CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS: A Tribute to George Floyd in 8’46” (© Jacaranda Music, 2021)

Performed by renowned dancer/choreographer David Roussève and trumpeter Daniel Rosenboom, this work of visual music honors the late George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement for social justice. Conceived by Patrick Scott, Artistic Director of Jacaranda Music, this visualization of James Newton’s “The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness” trumpet solo is co-directed by Ben Caldwell, Director, KAOS Network, with camerawork by Wesley Groves, and additional music by James Tenney.

CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS was filmed with hand-held and drone cameras in Leimert Park, LA’s historic Black neighborhood. The plaza is painted with ancient African pictograms called adinkras. The motto adinkra for this work of visual music is Mako – pepper, from the proverb, “all peppers do not ripen at the same time” symbolizing inequality and uneven development. Mako tells us: we should help the less fortunate, as our own fortunes may one day change.

On David Roussève:

“The struggles of Black Americans—oppression and abuse, poverty and neglect, AIDS and alienation register in the body of this dancer-choreographer, whose death-haunted imagination is drawn to the polarity and paradox of bondage and antic freedom… Roussève moves from the personal to the historical and on to the universal.”

— Charles McNulty, The Los Angeles Times