Child of Impossibles

Composed by: Julia Adolphe

Year composed: 2017

Text by: Safiya Sinclair

Year: 2017 Year: 2018

Duration: 06:00

Program Notes:

Commissioned by the PWC as part of the Trailblazers Project. PWC-commissioned poem by Safiya Sinclair

Composer's Notes:

Safiya Sinclair’s “Child of Impossibles” is a composer’s dream: rich with color, textures, sounds, and evocative imagery. The music begins in a low vocal register with close harmonies, capturing the “dark sleep,” the lingering wound. As the harmonies slowly strive upwards, the music “unfurls” and “circles,” leading the voices out of the darkness and into a brighter, yet still dissonant, sound world. The music continues to blossom from dense textures to open harmonies. The many echoing voices and repetitions throughout the piece channel “all my mothers,” illuminating the dream and desire that our ancestors could speak to us, to guide us towards an imagined home, to remind us of how many lives were impacted and are still impacted by the legacy of American slavery. The music continues to swirl through the array of evocative colors and landscapes depicted in Sinclair’s poem: the warm heat of Maryland populated by chokecherry trees, the glint of the knife and the sunlight in heaven, the transformation from the deep blooming would to the bright fire, and finally, the arrival from “Green,” to “gold,” a harmonious vision of sanctuary that does not yet exist, a home where all are welcomed. — Julia Adolphe

When Harriet Tubman was a teenager, a slave-owner’s overseer threw an iron weight at her head, severely injuring her and causing her to suffer from acute seizures, headaches, and narcolepsy for the rest of her life. After this injury, Tubman Tubman also began experiencing intense dream-states and visions. For my poem, “Child of Impossibles,” I wanted to examine the systemic hurt, both current and centuries-long, that affects Black people — women specifically — in the African Diaspora. By beginning in darkness, I am channeling the spirit of her long sleep of narcolepsy, the fracturing of being both Black and woman, all this inherited pain that shadows us at every turn. By tracing Harriet’s brave footsteps through the treacherous southern forest, and echoing her resolve in leading 140 slaves to freedom, I wanted the poem to turn, impossibly, from horrific to hopeful — a hope that as her would led her incredible visions of freedom, Harriet’s sorrow eventually led to her enduring strength. From something horrific, she uncovered a great gift. This poem is my way of paying tribute to Harriet’s gift to us, her starshine of hope, her light in the dark, urging me and all people like me — downtrodden and discriminated-against — to keep going forward, to believe in our future even though we cannot see it. All the while I hear her saying, Don’t look back: Ahead of us is wonder, ahead of us is a world that one day, one bright day, will welcome us with beckoning arms as her own, her only. — Safiya Sinclair

Additional Notes

Vocal Parts: SSAA chorus a cappella

Text:

Caught in a dark sleep I shelter the weight
of this long night inside me, great unfurling
knife of heaven on my back. How the hurt circles
like a famished bird. Don’t look back, she tells me,
Don’t look back. Child of impossibles, you are here,
dazzling. Still blooming wonder from the wound.
Don’t you hear them? All my mothers in the chokecherry
tree—she a Green June beetle, she the last fruit gifted
to the weary. Feet in the fire, I am chasing what I cannot see;
future of our own lost dreaming, her thousand warm hands
washed in gold, home renaming me. And she always beckoning
Welcome
        Welcome
        Welcome.