Trumpeter, bandleader and composer Hannibal Lokumbe has had a lengthy and distinguished career. But by his own admission, nothing he’d previously done anywhere equaled either the scope or magnitude of his epic multimedia work The Jonah People. The expansive piece, a collaboration with the Nashville Symphony that combines opera, jazz and theater, had its world premiere during a four-night run at the Schermerhorn in April. In four movements called “veils,” the story compares the past 400 years of African American history to the biblical parable of Jonah and the whale: surviving the horrors of slavery, enduring Reconstruction and building lasting and vibrant communities, in spite of injustice fueled by systemic racism.
“I wanted to chronicle the full measure of the African American experience — the glories and the tragedies, the incredible things that have occurred along the way,” Lokumbe told the Scene a few weeks before The Jonah People’s debut. “Not only is it the realization of a lifelong dream, it really is for me an affirmation of everything that makes the Black experience so vital and special.”
The inaugural weekend’s staging, for a packed house, featured more than 200 performers, including African drummers and dancers, an improvisational jazz quintet, a 100-voice choir and 30 actors, filling nearly every inch of the hall that could be used for performance. And that’s not counting the costume and set designers, technicians and others who helped this fantastically rich and poignant story come to life elegantly and seamlessly. Lokumbe hopes for The Jonah People to be staged again, whether it becomes a recurring event in Nashville or travels elsewhere. It takes extraordinary skill to tell a story on this ambitious scale, and the production never lost its immediacy for a second.
