Update Title: 279156A9-0768-4D5B-B0CB-65F75A291AC3

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In 1978 I wrote a work entitled ROOTS which was commissioned by and dedicated to the Beaux Arts Trio.  Two movements of ROOTS, Incantation and Sorrow Song, appear in Roots II, a five-movement suite completed in 1992.
Each of the five movements--Incantation, Dance in Congo Square, Sorrow Song, Boogie Woogie, and Jubilee--is a stylized portrait of a musical form from the African-American tradition.  This tradition, which includes work songs, field hollers, blues, ragtime, boogie woogie, rhythm & blues, spirituals, gospel songs, calypso, rock & roll, rap and of course jazz, provided the rich resources on which I drew.  In composing this work, I made use of some of the musical features common to these varied styles, among them rhythmic pr-eminence, the spirit and attitude of the blues call and response, the ostinato, and certain musical forms, harmonic and melodic materials.

"INCANTATION" is an attempt to capture the musical mood of the voodoo rites which  had their origins in ancient African traditions.  An insistent and persistent drone or vamp is the basis for this movement.

"Dance on Congo Square" is an allusion to the area in 19th-century New Orleans where blacks periodically congregated to perform a wide variety of music, dances, and religious reituals that might have been explicitly forbidden in a less liberal environment.  This movement is an attempt to capture the spirit and vitality of the music of the West Indies.

"Sorrow Song" belongs to the tradition of religious music which includes spirituals, laments, and church house moans.  It is the plaintive cry of a downtrodden people.

"Boogie Woogie" is a stylized version of a popular black piano music which flourished from roughly 1938 to 1945.  Also known as  "fast Western," "juke," and "rent party music," this style was based on the blues form and a left-hand ostinato.  Boogie woogie was the basis of the rhythm & blues and rock & roll of the 1940's and 1950's.  As in the original , the piano is the focus of this movement.

"Jubilee," reminiscent of the festive celebratory dances which occurred on rare rest days, is perhaps the most complex and abstract of the five movements.  It is built on a pedalpoint which represents an attempt to recall the drones that accompanied the sea chanteys of black workers on the levees of the South.  The movement is rhythmically and harmonically intense and virtuosic in its scope. --David Baker

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