FREEDOM IN CONGO SQUARE

History meets art in this musical and poetic account of a week in the life of an enslaved African in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Narrator JD Jackson's baritone is the perfect instrument to deliver the rhyming couplets that describe each weekday of plantation life. During the grueling days of Monday through Saturday, his narration is accompanied by the sounds of snorting hogs, splitting logs, snapping whips, scrubbing brushes, all with the purposefully unsettling gentle music of white slave owners as background accompaniment. But on Sunday afternoons, when the enslaved are allowed to congregate freely in Congo Square, birds sing and rhythmic drumming accompanies an uplifting poem of freedom--even if only for an afternoon. A foreword and author's note offer historical context. L.T. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2017]