has performed at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Big Ears Festival, High Zero Festival of Improvised and Experimental Music, and True/False Film and Music Festival. In 2024, JayVe will serve as chatterbird's composer in residence. He has collaborated with the ensemble for two previous creative residencies in 2019 and 2022.

 

Ben LaMar Gay is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, poet, and patently eclectic polymath who Afropunk has called “strikingly original,” Pitchfork has called “uncategorizable,” and Jeff Parker has called "hands down, one of my favorite musicians on the planet today.” He channels a radical array of sound, color, and space through the universal language of folklore; but despite the widely attributed genius of his work, his artistic approach and general demeanor are characterized by an endearing humbleness and warm humanity. Ben has collaborated with several influential figures in the world of music, including Joshua Abrams, the Association of the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Bixiga 70, Black Monks of Mississippi, Celso Fonseca, George Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, Theo Parrish, Mike Reed, Tomeka Reid, and Itibere Zwarg. He is a long-time participant in Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

 

Lisa E. Harris, Li, is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, creative soprano, performer, composer, improvisor, filmmaker, writer, singer/songwriter researcher and educator from Houston Texas. She received a 2022 Gugghenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and is also the 2021 recipient of the Dorothea Tanning Award in Music/Sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Li is the founder and creative director of Studio Enertia, an arts collective and production company in Houston Texas. She wrote, directed, and produced Cry of the Third Eye: a new opera film in Three Acts, a decade-long meditation on legacy, loss, and gentrification in Third Ward Houston. With Studio Enertia, Li created and curated Houston's inaugural Free Time Flow Festival at MacGregor Park, celebrating the intersections of basketball, electro-acoustic music and improvisational performance. Studio Enertia produced and instating Pauline Oliveros Day at Discovery Green Houston, curated by Li.

 

About chatterbird: chatterbird is a chamber music ensemble that explores alternative instrumentation, stylistic diversity, and interdisciplinary collaboration in order to create thoughtful, intimate, and inventive musical experiences. Formed in 2014, chatterbird performs classical music that skirts traditional boundaries, sliding between classical, jazz, hip-hop, rock, avant-garde, and country, creating a thoughtful and inventive way to discover and experience modern classical music. chatterbird brings cutting-edge chamber music repertoire into spaces where you wouldn't usually find it, like bars, galleries, breweries, basements, and everywhere in between.

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