Editor’s Note: The following article was originally commissioned by the website Refinery 29, but they refused to run it based on the advice of its legal department despite finding no factual mistakes or legally incorrect information.
In a tumultuous year of a continuing global pandemic, overlapping genocides in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and Tigray, and empires on the brink of collapse, too many artists have become derelict in the duty Nina Simone articulated for them to be a mirror for the world. “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That, to me, is the definition of an artist,” Simone famously said. But too often, fear of social and professional repercussions from capitalist overlords and trolling fans keep performers from even seeing a world that could stop their bag, let alone reflecting it. Enter Solange Knowles and her Saint Heron banner, curating a line-up of musicians experimenting with genre for a three-night sold-out odyssey of Black sound: Eldorado Ballroom.
Originating at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2023 and reimagined in 2024 with the L.A. Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall from October 10 to 13, 2024, Solange’s Eldorado Ballroom honored the legacy of Black music innovators across classical, opera, jazz, funk, soul and gospel. Named for the iconic venue in Solange’s native Third Ward of Houston, TX, the event was not the typically smooth, ethereal experience one might expect from the artist known as the epitome of a carefree Black girl.
Each night, Solange — one of the small number of mainstream artists who have spoken up for a Free Palestine —offered a transcendent soundtrack for the grief of the oppressed and allowed the audience a much-needed space to process, shout, and cry out to God, in community. The Ballroom was not only the site of preservation of underappreciated Black women artists of the past and present but also a conduit through which we could draw strength for today’s battles.
On the first night, aptly called “On Dissonance,” patrons shuffled into the architectural wonder that is the Walt Disney Center in downtown Los Angeles, only hours after the Israeli government’s army had rained down bombs and bullets on Palestinian and Lebanese children, parents, journalists, people in Gaza and Beirut. I experienced the night as an invitation to sit in that dissonance, ushered in with a full-orchestra performance of the works of renowned Black woman composer Julia Perry. The orchestra, helmed by conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson, played Perry’s Homunculus C.F. and icon Patrice Rushen’s symphonic piece Sinfonia to perfection. But the highlight was the opera.
Singing Perry’s arrangement of the classical Latin hymn Stabat Mater, soprano Zoie Reams told the story of Mary, mother of Jesus, in Jerusalem, the same land under occupation today, witnessing her son’s brutal and unjust crucifixion by the allied powers of religious supremacists and the state.
“The sorrowful mother was standing beside the Cross weeping / while the Son was hanging. Whose moaning soul, depressed and grieving, the sword has passed through,” read the English translation on a screen in the rafters.
“Who is the person who would not weep / if he had seen the mother of Christ in such great suffering?”
The discomfort led me to the edge of my seat. My mind rolled to the seemingly endless images over the past year of mothers and fathers in Gaza holding the remains of their children, children clinging to the sheets that wrapped their parents. Who, indeed, could not weep?
“Share [his] penalties with me / Make me cry dutifully with you, to suffer (with him) on the cross, as long as I shall have lived / To stand by the Cross with you, to unite me to you in weeping, [this] I desire.”
Uniting in grief seemed a central theme of the Ballroom and was reflected in Knowles’ compositional debut, “Not Within Arms’ Reach.” The minimalist tuba duet was performed by two Black male tubists, facing each other, yet standing apart as the title suggests. Inspired by gospel and Black southern marching bands, the piece reflected an uneasy conversation, a chasm between brothers desperate to harmonize, to be on one accord, but unable to bridge the gap. Still, they held on together till the end of the piece, discordant but never turning away from each other until their final bow.
A scene from the second night of Solange’s Eldorado Ballroom – “Contrapuntal Counterpoints (Experiments in Funk, Soul, and Jazz)”
During night two’s “experimentation in funk, soul, and jazz,” I didn’t realize my shoulders had been hunched until Liv.e, the opening performer, started to sing. Floating on electronic tracks, her voice was an invitation to ease some tensions in the body —not because the stress had been overcome, but because we were in the presence of someone who understood it. On the otherworldly, electric song, “Our Father,” she challenges her own beliefs, remixing a question from an old gospel hymn: “If it had not been for the Lord who was on my side, where would I be?…but what if God wasn’t really on my side?” It’s the question that every suffering person has asked at least once in the midst of the greatest tragedies, and would become, for me, the theme of the night.
