The Storyteller讲故事的人

布朗文·迪基 程颋

With her innovative albums， a ballet， and an opera， the musical genius elevates1 neglected pieces of Southern history to works of art. 憑借其颇具创意的专辑、芭蕾舞剧和歌剧，这位音乐天才将受到忽视的南方历史碎片升华为艺术作品。

Long before she ever picked up a banjo， or won a Grammy， or received a MacArthur Fellowship2， an eight-year-old named Rhiannon Giddens wanted to travel through time. She lived with her grandparents in rural North Carolina， where she liked to make up songs， and she spent many afternoons devouring3 fantasies inspired by European history. Much as she loved the magic and drama of these tales， she couldnt bring herself to care about kings and battles. She wanted to know more about the people outside the castle walls—what they ate， what they wore， how they lived—than the wealthy damsels weeping in the turrets.

Giddenss grandmother recounted her own haunting4 memories of a bygone era： the West Virginia coal-mining camps of the mid-twentieth century， where accidents sent the screams of doomed5 men resounding through the mountains. Her mother， too， described what it had been like as an African American woman born into the segregated South.

Giddens soon learned that history washed over the present like a slow， hushed tide. She didnt need magic to travel into the past; all she had to do was listen.

In the years to come， her curiosity about the lives of others would draw Giddens away from her first love， classical voice training （she studied opera at Oberlin Conservatory of Music）， and toward the rich narratives of folk， blues， gospel， and country music. “Songs are historical artifacts，” she says. “If we look at them in the correct context and really do the work around them， we can reap a lot of benefit from that.”

Giddens is best known as a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops， an old-time string band credited with reviving interest in traditional black banjo music. But she focuses much of her solo work on exhuming historys buried voices. “At the Purchasers Option，” the opening track6 of her 2017 album， Freedom Highway， for instance， was inspired by an advertisement for a young enslaved woman and her nine-month-old baby that was posted in the 1830s. Last spring， Giddens and her partner， Francesco Turrisi， wrote the music for the Nashville Ballets Lucy Negro Redux， which was based on a collection of poems reimagining the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeares sonnets. And for several years Giddens has been working on a musical theater production about the 1898 Wilmington massacre， in which a mob of violent white supremacists staged a coup détat against the citys black leadership， killing dozens， if not hundreds， of people.

Her latest project， commissioned in 2017 by Spoleto Festival USA to premiere there in May， is even more ambitious. With the help of Michael Abels， the award-winning composer behind Jordan Peeles Get Out and Us， Giddens has written both the score and the libretto for an opera， called Omar， based on the autobiography of Omar Ibn Said， a Muslim scholar who was enslaved after being kidnapped from his home in West Africa and put on a ship bound for Charleston in 1807. He escaped soon after and traveled to near Fayetteville， North Carolina， where he was recaptured and lived the rest of his life in bondage. His account7， composed in 1831 and now housed in the Library of Congress， is the only known narrative by a person enslaved in the United States to have been written in Arabic.

Despite all the years she spent studying operas and performing in them， Giddens was at first daunted8 by the prospect of writing her own. Saids autobiography is a short chronicle laced with9 lines from the Koran and contains only a handful of personal details. Giddens worried she didnt know enough about the world he came from to bring him to life， even after conducting extensive historical research and meeting with experts at the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History & Culture. “Im not a scholar，” she says. “I cant read the Koran in Arabic. I have to just do what I can do.”

Some of the story emerged naturally， with Giddens weaving traditional West African musical elements and early American tunes into a larger classical structure. There was no need for love plots or tragic deaths， the hallmarks of other operas， and most of the libretto flowed from Giddenss love of poetry， which she writes regularly. But the ending was trickier， because it required that Giddens， as inventor of this small universe， answer one question： What was her protagonist looking for？

Finally， it came to her. This small， erudite， and highly devout man named Omar， who came from a respectable family and built a focused intellectual life until he was almost forty， spent more of his time on earth in slavery than in freedom. His captors called him Morro. Historians believe he never married or had a family. The loneliness he must have felt， even among his fellow enslaved Africans， would have been all the more desperate because he spoke and wrote Arabic， which few others did. But his language and faith meant so much to him that， when he was confined in the Fayetteville jail， he used bits of charcoal and ash to write pleas for his freedom in Arabic on the wall of his cell.

