Collaborative & Multi-Media Poetries

I HOPE THIS HELPS :: 2020, 2024

I Hope This Helps is a solo multimedia exhibition featuring multi-sensory poetic installations by Harlem-based artist, Samiya Bashir. Featuring 20 works developed in 20 Standards, I Hope This Helps explores the complexities of human interaction and engages with critical issues impacting our society. As the world grapples with profound change, I Hope This Helps evokes shared experiences of upheaval, displacement, and the relentless pursuit of hope amidst uncertainty.

On view at The Africa Center, 17 May - 31 July, 2024.

I Hope This Helps is curated by Favour Ritaro, Curatorial Projects Consultant. The exhibition is made possible at The Africa Center with support of NYSCA & Sculpture Space.

DARK MATTERS :: World Premiere April 2023

Composer: Joel Thompson || Librettist: Samiya Bashir

Conductor: Lynda Hasseler || Commissioned & Performed by: Capital University Chorus

|| Learn More & Listen Here! ||

COOK SHACK

Composer: Del’Shawn Taylor

Librettist: Samiya Bashir

WORLD PREMIERE: March 2023, Opera Theatre Saint Louis

Commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis for their inaugural New Work's Collective, Cook Shack follows the story of a young Black girl named Dayo who faces bullying in a new school. On a class field trip to a local wax museum exhibition loosely based on the St. Louis’ Griot Museum of Black History, Dayo meets three historic Black female inventors who teach her to accept and love her identity: Annie Malone, the first Black female millionaire who was credited for starting the Black hair industry; Dr. Patricia Bath, who revolutionized cataract surgery; and Marie Van Brittan Brown, who invented the modern home security system.

a note from the creators

“As a composer,” says Del’Shawn Taylor, “bringing Cook Shack to life has been the proudest musical moment of my 29 years of life. For me, Cook Shack is my love letter to Black women and the superwomen in my life: my mom, my aunt, and my grandma. It was born from my reading of a quote by Malcom X which stated, ‘The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America,’ he said, ‘ is the black woman.’ In proposing this story to OTSL, I wanted this opera to be a movement of change, a resounding gong to the industry, to the world that this will no longer be true. As a Black man, who comes from a Black woman and was raised by strong Black women, I wanted to create an opera in which Black women are celebrated, seen, and creates roles where Black female opera singers can sing of their humanity, of their queendom. I wanted to displace whiteness, by centering the story around a young Black girl. Most importantly, I hope every little girl, every human being leaves seeing ‘who [they] are as their superpower.’”

In this moment when superheroes are half of our cultural conversation, what if we actually got to receive who our superheroes are? Ask someone else. Who is your superhero? “In St. Louis,” says Samiya Bashir, “someone like Keisha Lee, CEO of Annie Malone Children & Family Services, is one of our most inspiring, hard working superheroes. Someone like Lois D. Conley of the Griot Museum which began with her own whittling of our likenesses in wax so our people could be represented and remembered. Someone like my cousins Lucy, Linda, and Netta who teaches and leads our children every day as they grow to find their ways into themselves and their world.

In this work one little Black girl gets to represent the quintessential human American experience. Dayo is US. 

“We, black women, get to be the we at the center of our collective consciousness that everyone can check into,” says Bashir. “Yet, even in a world where nearly nobody has the back of black women but us – we see those dancers who show up like the ancestors and children who carry us when we don’t even know which step to take, who frame us when we can’t find our light.

“We come from a people who made a way out of no way.” (Cook Shack)

American history, despite its own wrenching pain, has forgotten them. We didn't. And this work says, actually, they’re still here with us. Right now. Their work is all around them. We can see because of them. We are seen – and are surveilled –  because of them. In this very city, one of the largest parades in the country happens every year under the name and in the memory of Annie Malone. And yet leave this city and she is a whisper. A friend in Philly found a graduate certificate from Poro College in the basement of the house she bought. It was from around the year Malone passed – nearly 100 years after she was born, of parents who were enslaved. They remain the strength we can pull from.

“As Black Americans continue to fight against the white washed history published in our school books,” says Taylor, “I believe Cook Shack is K.O. I hope everyone can leave the Cook Shack inspired to tell the stories of Annie Malone, Dr. Patricia E Bath, and Marie Van Britten Brown, remembering that Black history is American history.”

