It has to be for something. This all has to be for something! But how can we make it mean something?

Be Loud!
Be Loved!
Be Longing!

This piece is born of protest. But our protest has to be beautiful. This protest is a declaration that is meant to bring people together.

Be Loud!
Be Loved!
Be Longing!

How can we highlight, empower, and uplift people who have been incarcerated? People who have been detained? Folks who have been disenfranchised?

Be Loud!
Be Loved!
Be Longing!

In 2019, Andy Akiho and Imani Winds were searching for inspiration for our collaboration. When we heard the sounds of immigrants held at a Brooklyn detention center, we knew we’d found our reason. Nearly five years later, this album is the result: a series of super-tight, highly choreographed movements for wind quintet and steel pan that speak to the universality of humanity, even — especially — when that humanity is bound.


LOUD

In the middle of the winter of 2019 there was no heat at the Brooklyn detention center. People were pounding on the walls and windows so loudly it was audible from the street. Such an awful moment, and yet as musicians, we couldn’t help but hear these sounds of protest — rhythmic and deeply felt — and be moved by them. This moment was the inspiration for this piece.

Loud tells the origin story of BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging with actual audio footage of the protest itself, the words shot into and out of a vacuum chamber.


BELOUD

The beginning of this commission was tentative. We put a lot of responsibility on its shoulders, thinking we would play it outside the same Brooklyn detention center and blast the music through its walls on massive speakers, thereby letting everyone inside, from the workers, to the detainees, hear this musical moment in shared humanity.

BeLoud begins with a unison, lock-stepped meandering loop, interspersed with a repetitive clanging from the lower instruments, perhaps evoking the sound of people banging on the walls of the detention center. The movement grows in density and virtuosity as it progresses, ending with tightly wound swirls that come to an abrupt end.


LOVED

Obstacles can be inspirational, and can lead us down a path we otherwise never would have trod. When the real world hit the conceptual one, some ideas had to be jettisoned. It was too complicated logistically to play outside the center. Also, Andy decided to add to the original three-movement piece extra movements that would expand upon, contradict, or complement the original composition.

Loved is a brief steel pan solo interlude, an improvisation on some of the motives from other movements.


BELOVED

Imani Winds used this recording as a promise to itself. It is important to us that we perform for as many types of audiences as possible, because why make music in a vacuum? The moment we heard the protest in Brooklyn we realized we needed to make more of an effort to bring moments of musical communion to all communities.

To keep that promise, Andy didn’t start composing until he had visited Rikers Island and played music with members of its incarcerated population. After he finished the piece, Imani Winds and Andy went back to Rikers to talk to the same folks and play the completed project.

BeLoved is open arms, it is circling high above the ground on a cloudless day, it is a moment to breathe, it is a composite sound equally made by all the players.


LONGING

Longing, a steel pan solo, spills over into itself again and again. It flirts with perpetual motion or the infinite, because

it does.
not.
stop.

What a perfect musical metaphor for longing!


BELONGING

The official premiere of BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging, the one in a “traditional” concert hall and not at Rikers Island, happened as a part of Imani Winds’ year-long residency at the Kaufman Center in NYC. The administration of Kaufman helped us pivot from the dream of playing at the detention center to the possibility of playing at Rikers, and provided the resources to navigate the tremendous hurdles to get inside Rikers’ walls.

BeLonging starts simply with militaristic and percussive motives, and adds more and more layers of virtuosity as it moves inexorably forward. The extended clarinet solo provides a welcome break in the momentum, but by the end, the movement has become both firmly rooted and flying free, with a complicated bassoon reveille that signals its close.


BEING

The final movement is the perfect musical continuation of the many questions and answers raised in the creation, planning, and execution of the project. It keeps the cyclical nature of this party going, with circular electronic samples and recordings of all of the artists speaking to the humanity of our country’s most marginalized people. Imani Winds and Andy Akiho will continue to visit with the incarcerated when possible, but at best, music is only a mirror for an idea. The essence of art is the humanity of the people that surround it, and art must address this truth with intent, heart and thoughtfulness.

Be Loud!
Be Loved!
Be Longing!