Photography by Clint Kearney
The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library (KVML) has hosted a week full of events focused on banned books and offered free admission to the museum for everyone. They are focusing on resisting censorship—as Vonnegut was so adamant about—and spreading awareness of banned works. The week will come to a close with the release of their So It Goes literary journal followed by a performance by the Bushwick Book Club (BBC).
Every year for Banned Books Week, KVML hosts an artist-in-residence who stays in the museum for a week and creates work based on banned books and censorship. This year, they are hosting five musicians from BBC. Susan Hwang, Charlie Nieland, Patricia Santos, Spirit Maroon (AKA SpiritChild), and Thomas Teller rotated staying in both the KVML and a hotel during this past week. Their task: to create an album together based on various banned books, the idea of censorship, and Vonnegut’s works.
Hwang founded BBC in 2009. The club was started based on taking literature and using it to create music. Steve Trimboli, who passed away last winter, owned the Bushwick venue Goodbye Blue Monday, which is the alternate title to Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. The venue no longer exists, but Hwang said his booking policy was to always say yes to everything, and he said yes to hosting the very first BBC event. She knew she had to start with Breakfast of Champions.
“This means even more because it’s our first year without Steve, and he was the one who said yes to this,” Hwang says.
BBC puts on a show every month with a core group of musicians and songwriters based on a book. They all participate in different shows, but there are always new songwriters and musicians joining for the first time. People participate when they can; it is a revolving community of musicians and songwriters. The community also includes choreographers, puppeteers, poets, artists, and even chefs that create dishes for the events.
“It’s really open. The weirder, the better, for my taste,” Hwang says.
Last year’s artist-in-residence was New York-based playwright Drew DeSimone, who thought BBC would be the perfect choice for this year’s artist-in-residence. In February, he asked Hwang if she’d be interested. She responded with: “Yes. It is crazy, and it sounds too strange not to do. Of course.”
She sent out word to her list of songwriters and musicians. Nieland, Santos, SpiritChild, and Teller were all up for the challenge. Nine months later, the five of them all collaborated their talents and banned book choices to make and debut the album in one week’s time. Each of them chose at least one banned book to focus on for the album; Hwang’s choice was Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe.
Nieland chose All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. He said it’s been quite high on the banned books list the past few years, and he wanted to find out why. After reading, he was still left wondering.
“It’s very humanizing, and I can’t believe it’s been banned,” Nieland says.
Nieland has been working with the BBC for about ten years, and for the majority of those has been working alongside Hwang producing and participating in all of the shows. He plays bass, guitar and, as a producer, plays a little bit of everything. Collaborating multiple works and having a tight deadline is exciting for him. He says he is interested in how everyone’s different ideas from the books and inspirations are going to juxtapose and form a third thing—the album.
Santos is a cellist and singing cellist who plays with BBC. When she first joined the community she would participate as an accompanying musician. Santos was intrigued by what she described as an evening of songwriters who write in response to the same book. She eventually became a songwriter for the events.
“You have a deadline, you have to consume this other piece of art, and then respond to it and create your own. That’s a great challenge,” Santos says.
Santos also works with incarcerated people along with SpiritChild, teaching them to play music. Santos has a unique perspective of censorship, because she sees up-close how people are restricted to the kinds of information they can access. Normal things, like referencing an album to learn about a particular music style, is something that her students can’t always do. Her inspiration for this project focuses on spreading awareness of the nuanced ways in which censorship is present in current times, as well as from the book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
“This project being on my radar made me more aware of finding things where there is censorship. Maybe we don’t call it that, but it is censorship,” Santos says.
A few members of the group said that SpiritChild, an MC, vocalist, and freedom artist, brings a special presence to the group—which shows how intuitive this collaboration is. He has been working with BBC since shortly after its conception. His lyricism gravitates mostly toward reggae, hip hop, and poetry. SpiritChild participates in the shows using his voice as his instrument.
“Whenever they have a show, I go out and do what needs to be done. Most of the time it’s freestyling,” He says.
SpiritChild actually chose multiple banned books to pull from to create in this project. He chose Invisible Man, Native Son, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Another Country. He said that usually at BBC shows each artist creates a different song based on one book, but the record they are making at the KVML is taking inspiration from so many different pieces, so it’s a unique experience.
BBC has expanded to Malmö, Sweden, as well as Seattle, LA, Oakland, London, Greenville, Santa Barbara, Portland, New Orleans, and Toronto. Teller is in town from Sweden representing the Malmö chapter. In 2010, he and a friend had been hosting meetups focused on collaborating art, literature, and music when an American artist came through who knew Hwang. Teller and Hwang were then introduced and worked together to form the Sweden chapter of BBC a few years later. He plays piano and is a vocalist, singing in both English and Swedish.
His inspiration for the collaborative album comes from the book Hope and Other Stories by Dawit Isaak. Isaak was imprisoned without trial for his words over thirty years ago, and remains imprisoned to this day. Teller found this book at a banned books library in Malmö named after Isaak. Like his fellow songwriters, he enjoys the challenge that BBC provides in being creative with constraints and deadlines.
“Sometimes a few rules can give more freedom, and I guess that’s what Bushwick Book Club is about,” Teller says.
All week, Hwang, Nieland, Santos, SpiritChild, and Teller spent their days writing and playing music on the second floor of the KVML. They also got the chance to perform at The Jazz Kitchen with David Amram, Rob Dixon, Keith McCutchen, and Bill Myers at “Can’t Stop the Music.” Amram, Dixon, McCutchen, and Aleta Hodge led a panel discussing censorship in music. The BBC joined afterwards to perform some of their own pieces, and one of the collaborative songs that will be on their album. They got to explore Indy and the music scene here through the lens of The Jazz Kitchen, the Mousetrap, and Chatterbox.
Come experience what they have created together tomorrow, Saturday Oct. 1 from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the KVML So It Goes release party. The event is free to attend.
