Operatic Monodrama for Soprano and 12 Strings

2023

Librettist Note: June Carryl

"Oluwatoyin Salau was 19 when she was raped and murdered. She was a kid: studied cosmetology, started a business in hairdressing; had modeled some; was homeless; wanted to be a lawyer.  A near-regular on the local news in Tallahassee the summer of George Floyd’s murder, she was growing into a significant voice in the Black Lives Matter movement—making her death at the hands of a black man all the more brutal and galling.

I see her in the faces of every other Black woman I know: the erasure, the exhaustion, the resignation, the rage. She is told to be strong; and then that she is monstrous because of her strength; her anger is preternatural and unwomanly all at once; she is exotic and hypersexualized on the one-hand, unloved, unwanted and invisible on the other. Always running. She said, once, “I will die being black.” Blackness was her lot; she understood how very much it defined her in America’s eyes. But it was also her superpower. It gave her a voice. It gave her courage. It made her someone.

I wanted to tell her story because it is my story; I just didn’t die from it. I want other black girls and women to know they matter. It meant everything to me that Jason wanted to tell her story again in this beautiful, brutal opera. Oluwatoyin Salau deserved better; she, they, we deserve better."

Composer Note: Jason Barabba

As I watched the premiere of June Carryl’s The Life and Death Of online, I was struck the power of her ability to tell a story mixed with the absolute horror of the story she was telling. Oluwatoyin “Toyin” Salau was let down by just about everyone who should have been there for her. She was by all accounts a remarkable, strong woman who was forthright and courageous. She deserved so much better from the world than she got.

June’s play had multiple women performing shorter scenes, all of whom were speaking from Ms. Salau’s perspective. With June’s permission, I have collapsed them all into one contiguous work with a single singer taking on this role. The ensemble is intended to be on stage with the soprano, and in fact take part in the story telling. I have used a wide variety of extended techniques for these instruments, as it seemed the best way to support the narrative. I am consistently obsessed with the huge variety of sounds you can get out of a string instrument.

There’s no question that Salau’s all-too-short life was entirely different from my own, and my hope is that with the creation of this work I can in some way help to assure that her story continues to be told and she is not forgotten in the morass of horrible stories we are faced with on an ongoing basis.

This is a difficult story. It’s not easy to hear, but I think it’s important that we do. The world needs more people like Oluwatoyin Salau, and we need to make sure that in the future they are allowed to thrive.

Contact Jason Barabba directly for perusal score

To discuss performance opportunities, please contact me at jason@jasonbarabba.com.