Week Two -- Gettysburg: The Mixtape + The Booklist

While in residency at Gettysburg National Military Park, I've decided to find ways to let the world in on my creative process (indirectly) by coming up with alternative ways to engage the casual observer. I've assembled a playlist on Spotify -- Gettysburg: The Mixtape -- that's basically my soundtrack as I wander through the battlefield and in the town, the museums and both the National Cemetery and the Lincoln Cemetery, where black soldiers and other black citizens are buried.  You'll hear anything from Kool and the Gang and Ennio Morricone to Aaron Copland and Billy Squier. All of it is meant to sonically evoke this dark somber majesty, this strange Southern Gothic sadness that is Gettysburg.

I believe in research and scholarly excavation as a solid foundation when approaching any creative work.  This list is a compilation of a few of the books that are informing my solo show Blackbirding as well as this most recent Black Americana song cycle, inspired by pivotal moments in battle strategy, infamous stories of heroism and cowardice, bizarre monuments -- and of course, the blood-soaked land itself.

Gettysburg: The Booklist

1. Celia, A Slave: A True Story by Melton A. Mclaurin
2. African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign by James M. Paradis
3. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History: Immigrants, Women and African-Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle by Margaret S.S. Creighton
4. Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin
5. Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odysssey Home by Richard Bell
6. Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel
7. Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit Of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
8. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner
9. Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Achorn
10. Maine Roads to Gettysburg: How Joshua Chamberlain, Oliver Howard and 4,000 Men From the Pine Tree State Helped Win the Civil War's Bloodiest Battle by Tom Huntington
11. "Too Much For Human Endurance": The George Spangler Farm Hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg by Ronald D. Kirkwood
12. A Vast Sea of Misery: A History and Guide to the Union and Confederate Field Hospitals at Gettysburg, July 1 - November 20, 1863 by Gregory A. Coco
13. The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became An American Hero by Timothy Egan
14. Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture by Karen L. Cox
15. Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David M. Oshinsky
16. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust