The Carver Community Cultural Center will host the local premiere of The Quilt: A Living History of African American Music, a documentary produced by the San Antonio nonprofit arts organization Musical Bridges Around the World, this Sunday at 2 p.m.
The documentary explores the history and culture of African American music from the time of slavery to the present day. It invites the audience to think about every music genre as a different piece of fabric combining to make a “quilt” that constantly evolves as more genres arise.
The film covers genres from early jazz to R&B and hip-hop and features Texas artists like singer and former San Antonio Poet Laureate Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, Dallas-based jazz pianist Arlington Jones and Texas native and past Musical Bridges performer Michael Sumuel.
“I have had the most amazing and fulfilling journey by participating in creating and acting in The Quilt,” said screenwriter and actor Cynthia Freeman Gibbs. “As an author of novels, I always thought my first film project would be an adaptation of one of my books. To have The Quilt be my inaugural experience as a film writer has been more exciting than what I envisioned because of the purpose, the people I worked with and the outcome.”
The film came together when, during the pandemic, Musical Bridges had to limit the curriculum for Musical Sprouts, a program that teaches students the importance of learning and understanding diverse cultures worldwide.
“When schools had to close and our Musical Sprouts program could not share cultural musical performances to children in person, we turned to film as a medium,” said Musical Bridges CEO and artistic director Anya Grokhovski.
Gibbs is also collaborating with Musical Sprouts, the African American Quilt Society of San Antonio and Bexar County school districts to implement a curriculum based on The Quilt in schools and libraries. Five STEAM-aligned lesson plans were rolled out beginning last year and continue to be used in local after-school programs.
“The purpose initially was to create a film to educate children about the genres of African American music history,” said Gibbs. “What we have discovered is that the content is of interest to adults as well as children.”
The film has been chosen for screening at several film festivals and has won many awards already, including Best Full-Length Music Documentary at the Queens Underground Film Festival in New York.
The Quilt will be screened for the first time locally at 2 p.m. on July 23, at the Carver Community Cultural Center located at 226 N. Hackberry St. Free tickets are available with registration on the Musical Bridges website.
