"A Blues” Plants a Seed for the Most Fundamental Organic Growth

Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s “red, black & GREEN: a blues” is an enjoyable socio-cultural statement with many rings of fruitful growth.

Upon first walking into the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, D.C., people formed a long line to await entrance into Marc Bamuthi Josesph’s new multimedia play. The interactive set of three rooms of a house on movable wheels played with the audience’s curiosity while walking around it in discovery. Singing and dancing with spiritual flair, the actors provided the audience with visual and audible pleasantries and occasionally a slice of fresh fruit to sample.

Watermelon seeds – said countless times in Joseph’s multimedia play, red, black & GREEN: a blues - stand out to me like little, black, unchewable seeds stand out against a bright red wedge of watery melon.

The rhythmic music made by the well-experienced artists’ feet, hands, mouths, and regular household items portrays one ring of the message. The interactive, multimedia set provides another ring of the message. Then, out of Joseph’s mouth in the likeness of a Sudanese woman came black unchewable seeds: the life of a loved one cut off unexpectedly by violence after she moves to the States to find viable opportunities.

An additional ring of thought in the play, the artists discuss ­Houston’s Third Ward Project Row Houses that provide multimedia art projects to the public and homes and gardens to residents. Another ring- DeFremery Park, aka Lil Bobby Hutton Park, in Oakland is the site for Joseph’s Life is Living Festival that becomes a stand for environmentalism. The root of affairs portrayed as organic, natural foods healing humans and the Earth, in part. When we let each story roll over our tongues and digest, we understand the watermelon seeds.

The green movement separates society because depending on your economic position, the only green movement for anything organic becomes the movement to sustain, nurture, and progress human life, specifically those who live in poverty. People in many neighborhoods are too busy fighting for their next meal to worry about being green.

Life is green too, as many forget. That small black, unchewable seed can be planted for its fruit or spit on the ground or thrown away, disregarded altogether. So is the green movement promoting food security and public health or is it promoting consumerism?

A company like Monsanto genetically alters its agriculture which may or may not affect our health in negative ways. Then a company like Coca-Cola sells sugar water and chemicals so cheaply that its consumers may or may not drink soda everyday because it’s the most economical option. Then a company like Public Health Institute works with the Let’s Move initiative to keep children active, fit, and making smart food choices by growing their own vegetables and learning the value of a vitamin and a carrot.

So as I watched the timely socio-cultural statement created by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, I knew that the Sudanese woman with the watermelon seeds metaphorically described the economic disregard for human life. The watermelon seed, the human being in poverty, required the most care, watering, and attention. Because at the heart of the matter is alleviating poverty, violence, miseducation, and other injustices to ensure that movement toward food security is organically, humanely green.