Sultana Isham

The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

For New Orleans-based film composer Sultana Isham, plunging into research on her subject matter is as important as creating her score. Trained as a classical violinist, she moved from her native Virginia to New Orleans to steep herself in one of her passions, the peoples, history and culture of Créolité throughout the Americas and abroad.

Once in New Orleans, Sultana Initially busked with her violin in various venues around New Orleans and then started playing with Les Cenelles, an ensemble devoted to Creole folk music and work by composers of color. She began to write her own pieces, and in 2017 she put out her first EP, “Blood Moon,” a mixture of avant-garde classical and pop fusion, attracting the attention of director Zandashé Brown, who hired her to write the score for the horror short “Bood Runs Down.” Other directors soon came knocking on her door.

Director Angela Tucker hired her to be both researcher and composer on the documentary, “All Skinfolk Ain’t Kinfolk,” a PBS documentary about a historic New Orleans mayoral race between two Black women. Among Sultana’s other credits are “The Neutral Ground,” which also aired on PBS and received an Emmy nomination for best historical documentary, and the PBS series “Making Black America,” narrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Sultana’s scholarship continues unabated. LSU Press is developing an essay she co-wrote with Dr. Denise Frazier – “Mémwa Nwa: Agency, Sound and Women in AfroCreole Louisiana Folk Music” – into a book. A month before this interview, she concluded her residency at Ace Hotel New Orleans by co-curating an exhibit titled “Them Handy Sisters,” celebrating the careers of noted performers and musicologists Dr. Geneva Handy Southall and D. Antoinette Handy.

Here, Sultana explains how she developed her musical skills hand-in-hand with her research practice and why heeding her heart and feeding her curiosity continue to open incredible new doors for her.

Choose a question below to begin exploring the interview:

• What first made you want to try playing the violin outside of the classical world in which you were trained?
• What was it specifically about that music and the Créolité that really appealed to you?
• How did you develop your scholarship practice?
• When did you first start describing yourself as an ethnomusicologist?
• All this time you were playing and also speaking at conferences, it sounds to me like you were primed to get a doctorate in this. Was that ever a temptation?
• Could you describe a documentary project that you scored and how you went about doing the research and serving the story?
• Looking back at your artistic career, is there anything that could have been changed, whether in your education or employment opportunities, to make your work easier?
• What future projects are you excited about? Can you share some of them?

Pier Carlo Talenti: What first made you want to try playing the violin outside of the classical world in which you were trained?

Sultana Isham: In the classical tradition, the tradition that I come from, I always felt — this is just my experience, and I know people can relate to this — that the goal was not necessarily about expressing myself; it was about precision and being correct and continuing a tradition. I was judged based on how accurate my performances were. And also being a good team player, because when you’re playing in an orchestra, it’s not about just one person. So I was always growing up in group projects.

There’s a lot of beauty and skill and discipline from that training that has definitely influenced every aspect of my life, and I’m so grateful for it. But the idea of being an artist, the idea of expressing myself, was not presented as a legitimate desire. Like I said, it was just about being correct. It wasn’t until after school I was able to start to find myself, my voice, and explore the feral power of sound.

Pier Carlo: Oh, OK, I like that: the feral power of sound! You also talked about breaking out, so let’s talk about feral things and breaking out. How did that happen?

Sultana: So many things. I live in New Orleans. I’ve been here for 10 years. This is my 10th year of living here. My godparents — in Creole, we say parrain and nanan — are both from Lafayette, LA, so I’ve always thought of this region as my god-city, my god-home.

Pier Carlo: Oh, so you had visited there a lot growing up?

Sultana: Not a lot, but I’d just always known about my godparents who are from Lafayette, LA. Everybody knows each other. When I tell people who my godparents are, people know who they are just by names because their names are so old. I’ve always just known about it. 

But I think also in relation to that and my breaking out, also incorporating the things that I did learn in the academy, in my first year of college, I remember, we all had to take a world-music class. In that class was my first time seeing, not just ever but in an academic setting, the topic of Creole folk tunes come up, the topic of works composed by Black people or enslaved people, of folk music and that being the bones of Black classical composers that have come after them. That was my first time being exposed to that. It was my first time also seeing something that resembled me. 

From there, from 18 and that moment, I started on my own to just learn more about the Creole diaspora, Créolité, the linguistic dexterity and the cultural plasticity of this region.

Pier Carlo: What was it specifically about that music and the Créolité that really appealed to you?

