ARTS ACROSS AMERICA
Yo-Yo Ma spends a day in Braddock, exploring its culture and sharing his music
While the national gun violence conversation is revolving around school shootings and partisan lines in the sand, individual communities are coming together to discuss how to heal.
On Friday, internationally renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma toured Braddock’s art spaces and joined a cultural discussion about gun violence, art and music’s power to bring communities together after tragedy.
Mr. Ma is in Pittsburgh for a performance Saturday with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. His visit to Braddock was part of the Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America program, which highlights art and culture in everyday cities.
Braddock, a struggling steel town of about 2,000 people that is undergoing some redevelopment, is the third city that the program has selected, after Corona, Calif., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Standing in front of a mural of the faces of slain students of Woodland Hills School District in a community center recreation room, Mr. Ma said, “I don’t have the words, and I don’t have the authority to speak about this. But what I can do is play some music.” And he did.
Mr. Ma sat in the Woodland Hills String Orchestra to play with the students before joining a panel discussion and audience Q&A about community and the arts’ impact on Braddock’s culture and economy, especially in light of consistent gun violence.
“I think this is a specific use of art forms, participatory, where the reason something is created is to honor the memory of a great loss,” Mr. Ma said of the mural in the rec room, which was curated by artist Maritza Mosquera.
Mr. Ma began his walking tour in the morning at UnSmoke Art Space, an old Catholic school repurposed into an art gallery. An exhibition of photographs — titled “Carbon” by New Jersey photographer Ray Klimek — lined the walls. Valerie June Hockett, known as Valerie June, who visited Pittsburgh to perform at the Three Rivers Arts Festival on Friday evening, sang an impromptu song with Mr. Ma.
Their duet, though brief, was powerful — a gentle, joyful, even rustic gift to the space and the small gathering of listeners.
“There is a deep, long tradition here,” Mr. Ma said. “But it’s wonderful to see this new artistic energy.”
Mr. Ma and other delegates from the Kennedy Center proceeded to Braddock Farms, then to Superior Motors (which has a partnership with Braddock Farms) and Barebones Productions, a small black box theater in the back of the restaurant. Opened in July, Superior Motors was recently named by Food and Wine magazine as one of the top 10 restaurants of the year.
Next was the Carnegie Free Library and Concert Hall, the first Carnegie Library in the U.S. Braddock’s branch offers an art rental program that spotlights local artists to anyone with a library card, as well a ceramics lab and other community programming.
Two students from Propel Schools, seventh-grader KeVaughn Organ and 11thgrader Trinity Brown, performed in the music hall for Mr. Ma and Ms. June.
“This is the transformative stuff,” said Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter. “We’re trying to bring the music out of the concert hall, and we looked around Pittsburgh and saw what this mayor [John Fetterman] is doing in the community and had to visit and learn more.”
Mr. Fetterman was not present for the tour, but his wife, Gisele Fetterman, and their three young children helped escort Mr. Ma from site to site with gentle tugs on his arm.
After another impromptu performance at the Free Store in Braddock with the crowd — which had grown to about 50 by this time — joining in on the chorus of one of Ms. June’s songs, the tour wrapped up at the Heritage 4 Kids Early Learning Center. The store, created in 2012 by Mrs. Fetterman in a shipping container, offers donated and surplus items — clothes, household items, necessities — for free to anyone who needs them
“This isn’t about politics; we’re trying to not make this about politics,” Ms. Rutter said. “We’re seeking to highlight the importance of art in everyday life. We’re learning from America’s communities as we go. There’s some really amazing things happening with art and community in these smaller cities and areas.”