We were late to the show—luckily, it started some twenty minutes after the advertised time, but even so we had just ordered our harried dinner, bumping into our tablemates as we reached to refill our glasses, tripping over our own purses, tangled in each other’s hair. She walked onstage and started her crowdwork: I know you’re all busy worried about things like your parking, your babysitter, Venmo, CashApp, Zelle; soooo, to get on the same page, why don’t we just say:
She sang a C4.
This is not a breath test—one of the fun things about singing long notes with large groups of people, is you get to feel that sensation where you run out of steam, and you can take a pause to replenish yourself, but the thing is still going and it’s ready to receive you and you jump back in.
During her first song, a cover of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” she took her hands off the upright bass to gesture that we should return to the C4. We kept “the thing going” and accompanied her, we were all on the same page.
The age where
Singing is as easeful as oxygen seeping
Xylem breathing
You are
Humming
Esperanza Spalding at the City Winery in Boston was a philosophical seminar, a spoken word performance, a science lesson, a stand-up comedy show. A tribute to the greats—Milton Nascimento (“Cais” and “Outubro”), Cuchi Leguizamón (“Cantora de Yala”), Wayne Shorter (“When You Dream”), Cassandra Wilson got their shoutouts and covers.
Bark is history:
Sewn in the seams of years
Blessed bark
Witness to everything
Spalding told a story about how she shared a dressing room with Cassandra Wilson once. Inspired, Spalding wrote a poem entitled Blessed Be the Bark. She narrated it for us—I’ve never read this out loud, so:
Wide smiling sun is not a requisite for its outward photosynthetic growth
Let the fresh conglomerate of leaves work all their shining tasks uptop. See
Bark is in the growth.
When we debriefed after the show, we talked about how the best musicians are conduits for art. As they perform, some higher, cosmic emotion flows through them and into the skin of the audience. But this art originated with Esperanza. She would hold long notes, eyes and face and mouth open, beaming the push pull of her vibrato like tides reverberating across the dinner tables. We laughed at her jokes and sat with her wisdom. And her music—fingers flying over strings, singing easy like speaking—I sat transfixed, my head tilted, trying to follow melody lines that leapt with precision across octaves like rain.
Outside still
Goddess of the bark
Is sipping up earth water through root veins
We stepped out from our tables and into the night, loud with humidity and traffic, secure in knowing that we were a little more in tune with each other.
Bark is sturdy
Has been.
Charlotte Stokes ‘27 is a staff writer and Artist Relations Director at WHRB. Punctuation and line breaks in Blessed Be the Bark are the author's approximation, reconstructed from live recitation.