Spirit in the Vine: A Sankopera

“

“What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?
For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?
Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,
Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?”

― William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece

A Note from the Creator

Spirit in the Vine has been a passion of mine since 2013 when I decided to write a theater work based on African-American folklore at the request of a member of my local music organization. Out of this came Spirit in de Vine, the title, characters and themes striking me suddenly like lightning; I had even written the role of Mother Magda for my mother (also a classical singer) to perform. In 2017, my mother passed away from ovarian cancer and the unimaginable pain of that personal loss hauntingly matched with the themes of the opera I had been writing for years (death, rebirth and maternal power), a project she was excited about until her last days with us.

A Sankopera is a fairy-tale opera rooted textually and musically in the folklore of the African Diaspora. It is a mélange of verse drama, dance, poetry and sung-through lyrics, a cappella and with orchestra, that tells and retells myriad Black mythologies. Sankopera is a marriage of two words, Sankofa and opera. Sankofa comes from the Twi proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi”, meaning “it is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” Opera is an Italian word which means “work”. So in essence, a Sankopera is the dramatic work of going back for that which we have forgotten.

 The Sankopera is similar to the Baroque semi-opera, yet instead it combines narration, verse drama and Afro-Diasporic dance and music (Spirituals, ballads, chants, Ring Shouts, etc.) in an operatic context. I chose to write this because African and Afro-Indigenous myths are missing from the operatic and dramatic canon. Toni Morrison once said, “if there’s a book you want to read and it hasn’t been written, then you must write it”—and to that I add, a play, an opera or a musical, too. It's my hope that Spirit in the Vine will make old traditions speak to contemporary audiences, bringing to life many strange and beautifully untold stories that make these mythic experiences witnessed by all.