Marcus Shelby
“Blues in the City: Tenderloin”
In 2019 I began thinking about how music could highlight and inspire solutions on reducing the unhoused and displaced community in San Francisco. This issue has been the most challenging for our city to solve since I arrived 25 years ago. More affordable housing, shelters, and other measures have failed resulting in an increase of the unhoused as opposed to the elimination of this problem. It was clear that systemic racism, institutional racism, and decades of failed politics were at the root of this phenomenon. Then the pandemic hit, which exasperated the conditions. Encampments, which had populated back alleys, freeway entrances, and street corners throughout the Tenderloin and other city blocks had become primary locations for the Covid 19 virus to spread. I spent the last year reflecting on how the most vulnerable of our community that was largely BIPOC and poor white folks would make it through the pandemic, let alone survive the pandemic. The Tenderloin became somewhat of a ground zero for me having lived in the Tenderloin when I first moved to San Francisco 25 years ago bouncing from 1 hotel to the next until I found an apartment. Things had drastically changed and for the worse. I began to study this issue more closely and began to sketch melodies, transcribe music, orchestrate and arrange ideas that came to me. One of the first sketches I created is part of a suite of music I’m working on now called “Blues in the City” and subtitled “Tenderloin”. I video recorded the composition with my quartet featuring Danny Brown (tenor sax), Dillon Vado (vibraphone), Genius Wesley (drums), and yours truly Marcus Shelby (bass). “Blues in the City: Tenderloin” is a simple sketch that evokes a city neighborhood ravaged by the pandemic, the crises of the unhoused and displaced, and the product of systemic racism. Often this community is blamed for the predicament in which they find themselves. Rarely is the question asked, “How does a system that is built on so much wealth and resource allow for this to happen?” Ultimately, I plan to ask these questions and more in an effort to compose “Blues in the City” for a much larger ensemble (flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet/tenor sax, bass clarinet, trumpet, piano, vibraphone, guitar, bass, drums, percussion, 2 violins, viola, cello, string bass, 3 vocalists, and a poet), which is similar instrumentation for a chamber opera I just completed called “Harriet’s Spirit”. Thank you.
Danny Brown (tenor sax)
Dillon Vado (vibraphone)
Genius Wesley (drums)
Marcus Shelby (bass/composer)