Sultana: It just felt really familiar to me, honestly. It started as just an earnest, like, "Oh, there’s something that sounds familiar to me." I wasn’t sure I could put my finger on it.

At that time, at 18, I really didn’t have anyone to talk to about this, so it was something that was just always very private for me. I didn’t really feel the people around me were curious about it, so it didn’t really make a great environment for conversation and dialogue to prosper. When I came to New Orleans, that’s when I was able to form community with people. Through that, it just exposed more pieces, more music, more stories, more migration patterns, more connections to other locations. All of those things were being revealed to me.

Pier Carlo: So how did you develop your scholarship practice? Clearly you dove headfirst into deep research.

Sultana: Yes.

Pier Carlo: Is that something you had to train yourself in? You mentioned you had a mentor.

Sultana: I have a few mentors. [She laughs.] I have a few. It takes a village, right? Well, in school we’d been trained to do that, but the focus was on different people, a different region. But even from that region … I’m a huge Ravel fan. I’m a huge, huge fan of his work and his story. He is someone who is quoted constantly honoring jazz musicians, Black musicians, Black classical musicians. He traveled to New Orleans, he traveled to New York, and he even gave a lecture at Rice University when he was here. The tradition of Black music deeply influenced his later works.

Another person, Dvořák is another major one. Like when most of us are practicing Bach pieces, he was practicing that, but before that, spirituals, Negro spirituals. So learning of a mutual relationship between these genres and these worlds, I was really interested in that. My education did not teach me that. My education, the academy, they were focusing on something else.

Because this is the world I come from and this is the music that I love and this is the tradition that I grew up in, I just knew that there were parts of me that were not being included in their retelling of this history. It was honestly just me looking for myself.

Pier Carlo: When did you first start describing yourself as an ethnomusicologist?

Sultana: Well, ethnomusicologists started calling me that, so I was like, "Okay, well ..." [She laughs.]

Pier Carlo: That’s a badge of honor. That’s cool.

Sultana: Exactly. They started calling me that and including my work in their classes and things like that. They gave me a sense of permission. And also the sense of, "Oh, I know what I’m doing," and speaking at different conferences and things like that.

A lot of my work was interrogating the social conditions that were present at the time of these compositions and also sonic migration patterns. And just looking at even their construction of their idea of what was race or gender and how instruments … .

D. Antoinette Handy, another musicologist, is a major inspiration of mine. She talks a lot in her work about how instruments were gendered, the history of how women in particular were limited to voice and piano, mostly to pursue feminine ideals, not necessarily an earnest artistic pursuit. 

It was just honestly finding other people like myself, learning different things. They would point me in certain directions, I would point them in certain directions, and we all memorialized these sounds together.

Pier Carlo: All this time you were playing and also speaking at conferences, it sounds to me like you were primed to get a doctorate in this. Was that ever a temptation?

Sultana: People keep saying that. [She laughs.] People keep saying that. I mean, I definitely work with a lot of institutions, and I have a few things in the works that we can talk about in a bit. But I think in the beginning I was just like, "Really?" because … . 

OK, so how my performance practice sort of started in New Orleans. New Orleans is very jazz-centered. So woodwind, brass, they dominate. Being a string player is kind of exotic to them, even though historically speaking, the first opera houses in the Western Hemisphere were in Louisiana, were in New Orleans.

Pier Carlo: Wow!

Sultana: Integrated orchestras. There’s a very beautiful, extensive history of multiracial orchestras, Black orchestras, opera houses singing in multiple languages. The first ones were in New Orleans, so they have a very beautiful, long classical history that people don’t really talk about that much. 

But anyway, to get work as 22-year-old that had just moved here, I had to incorporate other genres. At the time, I just wanted to do my work and just explore music, so I started playing at different artist residencies and hotels and things like that. At that time, people were just so centered on being entertained, so I was incorporating things that I liked. I’m a huge Grace Jones fan, so in the beginning of my performance career in New Orleans, I used to do Grace Jones tributes on the violin, and I would also play my own stuff and a little bit of Bach and things like that. But I was trying to figure myself out. I was trying to figure out what did I want to say.

The performance etiquette in a jazz or pop world is so different from the classical world. They want more conversation, they want more engagement. I grew up never talking, rarely talking to the audience. It was very cut-and-dry. You stand at this point, they applaud, you bow, you read your music, you play. There was no expectation for me to talk to my audience. So it was kind of hard for me to do that in the beginning, but I learned how to do it. At the same time, this wasn’t sustainable for me at the time, and I just wanted to focus on more heart-centered work. 

