This summer, a pre-eminent classical musician is bringing civil rights leaders and public intellectuals to a storied venue in the Berkshires — as a way to examine American democracy.
“We The People” is a week-long residency at Tanglewood in early August, conceived by cellist Yo-Yo Ma to coincide with the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Ma has invited historians, folk singers, and others to help interpret the American experiment so far.
Alabama-based civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative, is among them. Stevenson works with death row prisoners and often points to the legacy of slavery.
Stevenson immediately understood Yo-Yo Ma’s vision.
“I think music has always been an important part of the struggle to create a more just America,” he said. “During enslavement, without the spirituals, many of the 10 million Black people who were enslaved in this country would not have been able to cope with the constant terror, violence and assault.”
Stevenson will have a public conversation with historian Heather Cox Richardson on one of the Tanglewood stages. Later, an evening concert will bring James Taylor and other musicians to play, along with Yo-Yo Ma.
Stevenson said holding the event in the Berkshires, a region known for performing arts and scenic vacations, drives home the urgency of the moment.
“There's no place in America, even in western Massachusetts, that can isolate itself from the challenges created by bigotry, inequality, exclusion, hatred," he said. "People may think it's less of an issue in the spaces that are near Tanglewood, but these toxins that are created by our long history of exclusion and bigotry are in the air ...no matter whether it's western Massachusetts or the Deep South.”
And while folk music is often associated with political protest, classical music does not have that reputation.
“There's a long history of musicians, and particularly classical musicians, looking the other way at times of controversy and conflict,” Stevenson said. “During the Holocaust, there were too many musicians who looked, who looked away, who became complicit. There was a genocide in Rwanda in the early 1990s, and a lot of musicians in that region were silent.”
He said Yo-Yo Ma’s “We The People” program represents the opposite side of that tradition. “And I think that's an important model for other musicians and for other artists.”