Kwame Brathwaite: We Will Breathe
Executive Producers Brandon Baker and Kwame S. Brathwaite collaborate with musicians Nicholas Payton, Marcus Gilmore and Spoken Word Artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph to change the narrative around the BLM movement. Special Guest vocalists Jasmine Mitchell, Melanie Charles and Vegas Cola complete the media project inspired by Kwame Brathwaite’s images.
We Will Breathe” was composed in the aftermath of the momentum following the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. It is the latest in a collaboration in which Marcus Gilmore and I created a tone poem based on an image by Kwame Brathwaite. The images, “Women on Boxes" and "Men on Boxes” from 1966, are from the Black Arts movement and are emblematic of the Black Power era where Black folks were reclaiming their ties to Mother Africa and eschewing perms and conks for natural hairstyles. The Black Power era was one of affirmation. In light of that, and inspired by the 3-note mantra played by Marcus, the incantation “We Will Breathe” popped into my head. I’m not a fan of the mantras repeated at protests nowadays, such as “I can’t breathe,” or “Hands up; don’t shoot.” I feel that they’re negative and serve to ignite and perpetuate trauma. “We Will Breathe” is a mantra that challenges victimization and empowers Black people to take control of the narrative. As a song, “We Will Breathe”
was developed much like the struggle for Black liberation itself, step-by-step. The inspiration for this song isn’t linear. It is a work in real time with roots in the past. Like the Ghanaian Sankofa bird, we reached back to bring new life into our current strata. Ancestry.
—Nicholas Payton