The floor in the Abyssinian Meeting House in Portland is a patchwork of new and old. Daniel Bernard Roumain walked across the worn wood that dates back a hundred years and the fresh boards installed as part of an ongoing restoration. In the middle of the room, he started to stomp his right foot.

“All a violin is is a wood box that vibrates,” Roumain said. “Whenever I go into a hall, I’m always looking for the vibrations.”

He found a rhythm. The meeting house answered. The boards thrummed.

Roumain pulled the violin up to his chin and began to play.

This spring, Portland Ovations and Indigo Arts Alliance will present “Echoes: Stories and Songs Across Time,” a collaboration that celebrates Black life past, present and future in Portland. Roumain is a renowned Black Haitian American composer who has been visiting Maine for more than 15 years. His latest project here will culminate with a free public performance with local Black artists outside the Abyssinian in May. The focal point will be a musical theme Roumain wrote specifically for the nearly 200-year-old landmark.

“What I’m doing is cultural documentation,” he said.

FREEDOM AND ART

Built in 1828, the meetinghouse is the third-oldest in the nation built by an African American congregation, after churches in Boston and Nantucket. The Abyssinian became the religious, educational and cultural heart of Portland’s Black community. But in 1898, 19 crew members who attended the Abyssinian died when the SS Portland sunk on a return trip from Boston. The congregation never recovered, and the church eventually closed. It was sold and converted into a tenement.

The Abyssinian is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and recognized as a northern hub of the Underground Railroad and the anti-slavery movement. In 2013, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed the Abyssinian as one of the most endangered historic places in the United States. In 2022, the Committee to Restore the Abyssinian received a $1.7 million appropriation in the federal budget, a major boost after many years of fundraising.

Since then, president Pamela Cummings said the committee has spent months trying to get the city permits needed for the restoration. They learned that they will need to put a small addition on the back to house four bathrooms and an elevator. Cummings said she hopes the committee will be able to get the necessary approvals and put out a request for qualifications to contractors by the end of April.

The addition will cost another $400,000 on top of money already raised, and she asked that people continue to support the project.

“This building represents resilience at its finest and persistence and Black excellence,” she said. “Keep supporting us. We are doing the work. We need your help. It is a community building. It’ll be used by us, by you, by the entire community for the learning of Black history.”

This project with Roumain is an example of how the Abyssinian could inspire and host artists in the future.

Cummings recalled an art exhibition hosted in the meetinghouse in 2017. She saw local Black artists including Daniel Minter and Titi de Baccarat talking together about their work and thought, “This is what it must have been like in 1830 when Black people were getting together, trying to figure out the Anti-Slavery Society and the Underground Railroad and how they could help the slaves get from the South to the North.”

“Their ideas were freedom, and these ideas were art,” Cummings said. “But aren’t they one and the same?”

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Roumain has performed with artists from opera singer J’Nai Bridges to pop star Lady Gaga to pianist and composer Philip Glass. He also has a long history of performing in Maine, including at “flatbed truck concerts” organized by Portland Ovations during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Echoes” originated from his long connection with the organization and its executive director, Aimée Petrin.

“It’s this continual reverberation of all these partnerships as they’ve grown over time,” Petrin said.

He started his research for this project last year by visiting the Abyssinian in person. On a return trip this month, Roumain walked through the space with violin in hand. He thought about the piece as “a musical eulogy,” he said, but he also did not want it to be somber or mournful. He composed 12 chords in three sets that repeat.

“The melody ascends,” he said, playing the notes. “It starts in one place, and then this repeats. That’s an A, that’s a B, that’s an E. So it keeps going higher. There’s all sorts of implications of ascension.”

That music will ultimately echo through the work of other Black artists, who came to the project through their relationships with Indigo Arts Alliance. Brian J. Evans, an assistant professor of dance at Bates College, and Nyamuon “Moon” Nguany Machar, a spoken word poet and board member at Portland Ovations, will join Roumain in his performance on May 11. Machar said she is working on a piece about her grandfather.

“It’s about the echoes that are left from the ones who have already gone,” Machar said.

The performance will be preceded by community events at sites that recognize the past, present and future of Black life in Portland. The Prince Project, a nonprofit dedicated to researching the role of enslavement in Maine’s history, will lead tours at the Eastern Cemetery. Indigo Arts Alliance will host guests at their location on Cove Street. A third site has yet to be announced. Organizers said they will create a map to direct people from site to site, and then guests will be invited to convene for a block party and performance outside the Abyssinian.

“This program with Portland Ovations solidifies Indigo Arts Alliance’s commitment to building and sustaining long lasting relationships with our community partners along with ensuring that Black brilliance is highlighted on a world stage that will ‘echo’ into the future,” said Jordia Benjamin, executive director of Indigo Arts Alliance.

In the meetinghouse, Roumain filled the rafters with the sound of his violin. Suddenly, he stopped and looked behind him to the empty room.

“I thought there was somebody standing right there,” he said.

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