“This is for the people, who don’t believe in anyone or anything like I do,” the reunited duo J*Davey sang their frustrations with government propaganda on their classic hit “This One.” Vocalist Jack Davey and producer Brook d’Leau, pioneers of “dark R&B,” hit the stage more confident than ever after their hiatus, pouring years of life into their 2008 song, which Jack shared was written during the reign of an awful U.S. president and seemed just as relevant today. This act of reaching back to move forward was the perfect bridge for headliner Bilal.
Accompanied by legendary multi-instrumentalists Cooper-Moore, William Parker and Michael Wimberly, the Grammy-winning artist and longtime Knowles collaborator Bilal entered the musical conversation with a wail. The first words he sang were, “I was born under a bad sign.” The lights in the 2,700-seat venue were off, save his spotlight, which demanded all of our energy focus on him as we watched a creative genius collaborate, experiment, and create live on stage. He channeled something ancient in his cries of “Where is God?!” He screamed high notes with perfect pitch, beauty, and despair. It was guttural, improvisational, spiritual, and ancestral — not a groove, but definitely a vibe that required total surrender to the process.
If those first two nights were the death and burial, the third and final night was the triumphant resurrection. Dedicated to gospel innovators, Glory to Glory: A Revival for Spiritual and Devotional Art collected the hymns that brought our ancestors and elders over and served them back to us as a reminder: even in the worst times, God is still there, because we are.
For the past year, I’ve witnessed on social media the last words written and the last videos recorded of Palestinians before their deaths at the hands of the Zionist Israeli government. “O, Allah, grant us a good end.” Marcellus “Khalifa” Williams, a Black man on death row who was wrongfully executed by the state of Missouri last month despite evidence of his innocence had similar last words: “All praise be to Allah in every situation!!!”
This energy of unconditional worship flowed through organist Dominique Johnson as she turned the Concert Hall into Sunday church with her rendition of the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” and Richard Smallwood’s 1996 classic “Total Praise”: “You are the source of my strength / you are the strength of my life / I lift my hands in total praise to you.”
Joined by singer-songwriter Moses Sumney for “How Great Thou Art,” the two blended their instruments in meditative acceptance that there is greater beyond all we could ever know.
Highlighting the compositions of the late great jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, New York Philharmonic’s Choral Conductor, Malcolm J. Merriweather, guided a choir through Williams’s contemporary spiritual works with the tightest harmonies of the evening, whether acapella or accompanied by concert pianist Artina McCain.
Once the Birmingham Chapter of the Gospel Music Workshop of America Women’s Choir sang their iconic 1991 song “Order My Steps,” there wasn’t a soul in the 2,700-seat hall who remained seated. Arms raised, hands waving, even a praise break for shouting, this choir took us back to the old ways and empowered us to face the new. It was a revival, in every sense.
Without ever performing herself, what Knowles and Saint Heron recreated through each night of the Eldorado Ballroom was the never-ending cycle that our elders, ancestors, and even past versions of ourselves have already been through. We grieve, we mourn, we question God, we praise God, and we get back to the work of freedom. The wail, the timbrel, the dance: this is the odyssey of Black sound, from generation to generation. In creating a holy space to spotlight game-changing artists, honor ancestors, and spark the audience’s imagination, Knowles —a true patron of the arts —reminded us that this creative work, this liberation work, this healing work never happens in isolation.
As we leapfrog from inspired to inspiring and back around again, we create the vibrations and the resistance in the community that make life worth the effort. Just like the music we invent, we survive and live on in new forms, forever and ever, amen.
Knowles conjured up sonic Black magic in that arena over three nights, shaking us out of the numbness of grief and setting us back in our bodies to feel again, to move, and to act. As much as her culture-shifting music is her legacy, let this experience be how she’s remembered, too.
Brooke Obie
Brooke Obie is an author, editor, and filmmaker in Los Angeles.