The Storyteller講故事的人

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. 憑借其頗具創意的專輯、芭蕾舞劇和歌劇，這位音樂天才將受到忽視的南方歷史碎片升華為藝術作品。

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. ? ? ? ? ? ■

早在學會彈奏班卓琴、贏得格萊美音樂獎和榮獲麥克阿瑟獎之前，8歲的麗安農·吉登斯想要做的是穿越時間。她和祖父母一起住在北卡羅來納州的鄉村。在那里，她喜歡編歌，還在無數個下午津津有味地閱讀以歐洲歷史為靈感創作的奇幻小說。雖然她喜歡這些故事中的魔法和戲劇性場面，但她的興趣卻不在國王和戰爭上。比起了解塔樓中哭泣的富家小姐，她想更多地了解生活在城堡高墻之外的人們——他們吃什么，穿什么，怎么過日子。

吉登斯的祖母訴說了過往時代刻在她心底的記憶：20世紀中葉，在西弗吉尼亞的煤礦營地里，事故中受傷難逃一死的人發出的慘叫聲回蕩在群山中。她的母親也講述了在種族隔離時期，出生于南方的非裔美國婦女曾經過著怎樣的日子。

吉登斯很快就認識到歷史如同緩慢而緘默的潮汐沖刷著現在。她不需要魔法就可以回到過去，她所要做的是傾聽。

接下來的幾年，對他人生活的好奇心驅使她從最初的愛好——古典聲樂訓練（她在歐伯林音樂學院學習歌劇）——轉向富有敘事性的民謠音樂、藍調音樂、福音音樂和鄉村音樂。“歌曲是歷史文物。”她說，“如果在恰當的背景下研究它們，真正圍繞它們做一些工作，我們可以從中收獲很多。”

吉登斯最出名的一點是參與創建了樂隊“卡羅來納州的巧克力豆”。這是一支老式弦樂隊，是它喚起了人們對傳統黑人班卓音樂的興趣。但吉登斯的大部分個人作品集中于挖掘被埋沒在歷史中的聲音。例如，2017年她出版了專輯《自由之路》，其中第一首歌《由買方決定》的靈感來自1830年代的一則廣告，廣告內容是出售一名年輕的女奴和她9個月大的嬰兒。去年春季，吉登斯和她的合作者弗朗西斯科·圖里西為納什維爾芭蕾舞團的芭蕾舞劇《歸來的黑奴露西》創作了音樂。這部芭蕾舞劇根據一組詩歌編寫而成，這組詩歌重新詮釋了莎士比亞十四行詩中的“黑女士”。幾年來，吉登斯一直在創作一部關于1898年威爾明頓大屠殺的音樂劇。在這場大屠殺中，一伙殘暴的白人至上主義者針對這座城市的黑人領導人發動了政變，政變中被殺害的人沒有幾百個也有數十個。

她最新的作品更是一部恢宏巨制，這部作品于2017年受美國斯波萊托藝術節委托，5月份在該藝術節首次上演。在邁克爾·埃布爾斯的幫助下，吉登斯為歌劇《奧馬爾》作詞作曲。邁克爾·埃布爾斯是一位獲獎作曲家，喬丹·皮爾的電影《逃出絕命鎮》和《我們》的配樂均出自其手。《奧馬爾》根據奧馬爾·伊本·賽義德的自傳改編而成。賽義德是一位穆斯林學者，1807年他在西非自己的家里遭到綁架，然后被裝上開往查爾斯頓的輪船，之后淪為奴隸。他很快就逃脫了，跑到北卡羅來納州的費耶特維爾附近，在此地他又被抓住，然后在奴役中度過余生。1831年他寫下了自己的故事。他的自傳現存于美國國會圖書館，這是已知的唯一一部由美國的奴隸用阿拉伯語所做的記述。

盡管吉登斯花了這么多年研究歌劇而且還參加過演出，一開始她還是對創作自己的歌劇這事的前景信心不足。賽義德的自傳按年代記錄，篇幅不長，《可蘭經》的語句點綴其中，里面只有很少的個人信息。吉登斯廣泛地研究了相關歷史，并且和史密森學會非洲裔美國人歷史和文化國家博物館的專家見面交流。即便如此，她仍擔心自己對賽義德所來自的世界不夠了解，從而無法栩栩如生地詮釋他。“我不是學者。”她說，“我看不懂阿拉伯語的《可蘭經》。我只能盡力而為了。”

吉登斯將傳統西非音樂元素和早期美國音樂編織成較大的經典結構，在此過程中，故事的一些內容自然而然地浮現。其他歌劇特有的愛情情節和死亡悲劇在這部歌劇里并不需要。吉登斯常常寫詩，大部分歌詞都從她對詩歌的熱愛中流淌出來。但歌劇的結尾部分比較難寫，因為這要求吉登斯，這個小世界的創造者，回答一個問題：她的主角在尋找什么？

終于，她得到了答案。這個矮小、博學、非常虔誠的人名叫奧馬爾，出身于一個體面的家庭，醉心于求知，直到近40歲。他在這世上做奴隸的時間比當自由人的時間還多。綁架他的那些人管他叫莫洛。歷史學家認為他沒有結過婚，也沒有過子女。他必定會感到孤獨，即便和他的非洲奴隸同胞在一起;這種孤獨只會更強烈，因為他說阿拉伯語，寫阿拉伯語，而其他人并非如此。但對他來說，語言和信仰具有非常重要的意義。當他被關在費耶特維爾監獄的時候，他拿小塊木炭和灰燼用阿拉伯語在牢房的墻壁上寫下了懇求自由的文字。

別人在他的處境中會尋找什么？

“他和我們大家一樣，試圖搞清楚為什么。”吉登斯解釋道，“該做的，他都做了。為什么要抓他？為什么讓他經受這種可怕的遭遇？”同時，“看看他都經歷了什么，看看他能做什么。他不得不讓過往人生與新的生活相適應，這樣他才能在精神上和肉體上都存活下來”。在吉登斯看來，奧馬爾的遭遇和現在世界各地與家人分離的移民和難民的境遇明顯相似。

《詠嘆調密碼》是吉登斯與紐約市的大都會歌劇院、紐約公共電臺工作室和古典音樂廣播電臺合作主持的歌劇播客。在第一期里，吉登斯將詠嘆調描述為“一個歌手走上前來，帶來恰好需要分享的東西”。這與奧馬爾·伊本·賽義德做的事沒有太大區別。賽義德寫了一部自傳，他不知道是否會有人讀到，但仍然把它像漂流瓶一樣發送給這個世界。

正是這一點促使吉登斯不斷挖掘過去，再現被遺忘的人們，并把他們的斗爭展示在現代舞臺上。她在研究中發現了幾句古拉方言諺語，她把其中一句某種程度上作為個人使命宣言：

護根以養樹。? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? □

（譯者為“《英語世界》杯”翻譯大賽獲獎者）