Walk Around You

for tuba and electronics
commissioned by a consortium directed by Chance Trottman-Huiet

On April 23, 1939, John and Ruby Lomax visited the Ramsey State Farm in Otey, Texas as part of a largescale project to document and preserve American folk music. Armed with their primitive wire recorder, the couple captured a handful of songs sung by a select group of prisoners. Alexander Hamilton, one of the inmates, contributed “Jesus Walk Round Your Bedside.” In it, the unaccompanied singer urges listeners to accept Jesus in times of crisis and to abide by the Lord’s teachings.

Walk Around You (2018), for tuba and electronics, reflects on the time and place of this source material through embellished variations of the tune, sampled audio loops of the tuba, fragments of Hamilton’s voice, and percussive artifacts of the low fidelity recording itself. For Hamilton, the recording session offered a reprieve from daily prison life and served as a cautionary tale for would be listeners; walk the straight and narrow or suffer the consequences. His plaintive intonation of the words “walk around me” is emotional on the surface, but becomes heartbreaking when considering the singer’s long term confinement and immobility.