Measha Brueggergosman positions herself and her cell phone at the base of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, hoping for good reception.
The ever-cheerful, ever-travelling soprano, visiting the historic Moorish palace and fortress after performing in Madrid with the Orquesta Nacional de Espana, is on the phone to talk about the huge trip she’s taken back into her past.
This spiritual, physical and musical journey took her to Cameroon, where she connected with the Bassa people, her ancestors.
“It was a foregone conclusion I was a daughter returning home,” says the international singing star. “You are actually welcomed back into the culture.”
Songs of Freedom, a 90-minute Rhombus Media film on VisionTV Monday night, is the tale of Brueggergosman’s journey with performances of 18 spirituals, including Amazing Grace, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Go Tell it on the Mountain and Go Down Moses.
Brueggergosman first learned of her Cameroonian origins from a DNA test done when she was a guest on the CBC-TV show Who Do You Think You Are? which looked for celebrities’ roots.
What happened to her ancestors is like the plot in Lawrence Hill’s bestselling novel The Book of Negroes.
“We were stolen from Cameroon and brought to the East Coast of the U.S. and forced into slavery in the 1700s and were Black Loyalists who fought for the British and came north to New Brunswick.”
Her ancestors on her father’s side sailed on the Concord, and their names are recorded in the British registry called The Book of Negroes: a John Gosman, a Fanny Gosman listed as “wench” and a Rose Gosman, aged six months. Rose was the first member of the family born free.
Brueggergosman did not encounter spirituals as a classically trained singer or in her choir at the Brunswick Street Baptist Church in Fredericton, where “we were pretty much the only black family.”
However, she does love these songs that emerged from Africa and came to America via the slave trade and then to Canada through the United Empire Loyalist migration and the Underground Railroad.
“As a musical genre, it stands on its own and it has the added aspect of really touching people and changing people’s lives; it’s very moving no matter where you are on the religious spectrum,” says Brueggergosman, who is a Christian.
“The spirituals to me have so much significance to my faith.” For Songs of Freedom, she and musical producer, director and arranger Aaron Davis listened to a lot of spirituals.
“We wanted to make sure they were born of North America, had travelled north and had been part of our music culture on the East Coast.” Part of her journey was to Nova Scotia to hear from the descendants of black immigrants to the province in the 1700s.
Also, the Nova Scotia Mass Choir helped her discover the soul of spiritual songs, then musical director Marko Simmonds helped her select songs and she performed with the choir.
“The experience of collaborating with the Nova Scotia Mass Choir was one I wanted from the very beginning, having just moved back to Nova Scotia,” says Brueggergosman, who lives in Falmouth with her husband and 21/2-year-old son.
“It was really important to me that I not just be there cursorily when the opportunity came to highlight the history of my ancestors.
“I knew there were parts of me that needed to get blacker, and the Nova Scotia Mass Choir would hold my hand to get me there. I’ll be forever in their debt.”
In Nova Scotia, she met with Sunday Miller, executive director of the Africville Heritage Trust, which runs the Africville Museum, and was shocked to learn all the details of the eradication of the centuries-old black community. “I didn’t know how disgusting the process had been to bulldoze it and rob people of their homes and land. It’s an injustice we as Canadians and humans need to right.
“There are members of the Nova Scotia Mass Choir who lived in Africville and came home to see their parents crying.”
In Madrid, Brueggergosman sang the Polish songs in Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, including one inspired by a message written on the wall of a Gestapo cell during the Second World War.
Freedom is “one of those luxuries we take very much for granted,” she says. “When I think of the freedom we consider as our birthright, I have to think of people for whom freedom is not a foregone conclusion. There are so many silenced people.”
Brueggergosman, who would like to put out an album and do a concert of spirituals, has a family trip this month to Costa Rica to learn Spanish. Her international concerts this year include performances in Sao Paulo, Bilbao in Spain, Hong Kong, the Bregenz Festival in Germany, and Rome.
She is expecting a baby in the spring. “This one in the belly is constantly jumping around. I can’t imagine what he’ll be like!”
He’ll grow up knowing his mother’s roots. “It’s funny when people make connections to their history how much it connects them to themselves.”
