Encountering the curious, true tale of a southern town lynching a circus elephant so caught David Castro‘s imagination that the TV writer turned the bizarre episode into a one-man play, “Man’s Dominion.” From there, Castro turned his story-telling skills to other creative projects. Current events inspired a collaborative music video created with former student, singer-songwriter Tyson Kelly.
“In a time of such hyper-partisanship, which in its worst form is simply ignorance and fear-based hate, Tyson and I wanted to bring people together,” Castro explained. “And along with food, nothing brings people together more than music.”
Food. Music. Technology. All are built on the creativity and inventions of those who came before us.
“Shoulders of Giants” remembers them. I met Castro about the time he first came upon the 1916 account of the elephant lynching in Erwin, Tennessee. I asked for some background on “Giants.” (Lightly edited.)
TS: What (about these times) inspired you to launch this project?
Castro: I’d been working on a project – “On the Shoulders of Giants” – about the Black contribution and even creation of every major form of 20th century American popular music – from ragtime and the blues through jazz, R&B and culminating in the birth of rock and roll – all represented in the life of one man, Jesse Stone (aka Charles Calhoun), known as the man who wrote “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” considered to be one of the earliest songs to be considered rock and roll.
Jesse Stone’s life was the 20th century in music – 1901-1999 – and he, possibly/probably alone among all the other members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – was a major player and practitioner in ALL those musical genres. He started out in a family minstrel show, taught to read, write and play music by his grandmother who’d been a slave, and then moved seamlessly into the blues, jazz, R&B and rock and roll.
This is a man who worked with everybody – Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Ruth Brown and Big Joe Turner – and countless other Giants – but it was the family aspect of his life and career that made me think of the Newton quote that I know is known and used in Black America – that none of us would be here if not for the sacrifices and love of those that came before – that all of us are standing on the shoulders of giants. Even a superhero movie like “Black Panther” is all about “the ancestors” – that we’re here because of their lives, lessons and guidance.
And those first shoulders for Jesse Stone belonged to family and then to the various circles of friends and inspirations that make up the Venn diagram of his and all of our lives.
T.S.: How do you know all these great artists here and abroad (or was that Tyson)?
Castro: So I write the lyrics and Tyson writes the music and does the vocals and we had this song, this title song, that we felt was simply the right message for right now – that we are connected to everyone and everything that came before – and that is the commonality we share as people. And Tyson, a working musician in his own right – a singer songwriter I’d met when he was my high school student back in the aughts – and was a veteran of the LA music scene before moving the London where for the past few years he’s been John Lennon in the Bootleg Beatles, the world’s first and greatest Beatles Tribute bands.
So the video – I’d seen some short films Tyson had made as a HS student – and saw the eye and ear of an artist – and the word went out. People he knew in the UK and Europe, people he and I knew here in the LA area and Canada – and Tyson was the creative director, breaking down the entire song for the singers, musicians and dancers – handing out their parts and then getting them all to record themselves on their iPhones.
And then the hard work of editing and putting all those disparate folks into a creative whole.
Everyone volunteered their time and talents, Castro added.
I prodded him to recount a story he once told about growing up in the Bronx, and the sense of heritage that melting pot community gave him.
Castro: I grew up in lower-middle class/working class diversity in the Bronx and I’ve often joked that I grew up among the 5 major food groups of NYC at the time – Irish, Italians, Jews, Blacks and Puerto Ricans. And it was an education. By the age of 10-12 I’d eaten at everyone’s house, stayed over, went to their churches and synagogues for confirmations and bar mitzvahs, weddings and funerals, listened to their music and saw with my own eyes, as my first generation American mother said, “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that so-and-so’s parents don’t work as hard as anyone else. EVERYBODY HERE WORKS HARD.”
What’s more, David said once, although the foods and religious iconography changed from house to house, growing up none of that was threatening. They were just your friends’ parents.
T.S.: What do you hope people take away from the song/video?
Castro: We’d like people to see the video and hear the song and think about the giants in their lives – and how those giants aren’t viewed through the prism of race or religion – but are seen for the impact their humanity (talents, values, virtues, et al) – had on them.
Perhaps there is a movie musical in his future.
Rebecca Solnit recently condemned the notion that every man is an island, every success her own, every failure a personal one. Solnit wrote, “The contemporary right has one central principle: nothing is really connected to anything else, so no one has any responsibility for anything else …” Insisting otherwise is somehow “an infringement on freedom.”
And here we are, tens of thousands of Americans buried, needlessly, from a deadly pandemic, in part because in the name of freedom people raised on rugged individualism reject fighting it together. They refuse to wear masks either to safeguard their families, their neighbors, or themselves. President George W. Bush (and conservative think tanks) sought, critics said, to build a “you’re on your ownership society.” Over 8 million Americans infected with COVID-19 and nearly 220,000 dead is the endgame of denying our interdependence.
The 1978 BBC series Connections considered how odd bits of history, science, discovery and serendipity built upon one another over hundreds of years to produce the modern world. Chris Higgins wrote about it at Mental Floss in 2008:
Connections was hosted by James Burke, whose dry humor pervades each episode. The fifth episode, for example, starts with a fullscreen view of a punchcard. Burke narrates: “What you’re looking at is a bit of paper with holes in it. How’s that for a spectacular way to start a program? But this may be the most important bit of paper with holes in it since the hole was invented.” Burke goes on to explain — via a discussion of astronomy, calendaring, clockwork, Sheffield steel cutlery, sea navigation, mechanized manufacturing, guns, John Kenneth Galbraith, and much more — how computers came to be.
Before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, before Bill Gates and Paul Allen came the punchcard. From music to computers, nobody starts from scratch.
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