Bridge Songs is a community collaboration and music composition project, site specific to York, Alabama. Through a collaborative process between artist Samita Sinha and choir leaders from area churches, new compositions will braid different versions of the same songs that are common to the repertoires of the area's both black and white churches, but that are arranged and performed differently. Calling on Sinha's own background, the works will fuse Indian music's approach to tone and vibration with different sounds and songs from Sumter, County Alabama, synthesizing unlikely materials to create new stories.
The impetus for this work was a Community Sing completed at the Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA) in the spring of 2010. Building on the work of late poet and activist Sekou Sundiata, Samita Sinha and Stephanie Loveless led an evening of singing and dialogue that brought together different segments of York's community, which remains deeply fractured along lines of race and class. For this event the artists worked closely with the memberships of Truevine Fellowship, a primarily African American church, and First Presbyterian of Livingston, a primarily white church. The choir directors of each church, Audrey Graves and John Brown respectively, helped to lead and organize the Community Sing, and their memberships came out in strong numbers for the event.
The project will continue over two to three more residencies during 2011.