What would anyone in his position be looking for？

“Hes trying to figure out， like the rest of us： Why？” Giddens explains. “He did everything he was supposed to do. Why was he captured？ Why was he put through this horrible thing？” At the same time， “look at what he went through and what he was able to do. He had to make the old parts of his life fit in with10 his new life in ways that would keep him alive， spiritually and physically.” For Giddens， the parallels11 to what is happening today， with migrants and refugees being separated from their families around the world， are unmistakable.

In the first episode of Aria Code， the opera podcast Giddens hosts in partnership with the Metropolitan Opera， WNYC Studios， and WQXR in New York City， she describes an aria as “one singer stepping forward with something they just have to share.” Which is not so different from what Omar Ibn Said was doing， writing an account he never knew anyone would read， but sending it into the world like a message in a bottle all the same.

And that is what keeps Giddens digging into the past to resurrect the forgotten and to bring their struggles onto the modern stage. She has taken one of the Gullah Geechee12 proverbs she came across in her research as something of a personal mission statement：

Take care of the roots to heal the tree.           ■

早在學会弹奏班卓琴、赢得格莱美音乐奖和荣获麦克阿瑟奖之前，8岁的丽安农·吉登斯想要做的是穿越时间。她和祖父母一起住在北卡罗来纳州的乡村。在那里，她喜欢编歌，还在无数个下午津津有味地阅读以欧洲历史为灵感创作的奇幻小说。虽然她喜欢这些故事中的魔法和戏剧性场面，但她的兴趣却不在国王和战争上。比起了解塔楼中哭泣的富家小姐，她想更多地了解生活在城堡高墙之外的人们——他们吃什么，穿什么，怎么过日子。

吉登斯的祖母诉说了过往时代刻在她心底的记忆：20世纪中叶，在西弗吉尼亚的煤矿营地里，事故中受伤难逃一死的人发出的惨叫声回荡在群山中。她的母亲也讲述了在种族隔离时期，出生于南方的非裔美国妇女曾经过着怎样的日子。

吉登斯很快就认识到历史如同缓慢而缄默的潮汐冲刷着现在。她不需要魔法就可以回到过去，她所要做的是倾听。

接下来的几年，对他人生活的好奇心驱使她从最初的爱好——古典声乐训练（她在欧伯林音乐学院学习歌剧）——转向富有叙事性的民谣音乐、蓝调音乐、福音音乐和乡村音乐。“歌曲是历史文物。”她说，“如果在恰当的背景下研究它们，真正围绕它们做一些工作，我们可以从中收获很多。”

吉登斯最出名的一点是参与创建了乐队“卡罗来纳州的巧克力豆”。这是一支老式弦乐队，是它唤起了人们对传统黑人班卓音乐的兴趣。但吉登斯的大部分个人作品集中于挖掘被埋没在历史中的声音。例如，2017年她出版了专辑《自由之路》，其中第一首歌《由买方决定》的灵感来自1830年代的一则广告，广告内容是出售一名年轻的女奴和她9个月大的婴儿。去年春季，吉登斯和她的合作者弗朗西斯科·图里西为纳什维尔芭蕾舞团的芭蕾舞剧《归来的黑奴露西》创作了音乐。这部芭蕾舞剧根据一组诗歌编写而成，这组诗歌重新诠释了莎士比亚十四行诗中的“黑女士”。几年来，吉登斯一直在创作一部关于1898年威尔明顿大屠杀的音乐剧。在这场大屠杀中，一伙残暴的白人至上主义者针对这座城市的黑人领导人发动了政变，政变中被杀害的人没有几百个也有数十个。

她最新的作品更是一部恢宏巨制，这部作品于2017年受美国斯波莱托艺术节委托，5月份在该艺术节首次上演。在迈克尔·埃布尔斯的帮助下，吉登斯为歌剧《奥马尔》作词作曲。迈克尔·埃布尔斯是一位获奖作曲家，乔丹·皮尔的电影《逃出绝命镇》和《我们》的配乐均出自其手。《奥马尔》根据奥马尔·伊本·赛义德的自传改编而成。赛义德是一位穆斯林学者，1807年他在西非自己的家里遭到绑架，然后被装上开往查尔斯顿的轮船，之后沦为奴隶。他很快就逃脱了，跑到北卡罗来纳州的费耶特维尔附近，在此地他又被抓住，然后在奴役中度过余生。1831年他写下了自己的故事。他的自传现存于美国国会图书馆，这是已知的唯一一部由美国的奴隶用阿拉伯语所做的记述。

尽管吉登斯花了这么多年研究歌剧而且还参加过演出，一开始她还是对创作自己的歌剧这事的前景信心不足。赛义德的自传按年代记录，篇幅不长，《可兰经》的语句点缀其中，里面只有很少的个人信息。吉登斯广泛地研究了相关历史，并且和史密森学会非洲裔美国人历史和文化国家博物馆的专家见面交流。即便如此，她仍担心自己对赛义德所来自的世界不够了解，从而无法栩栩如生地诠释他。“我不是学者。”她说，“我看不懂阿拉伯语的《可兰经》。我只能尽力而为了。”

吉登斯将传统西非音乐元素和早期美国音乐编织成较大的经典结构，在此过程中，故事的一些内容自然而然地浮现。其他歌剧特有的爱情情节和死亡悲剧在这部歌剧里并不需要。吉登斯常常写诗，大部分歌词都从她对诗歌的热爱中流淌出来。但歌剧的结尾部分比较难写，因为这要求吉登斯，这个小世界的创造者，回答一个问题：她的主角在寻找什么？

终于，她得到了答案。这个矮小、博学、非常虔诚的人名叫奥马尔，出身于一个体面的家庭，醉心于求知，直到近40岁。他在这世上做奴隶的时间比当自由人的时间还多。绑架他的那些人管他叫莫洛。历史学家认为他没有结过婚，也没有过子女。他必定会感到孤独，即便和他的非洲奴隶同胞在一起;这种孤独只会更强烈，因为他说阿拉伯语，写阿拉伯语，而其他人并非如此。但对他来说，语言和信仰具有非常重要的意义。当他被关在费耶特维尔监狱的时候，他拿小块木炭和灰烬用阿拉伯语在牢房的墙壁上写下了恳求自由的文字。

别人在他的处境中会寻找什么？

“他和我们大家一样，试图搞清楚为什么。”吉登斯解释道，“该做的，他都做了。为什么要抓他？为什么让他经受这种可怕的遭遇？”同时，“看看他都经历了什么，看看他能做什么。他不得不让过往人生与新的生活相适应，这样他才能在精神上和肉体上都存活下来”。在吉登斯看来，奥马尔的遭遇和现在世界各地与家人分离的移民和难民的境遇明显相似。

《咏叹调密码》是吉登斯与纽约市的大都会歌剧院、纽约公共电台工作室和古典音乐广播电台合作主持的歌剧播客。在第一期里，吉登斯將咏叹调描述为“一个歌手走上前来，带来恰好需要分享的东西”。这与奥马尔·伊本·赛义德做的事没有太大区别。赛义德写了一部自传，他不知道是否会有人读到，但仍然把它像漂流瓶一样发送给这个世界。

正是这一点促使吉登斯不断挖掘过去，再现被遗忘的人们，并把他们的斗争展示在现代舞台上。她在研究中发现了几句古拉方言谚语，她把其中一句某种程度上作为个人使命宣言：

护根以养树。                  □

（译者为“《英语世界》杯”翻译大赛获奖者）