While the national gun violence conversation is currently revolving around school shootings and partisan lines in the sand, individual communities are coming together to discuss how to heal.
On Friday, internationally renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma visited Braddock to tour the city’s art spaces and join a cultural discussion about gun violence, art and music’s power to bring communities together after tragedy.
Mr. Ma is in Pittsburgh for a performance with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Saturday evening. His visit to Braddock was part of the Kennedy Center’s Art Across America program, which highlights art and culture in everyday cities.
Braddock, a struggling steel town of about 2,000 people that is undergoing some redevelopment, is the third city that the program has selected, after Corona, Calif., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Standing in front of a mural of the faces of slain students of Woodland Hills School District in a community center recreation room, Mr. Ma said, “I don’t have the words, and I don’t have the authority to speak about this. But what I can do is play some music.” And he did.
Mr. Ma then sat in the Woodland Hills String Orchestra to play with the students before joining a panel discussion — moderated by Braddock local Leonard Hammonds — and audience Q and A about community and the arts’ impact on Braddock’s culture and economy, especially in light of consistent gun violence.
“I think this is a specific use of art forms, participatory, where the reason something is created is to honor the memory of a great loss,” Mr. Ma said of the mural in the rec room, which was curated by Maritza Mosquera.
Mr. Ma began his walking tour in the morning at UnSmoke Systems Artspace, an old Catholic school repurposed into an art gallery. An exhibition of photographs — titled “Carbon” — by New Jersey photographer Ray Klimek lined the walls. Valerie June Hockett (known as Valerie June), who visited Pittsburgh to perform at the Three Rivers Arts Festival Friday evening, sang an impromptu song with Mr. Ma.
Their duet, though brief, was powerful — a gentle, joyful, even rustic gift to the space and the small gathering of listeners.
“There is a deep, long tradition here,” Mr. Ma said. “But it’s wonderful to see this new artistic energy.”
Mr. Ma and other delegates from the Kennedy Center proceeded to Braddock Farms, then to Superior Motors (which has a partnership with Braddock Farms) and Barebones Productions, a small blackbox theater in the back of the restaurant. Opened in July 2017, Superior Motors was recently named by Food and Wine magazine as one of the top 10 restaurants of the year.
“I feel super hopeful that small towns around America can learn from you and be revived,” said Ms. June after an a cappella performance in the theater.
Next was the Carnegie Free Library and Concert Hall, the first Carnegie Library in the U.S. Braddock’s branch offers an art rental program that spotlights local artists to anyone with a library card, as well a ceramics lab and other community programming.
Two students from Propel Schools, KeVaughn Organ and Trinity Brown (seventh and 11th grade respectively), performed in the music hall for Mr. Ma and Ms. June.
“This is the transformative stuff,” said Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter. “We’re trying to bring the music out of the concert hall, and we looked around Pittsburgh and saw what this mayor [John Fetterman] is doing in the community and had to visit and learn more.”
Mr. Fetterman was not present for the tour, but his wife, Gisele Fetterman, and their three young children helped escort Mr. Ma from site to site with gentle tugs on his arm.
“It’s a day focused on community and the arts,” Ms. Fetterman said. “We’ve been working on this for weeks, and we’re very glad that the Kennedy Center and Yo-Yo Ma could spend time with our community.”
After another brief impromptu performance at the Free Store in Braddock with the crowd — which had grown to about 50 people by this time — joining in on the chorus of one of Ms. June’s songs, the tour wrapped up at the Heritage 4 Kids Early Learning Center. The store, created in 2012 by Mrs. Fetterman in a shipping container, offers donated and surplus items — clothes, household items, necessities — for free to anyone who needs them
“This isn’t about politics; we’re trying to not make this about politics,” Ms. Rutter said. “We’re seeking to highlight the importance of art in every day life. We’re learning from America’s communities as we go. There’s some really amazing things happening with art and community in these smaller cities and areas.”
Mr. Ma spent the day shaking hands and smiling genially, shooting surreptitious cell phone videos of some of the community members performing or speaking and taking many — some artists, some grieving relatives — aside to speak quietly and individually during the tour and at the final event at the community center.
“We have to keep moving forward, that is life,” Mr. Ma said before the panel discussion.
The event concluded with members of the local dance ensemble Royal Outlawzz surprising Mr. Ma with a vibrant physical interpretation of “Quarter Chicken Dark,” a track on Yo-Yo Ma’s collaborative crossover album “Goat Rodeo.”
“I think if I could speak for the Kennedy Center, we have learned so much today, and I know we’re going to take what we’ve learned back home and keep the conversation going,” Mr. Ma said. “We want to be part of the solution.”
Jeremy Reynolds: jreynolds@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1634; twitter: @Reynolds_PG. Mr. Reynolds' work at the Post-Gazette is supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Getty Foundation and the Rubin Institute.
First Published: June 8, 2018, 7:04 p.m.
Updated: June 8, 2018, 8:40 p.m.
