​Amplifying Silent Voices

What the Next Generation is Thinking About


The Brooklyn Youth Chorus'
"Silent Voices: Lovestate" as
Liberating Theopoetics

The Brooklyn Youth Chorus

Photo by Tim Trumble

Photo by Tim Trumble

Photo by Tim Trumble

Photo by Tim Trumble

The Silent Voices Series

"Silent Voices is a multimedia, multi-composer, and multi-year series of concert works with spoken word conceived, produced and performed by Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Silent Voices amplifies the voices of those silenced or marginalized in our communities and harnesses the power of young people to be instruments of change. The Chorus has commissioned a dynamic group of innovative artists to interpret rich personal stories and historical narratives exploring contemporary themes of identity, orientation, status, boundaries, and belonging.
This Show

Silent Voices: Lovestate, the third installment in the Silent Voices series, builds on the success of its earlier premieres at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, National Sawdust, and Prototype Festival, in a program including stand-out works from the earlier series and new premieres. In Lovestate, a dynamic roster of composers and artists collaborate with the choristers in confronting the challenges of division and categorization, racism, sexism, immigration, threats to our environment and our understanding of truth, as we seek to affirm our vision of a more inclusive and compassionate future—a world we can all look forward to. Unifying this musically and topically broad work is the distinctively versatile and beautiful sound of the rigorously-trained singers—a chorus of culturally and socioeconomically diverse New York City young people, ages 12–18. Commissioned composers for Lovestate include:

​Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Caroline Shaw, Olga Bell, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Paola Prestini, Toshi Reagon, Shaina Taub, and Bora Yoon.
Brooklyn Youth Chorus
International Contemporary Ensemble"

-- from the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Website: 
https://brooklynyouthchorus.org/events/silent-voices/

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What is Theopoetics?

Theopoetics is an activity.  It includes creating things and reflecting on things in ways that encourage a sense of the sacredness of everyday life in its fragility, pain, mystery, and beauty.  It is inherently communal and is best done in a live setting: a restaurant, bar, living room, street corner, bowling alley, library, church, synagogue, mosque, or sangha.

Theopoetics might not seem like "theology" if the latter word refers primarily to written texts and the activity of producing them, as developed by (all too often) men with scholarly degrees.  These "theologians" can be part of theopoetics, but so can people without such degrees who never read their works.  Theopoetics is a democratizing, an opening up, of theology.

Artists play a particularly important role in this opening, as does art itself.  Theopoetics can be explored and communicated through words (written and spoken), film, music, poetry, dance, sculpture, the culinary arts, and many other means.  

In the term theopoetics the word "theos" has two possible meanings.  On the one hand, it can refer a higher power or deeper source: that is, to something more than our universe, within which all things are enfolded.  Call it the vertical sacred.  On the other hand "theos" can be a name for the poignancy and sacrality of felt connections here on earth, quite apart from questions of an ultimate source or higher power.  Call it the horizontal sacred.   Theopoetics appreciates both senses of the sacred and does not worry very much about more precise definitions.

One of the primary aims of contemporary theopoetics is amplifying the vocies of people who are otherwise silenced.  This can be understood as a response to the others themselves (the horizontal sacred) or to a call from the deep beyond (the vertical sacred), or both.  What is clear is that a society muffled by its self-satisfied greed and insulation cannot easily hear these voices..  It needs to be sung into hearing.  Such is the task, among many, of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.  It is liberation theology, choral style.  Liberating Choral Theopoetics.

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