I wanted to focus on work that was bigger than me as an individual. I wanted to support and uplift stories that were bigger than me as an individual that could be a catalyst for change and memory collections. So I just started diving more into my scholarship, and I attracted different opportunities. 

Pier Carlo: What was your first film score?

Sultana: My first film score was a Southern Gothic horror film called —

Pier Carlo: Horror! That’s hard. There’s no other genre that relies on a score as heavily as horror.

Sultana: Exactly, exactly.

Pier Carlo: It’s my favorite genre.

Sultana: I love it too. I love it too.

Pier Carlo: So your first score was for a horror film! What was it?

Sultana: It was called “Blood Runs Down,” directed by Zandashé Brown. Yeah, it was very interesting. It was my first experience of seeing how supporting a story like this can be like a mirror to my own life. The film was exploring mental illness and generational trauma between mother and daughter, and the mother in the film was schizophrenic. The director’s mom is schizophrenic, and my grandmother was schizophrenic, so it brought up a lot for me as I was making it. 

Then, when I finished the score, my grandmother died, and the film has a similar ending. It was really gnarly for me to be in that kind of experience, but it taught me so much about the power of empathy, and it really has influenced every other film I’ve done since.

Pier Carlo: Could you describe a documentary project that you scored and how you went about doing the research and, as you said, serving the story?

Sultana: A really good one. It kind of brings all of these things together, even horror. My first feature film is “The Neutral Ground,” directed by CJ Hunt, and it is about the removal of Confederate monuments. It premiered at Tribeca, and we got an Emmy nomination. It was a really good thing for us all. 

There’s this one scene in the film that’s about the United Daughters of the Confederacy and how these women, these widows who lost their husbands and sons in the Civil War, how they erected these monuments to memorialize their loved ones who were killed. I had to write a choral piece. That was the objective. The director wanted me to write a choral piece for little girls. I had never written a choral piece at the time, and he wanted the text to be in Latin specifically. 

This is where scholarship and horror for me were able to come together because I told him, for me, I saw that scene in particular as a horror scene. I think of white supremacy as horror. That’s how I think of it. That’s how I see it at least, especially in an artistic way. I definitely see it that way. I think it’s effective to have it in that way.

Pier Carlo: And, correct me if I’m wrong, it’s kind of a horror trope in scoring: The sound of a girl singing can be terrifying.

Sultana: Yes, it can.

Pier Carlo: In a certain context, right? 

Sultana: Definitely. And it was for the scene. 

Pier Carlo: Where’d you find your Latin text?

Sultana: The text came from a motto that the Confederacy used to chant. Their motto was “Deo vindice,” which means, “God will vindicate us,” something like that. And I added the word alibi because I saw that they were using their religion as an alibi for their violence, using that as a shield to keep doing what they’re doing, causing all this mess and war and dehumanization but in the name of their God, which is a horrible thing to do. The text was basically that statement that they used to chant, “Deo vindice,” but with little girls singing it. 

I remember putting it in D Minor, I believe, and I hired a choir from the West Los Angeles Children’s Choir. This was still in the pandemic, during lockdown. I sent them the score and the director sent the score to the children, and I think they all recorded it separately and sent me back an amazing recording. I’ve had many people — I think they are people who are descendants of these women who were passing down this lie — who have all told me that they’ve had a cellular response to that particular scene, so it made me feel like, as a composer, I did my job.

We have to hold all these different stories as a composer. Actors only have to think about their one role. Composers have to think about the entire picture, and I can’t not give empathy to someone just because I don’t like them, if it’s not serving the story.

It was also a lesson of building empathy for a group of people that would not have empathy for me. We have to hold all these different stories as a composer. Actors only have to think about their one role. Composers have to think about the entire picture, and I can’t not give empathy to someone just because I don’t like them, if it’s not serving the story. 

Pier Carlo: It’s clear to me that you’re a self-starter and have made your own opportunities. But looking back at your artistic career as you were coming up, is there anything that could have been changed, whether in your education or employment opportunities, to make your work easier?

Sultana: So many things I feel, but I think of all of those challenges as ingredients and as a fuel for me to do what I’m doing. Who knows if I would’ve been doing what I’m doing if those challenges weren’t present? Who knows if I would’ve had the drive to create this lane for myself?

