Philly Fringe 2016 review: 'Notes of a Native Song'

The show’s first song is about “Baldwin Country” and how he was sent there by his black teachers; they introduced their students to the legendary figures who became his heroes. But, he confesses, “I’m so fuckin’ tired of James Baldwin — his elegance, his clarity,” and all that glamour of the cultural world of Paris in the ‘50s. Stew notes with clever insight, Baldwin “made a butler, not a monster, of his rage.”

The show’s next to last song bookends “Baldwin Country” with another location: “Florida, you’re killing me,” a place with “hanging chads and lynching boys” (perhaps a tip of Stew’s straw boater to Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam”).

Learning from the best

In between, Stew provides a musical mini-course on James Baldwin. There are many songs with endless rhymes and word play, all sung by Stew who accompanies himself on guitar, waving his glasses, as he leads us chronologically through Baldwin’s life in exile from Paris to Istanbul.

Stew’s own life as an artist is outlined, as he follows famous writers, from the dashiki-wearing compilers of African fables through Eldridge Cleaver and LeRoi Jones. He points out that black people cannot be painted with one brush: Martin Luther King refused to let Baldwin speak at the March on Washington.

Backed by interesting but unobtrusive projections on a screen (designed by Joan Grossman), the band is thrilling. The musicians provide terrific riffs on various instruments, with Heidi Rodewald on bass, guitars and Moog, occasionally adding her sleek, soft voice. Marty Beller is one of those sensationally energetic drummers you cannot not watch. Damian Lemar Hudson is terrific on keyboard, and Mike McGinnis toodles on a assorted woodwinds, from sax to clarinet to flute to something that looked like a kazoo but surely wasn’t.

Great show.