Ahamefule J. Oluo, Seattle based musician, composer, writer, and comedian, created original music in response to the painting Silence is Golden by Kerry James Marshall, an artwork from the Frye Art Museum’s special exhibition Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem. This recording was originally shared during the Frye's Virtual Community Day on Saturday, June 5, 2021. Black Refractions is on view at the Frye through August 15, 2021.
Ahamefule J. Oluo chose to make a piece of music in response to Silence is Golden by Kerry James Marshall because it comes from a lineage of great works of art. The painting was inspired by Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, which itself was inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. These also happen to be two of Oluo’s favorite books.
With all this as inspiration, the music that Oluo created is more of an audio homage rather than a composition. He approached this music by first considering how to translate the overall aesthetic of the painting into sounds, including its textures, colors, and sense of clarity or distortion. To him, the subdued quality of the painting expresses the idea of a great mind being tamped down. Oluo played with this idea by manipulating the speed of different elements, slowing some things down and speeding others up.
In addition, Oluo incorporated a number of musical quotes in the piece that allude to jazz from the 1940s and 1950s—music that Ralph Ellison enjoyed along with being some of Oluo’s favorites as well.
ABOUT AHAMEFULE J. OLUO
Ahamefule J. Oluo is a Seattle-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, writer, and stand-up comedian. He is a founding member and trumpet player in the award-winning jazz-punk quartet Industrial Revelation, was a semi-finalist in NBC’s Stand Up for Diversity comedy competition, and co-produced comedian (and writing partner) Hari Kondabolu’s albums Waiting for 2042 and Mainstream American Comic, for Kill Rock Stars. Oluo has appeared on This American Life and is a recipient of the prestigious Creative Capital Award. He has premiered two autobiographical musicals at the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival: Now I’m Fine (2016), which New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley described as “a New Orleans funeral march orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg,” and Susan (2020), which Brantley called “virtuosic” and “crackerjack.” Now I’m Fine was adapted into the film Thin Skin, co-written, starring, and scored by Oluo. Thin Skin premiered in 2020 to glowing reviews and won Best Director at the Harlem Film Festival.