I mean, I could say, "Yeah, it would have been great to learn about these different composers of my lineage in school." That would’ve been great to learn. That would’ve given me a certain level of confidence at such a young age.

Pier Carlo: Did you only have that one world-music class?

Sultana: Yeah, that was my only time. But growing up, I knew people. I knew the first Black person to ever be in the Virginia Symphony. His daughter and my mom taught at the same school. And there’s a group of Black classical musicians in my hometown that gave out scholarships. I received a four-year scholarship that got me through my college career. So I had resources. I just wish I had more of a personal relationship with that particular thing, but I think it came at the time that it was supposed to come, honestly. I don’t have any regrets. 

I think we can always make systems better. I think a concrete one that I can think of is that it would’ve been awesome to learn some of the tech stuff in music school, because the things like the tech stuff that I use, none of this was taught to me in school. I kind of learned just by process, not really in school, the technology aspect of it.

Pier Carlo: Do you think it’s probably taught now, maybe?

Sultana: I think it just depends on what you’re majoring in because there are film-scoring programs, right? But I was in a classical-performance programming, and I wasn’t even thinking about composition at that time. I was just thinking about being a violinist in somebody’s orchestra.

I’m so glad that my goals have changed. I remember when I started to dive into other genres, the highest I was dreaming was to be a string version of Sheila E., [laughing] but I was thinking too small.

Pier Carlo: That would be kind of an amazing thing to be, honestly, but that wasn’t your thing.

Sultana: It’s cool, it’s cool, but no, not for me.

Pier Carlo: To the extent that you’re comfortable talking about future projects that you’re excited about, can you share some of them?

Sultana: Yes, definitely. I’m working on a planetarium opera based on the research of these celestial objects called brown dwarfs. I’m working with my director and librettist Janani Balasubramanian and also a team of astrophysicists with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and —

Pier Carlo: Wait, how did you make this happen?

Sultana: So first off, always, I think the heart-based aspect is following my curiosities. For fun, I took a science class at Duke. For fun, I was reading all these physics and science books. All that was for fun. I didn’t have an agenda. I was just curious about a topic, and I just wanted to learn more about it. Then it just started to naturally influence my work and my scholarship and my presentations.

Fast-forward a year. In 2020, I got into my first fellowship at Sundance for film composers, and then the following year I got into my next one for interdisciplinary artists. There was a huge cohort of interdisciplinary artists, whether they were dramaturges or composers. We had an in-person residency program for a select few of us. We had different options that we could choose from, and I chose one in Wyoming called Ucross, and that’s where I met my collaborator in person. They’re an artist/scientist as well. They heard me speaking somewhere, and they were like, "Ah!" The light bulb went off, and they were like, "I think this is the composer for this project that I want to do."

So we started talking. At the time I was working on my HBO series I can talk about soon after this. But yeah, we were talking and learning more, getting to know each other about the research and things like that. It just worked out, and so we’re on a residency tour. We did one in New York this past fall. 

Pier Carlo: So tell me, what’s operatic about brown dwarfs?

Sultana: Brown dwarfs are celestial objects that blur the lines between what makes a planet a planet and what makes a star a star. There’s so many parallels that are being made with just this object’s experience, and there’s also a lot of play with darkness and light because these objects are only visible under the infrared. They were just discovered in 1994. This is recent scholarship.

The opera is going to be a planetarium opera. It is written for dome-shaped cinema. There’s going to be some pre-recorded and live elements, different voice techniques, and it will also incorporate instruments that are not always included in the symphonic families. These objects blur the lines, and they break the rules between these different genres and categories, so the intention of the piece is to also be in that ethos.  

Pier Carlo: And then you mentioned an HBO series.

Sultana: Yes. So simultaneously, while working on this with my collaborator — this was two years ago — I was in the queue to work on this miniseries for HBO that I got. It’s about Stax Records, the record label company in Memphis, TN, which housed all those giants like Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes and so many amazing, amazing, amazing musicians. I did that series with my director, Jamila Wignot. We actually did a documentary on Alvin Ailey, which was technically my first Sundance premiere; I did the additional music for that film. We worked together again for this, where I’m the main composer. I’m the only composer for “Stax, Soulsville, U.S.A.” It was just announced that we got into South by Southwest.

Pier Carlo: Wow! Nice!

Sultana: We’ll be premiering at South by Southwest on March 10th, and it will be broadcasting on HBO, I think, at the end of May. It’s a four-part docuseries.