Matana Roberts at the Roundhouse

Note: After this piece was first posted, Matana pointed out to me that her pronouns are “they/them”. I’ve rewritten it to take account of that preference.

Matana Roberts did a lot of talking at the Roundhouse last night. A lot more talking than playing, in fact. Alone on the stage, opening the show for Lonnie Holley with an hour-long set, they restricted the saxophone — a soprano, rather than her usual alto — to the occasional short phrase or two, often prefaced with the words “This is an improvisation.” We heard a handsome tone on the straight horn, and an ardent delivery, but nothing was allowed to build or cohere into a greater scheme.

Instead we were addressed with verbal riffs on a variety of topics, from the general reaction to the artist’s wild new hair to what a border control officer said about their tattoos. They spoke of a photo of a recent protest in which students had barricaded their doors and windows in the manner taught in “active shooter” drills. “I’m from the Mid-West,” Matana said. “We only had tornado drills.”

That provoked their observations on protest songs, during which we were encouraged to hum a single tonic note in accompaniment as they sang “Wade in the Water” in a pleasant, unemphatic voice. Eventually we were persuaded to join in “I Shall Not Be Moved”.

There was also a story to tell about being invited to play at the Whitney Museum on the day in 2015 when Michelle Obama, a fellow Chicagoan, was opening a new wing. Matana was invited to perform on the roof while the First Lady was doing the ribbon-cutting thing, so that the music would cascade down. The surprise discovery up there was the presence of a detachment of snipers.

“They were surrounding me,” Matana remembered. “Three of them. And they were kind of happy-go-lucky. They wanted to show me their guns. ‘I don’t want to see your guns!'” The ceremony over, Michelle Obama was taken away in an armoured vehicle.

“That was really a symbol of America today,” Matana observed, before returning to the business of singing and playing and musing, trying to summon the better spirits of our troubled world.