This Friday, White Snake Projects will present the world premiere of “Is This America?”, an opera centered around the life and legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer. It’s by one of our most esteemed, prolific and brilliant composers and performers, Mary D. Watkins. Watkins has composed three other operas but worked across a range of genres and formats and often combines genres and styles.
Mary D Watkins joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss her latest works. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: This is a historical opera focused on Fannie Lou Hamer, a voting rights activist in the South during really the heyday of the civil rights movement. Tell us, though, a little bit more about her and the history we follow in this opera.
Mary D. Watkins: I wanted to do an opera about the Civil Rights Movement. That period was so, so large. And I had a little problem trying to decide where to focus in that movement. And I decided on Fannie Lou Hamer.
I liked the idea that it was a woman, because mostly we hear about the men who worked in the Civil Rights Movement. But Fannie Lou Hamer is someone who I greatly admire — and who she was admired by many people. I’ve talked to people who actually worked with her.
She went to a snake meeting in the early ’60s, and this is when she learned that she had the right to vote. And she was, I think, in her 40s at that time. She had no idea that she had the right to vote, or that she had any rights — really — at all. And so that began her career as an activist.
So she worked in a field as a field secretary, but she also became quite a leader speaking all over the country and traveling. And she was quite a woman.
Rath: The title “Is This America?” actually comes from a speech Fannie Lou Hamer gave at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. Tell us about what she was speaking about there, and the context for that question: Is this America?
Watkins: First of all, they were trying to get the delegation of the Mississippi Freedom Party seated on the floor of the convention. And Mississippi, they weren’t having that. And so there was a meeting with the credentials committee, and Fannie Lou was asked to give them some information about what was going on in Mississippi. And she made this speech: “Is this America?”
And, of course, it was being televised. And Lyndon Johnson, he was very nervous about losing votes from the South, so he had the speech interrupted by a news conference.
But the thing is, the speech went on — in spite of the fact that cameras cut away from it. And she was asking: Is this America? This is where people were getting threats on their lives daily just because they wanted to vote. Life in Mississippi for Black people at that time was a little bit better than slavery — a little bit. And she wanted the world to know what was really going on in Mississippi.
And so she questioned, you know, Is this America, where we have to sleep with our phones off the hook? And our lives are threatened daily? That sort of thing.
“She was asking: Is this America? This is where people were getting threats on their lives daily just because they wanted to vote.”Mary D. Watkins, on Fannie Lou Hamer’s famous 1964 Democratic National Convention speech
Opera excerpt, pre-recorded: If the Freedom Party is not seated to day, I question America. If the Freedom Party is not seated, no, I question America. I question America: is this the land of the free, home of the brave?
Rath: Mary, are those actually the words of Fannie Lou Hamer that you’re setting there?
Watkins: Yeah, those are her words.
Rath: Wow. How did you approach this as a composer? You’re just putting this to music, that must have been incredible.
Watkins: I just have a knack for that sort of thing. I read a lot. I’ve watched videos so that I could learn as much as possible about the life of Fannie Lou Hamer.
So when the time came to set music to her words, it wasn’t that difficult. She had a musical rhythmic quality to her speaking anyway. It seems to me that sometimes a Southern speech is a kind of musical at times. And her speaking was very rhythmical and sort of melodic.
Rath: It’s impossible not to think about the fact that, 60 years after that Democratic convention, we’re recording this a week before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when a Black woman will be accepting the Democratic nomination for president. I’m just wondering how much current politics are going through your own head as you’re contemplating Fannie Lou Hamer.
Watkins: I’m sort of really reliving that period. I mean, I remember watching on television and reading in the paper about what was going on. That’s what it’s like right now. It’s, at this point, a very joyful occasion and hopefulness. You know, there’s a lot of hope that wasn’t there a few weeks ago.
And it’s very much the way the people approached the problem of segregation during that time in the ’60s. There was a lot of hope, there was a lot of spirituality. And I feel that in what’s going on today with Kamala Harris. Hope, And it’s a very powerful, palpable feeling.
Rath: And another commonality, though, is that voting rights for people of color are still under attack.
Watkins: Yeah. Isn’t that amazing? Yes, that’s true. And I am quite bothered about that. But I think it’s very interesting, that at this particular time, this opera is coming out.
Rath: As as I was getting ready for our interview, going over your body of work, I couldn’t help but think of another African American composer I interviewed very recently who also deals with a lot of American history in his work. That’s Wadada Leo Smith. And I could probably rattle off several other African American composers who fit this description. And I’m just curious if this is something that you think about as a composer. Do you feel a responsibility for telling these stories of history that might be overlooked?
Watkins: Well, I do. I think it’s important to put this out for artists to comment on this. It’s been my main focus. It’s my opportunity to speak to those who weren’t necessarily affected — at least, not directly by the discrimination and the violence of the time.
But it tells our story. I’m talking about me. I’m talking about my people. And I’m talking about the world that I live in. There was a lot of goodwill among people. Many white people, there was quite a bit of goodwill. People jumped in and they fought. They helped us. And we couldn’t have done it without the help of some of them.
So I want to tell the story, and I want my music — definitely — to tell the story.
Mary D. Watkins’ opera “Is this America?” will have its world premiere at the White Snake Opera Company at Dorchester’s Strand Theatre on Friday, Sept. 20.
