Ekene Ijeoma deconstructs the national anthem at Cyclorama on Thursday, 15 February 2024.

James Francies performs the site-specific piece for piano “Deconstructed Anthems: Massachusetts” at the five-day exhibition hosted by Boston Center for the Arts.

Jeremy Dutton (drums) and Will Mabuza (bass) are joined by special guest Angel Bat Dawid (vocals, clarinet) to round out the evening.

Walk into the Cyclorama in the South End during this exhibition – what do you see?

Giant, white, semi circular walls extending the length of the perimeter of the rotunda at your right and left. And on the white walls, page after page of Ekene Ijeoma’s score for the site-specific composition “Deconstructed Anthems: Massachusetts,” wrapping around the room like an MC Escher staircase to nowhere.

Part-musical score, part-political commentary, the piece “sonifies” a nest of statistics pulled from national incarceration rates by progressively removing notes from the “Star Spangled Banner” as pianist James Francies performed the tune, on repeat, on a piano wired to suppress keys at intervals at frequencies determined by the rising rate of incarceration over time.

That’s a long sentence! But a relatively short piece, which benefited from Francies fluid keywork.

The most poignant moments of the piece, though, were the blank sounds of Francies’ fingers hitting the already-suppressed keys with a dull thud. A sense of futility and impotence impregnated the empty shell of the national anthem.

Before the composition reached its conclusion, the room was already silent. Except not silent – filled with sound of emptiness, a reminder of what is missing, in the white noise of non-playing, like an anti-carceral version of John Cage’s “4’33.”

Special guest Angel Bat Dawid sat in to make a quartet with Dutton, Francies, and Mabuza, closing the evening with a short improvisational suite of her songs, including “Black Family.”

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