Louisiana Civil Rights Museum
Sonic Experience
How can sound help transport key events from the Civil Rights Movement into the present day?
To recount Louisiana's role in the Civil Rights Movement, we designed audio for an immersive installation featured prominently in the opening of the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum. Through original music, sound design, archival audio treatment and spatial audio consulting, we helped to recreate two poignant scenes from the American Civil Rights movement.
First, we told the story of the 105-Mile March from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge, when, in the heat of 1967, activists embarked on a 10-day march to protest violence perpetrated by the Louisiana KKK. Due to the threat of abuse by white segregationists along the march, over 2,000 National Guardsmen and police officers protected the marchers—whose numbers grew from 25 to 600—signifying both the gravity of the situation and the support of the federal government in enforcing new Civil Rights measures.
The second scene chronicled the New Orleans Four, the four brave first-graders who desegregated schools in Louisiana. On November 14, 1960, Leona Tate, Tessie Provost, Gail Etienne, and Ruby Bridges were met by a sea of protests and boycotts when they arrived for their first day at their newly integrated schools. The innocence of four six-year-olds attending school stands in stark contrast to the baseless and racist hatred directed at them.
"Blowing on the River" introduces the entire experience when attendees walk in, and a solo trumpet rendition adds color to the March Scene. We took that same original melodic riff and created a slower piano recording of it for the Desegregation Scene. This recording evokes a more somber texture while uniting the two scenes with a common musical motif.
Music
Antfood composer and New Orleans native Linton Smith II wrote "Blowing on the River" to heighten the emotional stakes of the installation and to recreate a regional and cultural experience authentic to Louisiana. In this piece, we leaned into the rich call-and-response tradition of second-line music. The call, a trumpet improvising around a melodic riff, was followed by a percussion group's response in the style of the Mardi Gras Indians’ Super Sunday. The impassioned cries of the trumpet are continually grounded by the percussion, which creates a push and pull between aspiration and reality that mirrors the discord ensuing in the scenes.
Sound Design
Before creating or recording any sounds for these scenes, we studied the archival footage and audio from the events and similar recordings from that period. By immersing ourselves in the sounds of the time, we crafted a thoughtful and convincing portal to the past and paid respect to these important moments. In archival recordings of the New Orleans Four, we noticed the incessant sound of protestors, so we included commotion and chants in our soundscapes, which served as a constant symbol for the headwinds the students faced. Likewise, we came to learn that the National Guard was on horseback for most of the 105-Mile March, and so our soundscape most prominently features hooves, footsteps, and voices.
Mix and Audio Treatment
This experience was elevated by using real archival audio from the 105-Mile March and the New Orleans Four. Tasked with cleaning up the source audio to make it clear and powerful for a modern audience, we used the latest audio technologies to selectively reduce unwanted noise, whilst retaining genuine artifacts that give it a true vintage flavor. Moreover, we replicated some of those audio artifacts and applied them to the sound design, music, and original recordings to firmly place this experience in the 1960s.
Conclusion
We were honored to bring important historical events to life through the power of original music, crafted soundscapes and archival audio. The final experience is engaging, moving, informative, and positioned to impact thousands of people. For the next two years, you can find the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum in the Ernest. N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.
