Behind Barbed Wire
Chika Inoue, Alto Saxophone, Mary Au, piano, National Association of ComposersUSA, September 23, 2017, Tustin Presbyterian Church, California
Deon Nielsen Price’s evocative piece Behind Barbed Wire (2017) followed, with Dr. Price and the pianist providing the narration in this performance. Commissioned by Au, the work marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of E09066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which led to the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, from 1942 to 1946. According to Au, “Rather than remaining bitter that their beloved country imprisoned them, the spirits of many incarcerated Japanese-Americans were uplifted through the power of music.” The piece tells the story of the prison camps through music, as well as through the recitation of Haiku and Tanka poetry written by poets who lived through it. Ms. Inoue sang a couple of phrases from the popular song, “China Night (Sina No Yoru),” heard often in the camps. The music begins with Pearl Harbor and ends with Hiroshima. It was presented with a video (with both historic color and black and white footage) of striking images, prepared by video students at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where the piece was premiered earlier this year. This is an enormously successful piece and more poignant because Ms. Inoue, is Japanese now living in Los Angeles, and Ms. Au, a sensitive yet solid accompanist, is Chinese American. The piece ends with the saxophonist blowing air into her instrument into the open piano, evocating the eerie, bleak sound of the wind through the trees in the desert landscape, where the camps were located. This mini-history lesson reminds us of this dark chapter and the pain and damage caused by panic, ignorance, and racial profiling.
Review for ComposerUSA by musicologist/author Jeannie G. Pool, PhD.
“I have never spoken of my incarceration in the Camp, but when I heard the first sounds of the music the tears began to flow.” Elderly woman at the CSU Fresno performance, May 2017
“I wept when I heard this meaningful and expressive work by Deon, beautifully performed by Mary and Chika! The lesson in this work resonates in today’s world!” Carol Worthey, composer/artist