A View From The Balcony

Opera Through Womanist Eyes

Praxis for Developing a Balcony Hermeneutic of Restorative Resistance

In this theological work, readers are seated in a metaphorical balcony as a counter melody is composed within America’s operatic tradition. By using imaginary opera glasses, readers are invited to critically view American society and history. The most popular folk songs of white Southerners, Western settlers, and Northern elites were composed from chords of colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, hegemony, and xenophobia—forms of anthropological poverty. These songs were, and remain, the most discordant melodies heard by indigenous and enslaved persons in America. Indicting the “church” for its complicity in these oppressions, this work offers the reader a historical glimpse at the philosophical and religious underpinnings of systemic racism. A new healing hermeneutic, the balcony hermeneutic, enables the reader to view, critique, assess, correct, and reverse the devastating consequences of anthropo-logical poverty. By taking a “reversed gaze” of traditional Western Eurocentric systems of knowledge production, through theomusicology, this work privileg-es the voices of indigenous scholars—philosophers, anthropologists, theolo-gians, and performers—to sing a new song as we correct negative narratives and lyrics through resistance operatic performances.

endorsements

"Using the opera musical genre, Jean Derricotte-Murphy has put together a hermeneutic for capturing the presence of the Lord from a womanist perspective with clarity about who the Lord is, how the Lord is, and where the Lord is at work in the lives of people and the world through all of the scenes, situations, and stages of life whether good or bad, happy or sad, sick or healthy, impoverished or abundant."

“Jean Derricotte-Murphy has indeed written her magnum opus, her masterpiece, from her unique perspective as a Black woman, educator, theologian/ordained minister, opera singer, and as a womanist to her core. She provides a ‘balcony hermeneutic’ of the oppression of Black diasporic humanity through the lens of opera. New ground is indeed plowed, cultivated, and harvested in this theological gem. Brava!”

“At last, we have research that interrogates elite concert hall box seat aspirations through what Jean Derricotte-Murphy astutely coins as a ‘Balcony Hermeneutic.’ The balcony is one of the most contested spaces in both performing arts and Black religiosity throughout US history. This research reveals the fantastic hegemonic imagination about the ways in which power is asserted when the prism of intersectionality is considered within our racially segregated past.”

“Jean Derricotte-Murphy’s A View from the Balcony is a ‘Grand Opera’ orchestration of insurgent Womanist intelligence in multiple keys, building on a base beat of Black Performance Theory and Mvengain anthropo- logical critique, embroidered in personal solo riffs to give a new score to an old tune. Syncopating the tired metronome of American-style racial, patriarchal classist, etc. domination through a balcony-cadence of bombast, throw-down, and send-up, Derricotte-Murphy’s aria sounds out the amnesiac ‘white’ depths of the art form and re-opens this stage to its underground voices of beauty.”