Salute to Underground Railroad
Khari Wendell McClelland’s Freedom Singer shines a light on dark days
Khari Wendell McClelland knows the message spreads wider with sweet soul as its driver. From his work with the JUNO-nominated gospel group the Sojourners to his Fleeting is the Time solo album, the Vancouver-based, Detroit-raised artist is someone who passionately believes in “the redemptive power of music.”
Freedom Singer, his latest multimedia performance is the culmination of extensive research into the journeys of fugitive slaves who travelled the Underground Railroad to Canada and the songs that supported them spiritually a century and a half ago.
The documentary theatre piece delves into a period in North American history that is both under exposed and often taught from a top down perspective without much personal focus. Co-created by Project: Humanity’s Andrew Kushnir and CBC journalist Jodie Martinson, the work was years in the making.
“It all began a few summers ago when I was playing the Lunenberg Folk Festival and as I was coming offstage a woman came up and handed me Karolyn Smardz Frost’s Goveror General Award-winning non-fiction book I’ve Got A Home In Glory Land,” said McClelland. “It was the story of two people who escaped from slavery in Kentucky who made their way up to Ohio and then Detroit to make their way to Canada to establish the first taxi service in Canada. The story made me think of my great, great, great grandmother Kizzy coming into the country in a very similar fashion, having her legs amputated possibly due to the cold, and persevering.”
Kizzy passed long before McClelland was born. Little to nothing of her history was known to anyone in her family. She was born a slave, escaped to Canada, had two children with a white man she didn’t marry and eventually returned to the United States after slavery was officially abolished. To build the story in Freedom Singer, McClelland visited historic sites with Afro-Canadian significance, interviewed descendants of those Underground Railroad travellers who succeeded in their journeys and went back to Detroit too.
“Right from the reading of the book, I kept on hitting these passages that would inspire melodies and I was writing both my own songs and also wondering what would the songs have been?” he said. “As I delved deeper into it, I discovered that there was a really important story to tell to Canadians that I wanted to disseminate in some greater way than I could do as an individual. There is a lot of power in sharing the diverse stories of what Canada is and what it means for different communities of people.”
He thought about making a record of the songs. He debated how to present something bigger than a concert, how to document the information in some larger way. A friend at the Wilder Snail coffee shop tipped him off to documentarian Martinson. The two got a lot more information to flesh out both Kizzy’s story but the bigger picture for a documentary film concept. On the recommendation of a musician friend, he was introduced to Andrew Kushnir who worked in documentary, or verbatim theatre.
“It’s where you take recorded footage or documentary footage and incorporate it into a theatrical piece,” said McClelland. “Because of already doing the work with Jody, all the parts were there, so the three of us came together to create this. It’s definitely stepping out in a different way which allows you to do things you can’t do in music with the way that it’s structured.”
Using the 1850s freedom songs, McClelland’s own originals, verbatim interview excerpts and recounted first-hand stories, Freedom Singer is both a concert, a work of theatre and a super cool history lesson. Vancouver guitarist Noah Walker and JUNO-nominated soul singer Tanika Charles join McClelland in the show. He says that these two players have added dimensions to the performance he hadn’t even pictured.
“Noah is someone I’ve known as a fearless artist willing to try anything and succeeding at it,” he said. “Tanika being involved was a lucky break as I think if I had waited to ask her she would have been too busy. All along the way, the right pieces have been falling into place for this project.”
Perhaps the spirit of Kizzy lives on. Her role in the family remains as incredibly powerful as it is mysterious. Nobody knows what her last name was, as slaves were typically given names tied to their owners. Even her first name could have been a replacement for her given name to make tracking her down more difficult. The times when Kizzy travelled were tense, scary and fraught with risk.
“It’s part of our family story and I often use the phrase mythological matriarch to encapsulate what she has meant to our family,” he said. “In times where there is a sense of being lost or despondent, we draw a lot of strength from her story and struggle to make it to freedom, surviving losing her legs, but still raising two children. So many relations are out there now thanks to her incredible perseverance.”
Freedom Singer stands as a testament to the bravery of Kizzy and others who journeyed to freedom. As noted before, this is a part of history which is neither that long ago, or that well studied. But McClelland notes that so many people who arrived in Canada came as fugitives. You don’t have to scratch very far in most family histories to find some figures who truly suffered so that their descendants could be where we are today alive in this moment.
“It adds an extra sweetness knowing that, but also a responsibility to live a full and good life remembering the struggle and toil that we are born from,” he said.
The Freedom Singer album will be released in the next few months and there will be a new single coming from McClelland and crew later this month. A full solo album is scheduled in the new year. At the moment, no label is arranged. This doesn’t concern the charismatic singer.
“You know, this has been a year full of incredible opportunities and I feel that what I want more than anything is to communicate messages of hope to people,” said McClelland. “Whatever the medium I use, I hope I can help to bring people together so that they can see the shared benefit, the shared family, that is out there to make things better for us all. I am totally aware that everything is not pretty, is not good and I wouldn’t paint that picture, but I do have hope.”