Daniel Bernard Roumain applies a multitude of influences to compositions

Photo by Photo by John Walder, Photo by John Walder

From Latin to hip-hop to classical, DBR (Daniel Bernard Roumain) creates compositions that bear his many musical influences and social interests in "A Civil Rights Reader."

Daniel Bernard Roumain spent his teens and early 20s basking in the cacophony that is South Florida's musical melting pot.

He'd get earfuls of the local Latin-flavored music, then hang out in the heavy metal clubs where he was a fan of the up-and-coming Marilyn Manson.

Photo by Photo by John Walder

From Latin to hip-hop to classical, DBR (Daniel Bernard Roumain) creates compositions that bear his many musical influences and social interests in "A Civil Rights Reader."

Roumain was also a top violin player in his local youth orchestra.

That wide array of music still impacts Roumain, 38, known to his friends as DBR.

"I'm really a child of the MTV generation," he said, calling from his home in Brooklyn to talk about his "classical" compositions, which will be heard Sunday at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre.

He'll take the stage with members of his string quartet and hip-hop turntablist DJ Scientific to perform "A Civil Rights Reader," a diverse series of musical portraits dedicated to pioneers of the movement.

His compositions are influenced by both his musical background -- he got his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt and his doctorate from the University of Michigan -- and his ongoing fascination with American history.

"I started writing these quartets years ago after reading 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,'" Roumain said. "The book is about his trying to define himself. The process of being a composer is about how my music is consequently defining me."

String Quartet No. 1, "X," borrows motifs from the modernist Hungarian composer Bela Bartok.

"I liked that Bartok was a collector of folk music and was able to bring old songs forward into the 20th century," Roumain said.

A child of Haitian immigrants, Roumain says his parents' experience with the civil rights movement gives his music a more international flavor.

"A Civil Rights Reader" also includes works dedicated to poet Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, the Harlem pastor and congressman Adam Clayton Powell and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Roumain plays an electric violin and employs a range of nontraditional musical devices in his quartets. Maya Angelou's poetry, recorded by her, is woven into the quartet dedicated to her. The string players clap their hands in the Rosa Parks piece, in order to create a hip-hop rhythm.

Perhaps controversially, Roumain's quartet to King is inspired by the women with whom the civil rights leader is alleged to have had affairs.

"It's a way to honor the women who were in his life," Roumain said. "Those women existed. We know they existed. I'm certain they were privy to parts of his life that history will never know about. As a composer I want to amplify areas of history that require it."

-- Christopher Blank: 529-2305

Daniel Bernard Roumain and his quartet

3 p.m. Sunday at GPAC, 1801 Exeter. Tickets are $25-$35. Call 751-7500.

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