HERE’S THE THING: (2020)

Composer: Julian Wachner || Librettist: Samiya Bashir || Video Artist: Camilla Tassi || Conductor: Dr. Eugene Rogers

Listen Here! || Read the score!

Here's The Thing

FOR 8 SOLO AMPLIFIED SINGERS, LARGE SYMPHONIC CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA

Commissioned & Premiered by The Washington Chorus, featuring Sphinx's EXIGENCE Vocal Ensemble, Dr Eugene Rogers, conductor

Duration: 12' || 00:12 / 12:11

VIEW SCORE

In 2019, we were commissioned to write a celebratory choral-orchestral work to help usher in the newly appointed Artistic Director (as of then, yet unnamed and not yet identified) of The Washington Chorus. The work was to be performed during the 60th anniversary season of the chorus at the Kennedy Center. The commission required the use of a Beethoven-size orchestra, so it was immediately clear that the final movement of Beethoven’s epic 9th symphony could serve as the model for both the instrumentation and energy of the work. The deadline for the text was February 1st, 2020 and the deadline for the score was August 1st, 2020.  

We started discussions in the Fall of 2019, Samiya being in Rome as a recipient of the Rome Prize, and Julian was working in New York City and travelling around conducting. We hit it off right away. Julian ordered all of Samiya’s published books, and Samiya downloaded and listened to Julian’s compositions and conversations on-line. We both fell in love with each other’s work and couldn’t wait to create something joyful, uplifting, and forward-thinking for our friends in Washington. 

Then came the pandemic. Samiya was in Rome as Italy was hard hit by the virus and forced to return to the USA, finding refuge in Cape Cod, just as the virus was taking over the Northeast of the country. Julian took his family to New Hampshire to try to shield them all, but in particular his 3-year-old son, Tallis from the chaos and isolation that was to become apartment dwelling in New York. Both of us remained nomads for the next four months. Then came the murder of George Floyd and the national outrage that followed. 

Throughout this period from January 2020 to July 2020, we stayed in constant contact working and re-working the text and music until we came up with what seemed an appropriate engagement of “new beginnings” both for the cultural moment in which we found ourselves and for the wider world in which we might all continue to live. Poetry lead music and music lead text. So much so that the final piece has a musical statement with lyrics AND a stand-alone poem to accompany the work, almost a distillation of the musical composition into a purer, cleaner rendering of the meaning of our creation. That poem can be found below.

The musical composition is set for Beethoven orchestra plus piano and marimba, and calls for 8 amplified solo voices. These voices can be pulled from the chorus or could be additional professional soloists. The work’s driving rhythmic energy and chaotic yet sometimes beautiful sound world intends to emulate what has been swirling in so many of the world’s population’s heads these past months, and most likely, for months and years to come. The piece opens and closes with a solitary alto voice, one that Julian thought represented Samiya’s own personal voice. 

Samiya Bashir and Julian Wachner - July, 2020

Hades D.W.P. 2016

Debut @ LA Louver, Silt, Soot, & Smut

|| etched glass jars, water, dye, wood, cloth and ink transfer, electronics, found ladles and cups
30 x 50 x 16 in. (76.2 x 127 x 40.6 cm) ||

Sculptor: Alison Saar || Poet: Samiya Bashir

Artist’s Book: 2019

Sculptor: Alison Saar || Poet: Samiya Bashir || Printer: Tracy Schlapp

CLAIRVOYANCE :: World Debut 2021

Prototype Festival OPERA | THEATER | NOW :: Modulation "Fear"

Composer: Joel Thompson || Librettist: Samiya Bashir

Video Designer: Camilla Tassi

Director: Samiya Bashir

Vocalists: Rhianna Cockrell, Deborah Stephens, Andréa Walker
Actors: Alexandra Maurice, Maal West
Conductor: Maura Tuffy
Audio engineer: Chris Talbot

Nail Hard

Commissioned: by Sonya Clarke || Exhibition Premiere 2024 Museum of Arts & Design || Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other || March 23–September 22, 2024

Published by Poetry Magazine (April 2024) in conversation with folio on visual artist Kara Walker.