Is My Black Still Beautiful?

Violinist Gwen Laster reflects on 'colorism' Though Gwen Laster endured plenty of pain growing up, she forged a career playing the violin in Broadway pits, with her own ensembles and for well-known musicians. Usually pigeonholed as a jazz practitioner, she is classically trained, and some of her instrumental works defy description. Despite the success, past is prologue, as evidenced by the focus of her first multimedia presentation, Is My Black Still Beautiful? Reflections on a Childhood in Detroit. It's a work in progress that she will perform with readings and live music on Saturday (Sept. 26) and Sunday at The Depot Theater on Garrison's Landing. Laster, who lives in Beacon, goes for the jugular, twisting a slogan from the Civil Rights era into a sarcastic query that refers to "colorism" — discrimination in the Black community toward people with darker skin. "It's still happening with my family," she says. The blunt approach is unsurprising because she has always carried the Civil Rights torch, writing the Black Lives Matter Suite in 2014 and performing with Shakira and Jennifer Lopez at President Barack Obama's first inaugural ball. "During the pandemic, I wanted to get more involved in social justice and current events, and when the whole planet came to a standstill, I asked, 'Wait a minute. Who am I right now?' " she says. Inspired by The Hero With an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa and other books, she "lined up three string players and improvised a composition based on what I read." Laster's first theatrical foray stems from a short memoir with the same title. This weekend's production includes a dancer, three actors, a five-piece band and projected visuals. The ambitious work is supported, in part, by a Guggenheim Fellowship, which she won in 2025 — one of 198 artists selected from 3,500 applicants. She also received a MacDowell Fellowship to polish the piece. Several songs on the soundtrack let the guitar, bass and drums loose on funky grooves, some of which evoke the heady 1960s. Laster grew up three blocks from the original Motown studio in Detroit and a stone's throw from the church led by the Rev. C. L. Franklin, father of Aretha. As freeways tore through the city and the Civil Rights Movement pushed for generational change, a riot roiled her neighborhood in 1967 after the police raided an illegal bar. "I remember tanks in the streets," she says. "My parents sent me to another part of town." Against this dramatic backdrop, her songs mine the personal with titles like "Ancestral Baggage," "Skin White" and the affirmative "Yes My Black is Beautiful." In "Key to My Room," she longs to "be like the light-skin girls with hair down to their knees." String quartet interludes and endings alternate with the upbeat pop-oriented parts. Bassoon, bass flute and piano augment "Dirty Ashtrays." In "Ancestral Baggage," the West African kora sounds like a banjo. Through the written word, Laster expanded her dramatic vision and learned to convey her message with clarity. "I began to write because it crystallizes and articulates feelings that music cannot directly express." The Depot Theater is located at 10 Garrison's Landing. Tickets are $30 at depottheater.org; the show begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday and 4 p.m. on Sunday.