This is the narrative for a piece called The Scourged Back, see also The Virtual Venue or The Shop. Strong stuff, and a true story.

Trigger Warning. At the end of this account is a photograph. This entire work tells the story of the man in the picture. The text here also contains descriptions of cruelty and violence. After reading the rest of this, you may not want to see the photograph.

     The photograph is of a slave called Gordon, who subsequently became known to the world as ‘Whipped Peter’. He escaped from a plantation in Louisiana in 1863 after being lashed virtually to death, and when he arrived at a Union army camp that April, after 10 days on the run, this photo was taken, and became known as The Scourged Back. The white people that saw ‘Peter’ here were shocked, apparently the Blacks who saw it merely shrugged, they’d seen it all before. But rightly, the photo was widely published and became very much a part of the abolitionist cause.

     In many ways, a lot of this piece was written before I started. In other words, I’ve borrowed a lot. Laurie Lee, on the subject of writing, likens a book to a house. ‘One lays out the rooms for the necessary chapters, then starts wondering about the furniture. … I realised quite soon…that I had enough furniture to fill a town.’ So it was with this 17-minute piece. The story that needed telling was drawn from the worlds and words of Bach chorales, spirituals, music of the American Civil War and Christmas carols! It felt as if there was hardly any room for my own stuff. But the original material is really the body of the piece, and the glimpses of those many other sources function within it.

     There are nine sections of music, running continuously, not as separate movements. They are Intro, Fields, Incident, Torture, Bedridden, Escape, Refuge, Roots, and The End.

     It starts fast, with running, escaping music, which immediately comes round twice. The main theme of the work – which became known as Peter’s Theme rather than Gordon’s – booms out; a heroic, anthemic tune which turns cruel in the middle before returning to boisterous glory.

     Then the pace settles down to a rural picture of the cotton fields. The slaves are working in the hot sun, but of course their minds are free, and the titles of five Bach chorales describe their situation and thoughts: ‘Ah God, hear my sighing’, ‘O Man, bewail thy great sins’, ‘From deep need I cry to thee’. ‘The final day will soon arrive’ is a hope of death, an end to their lot. Also in their thoughts are the spirituals ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve seen’ and ‘By and By’. The possibility of escape is also there, with the chorale question ‘Whither am I to flee?’. But suddenly Gordon, as has happened many times before, finds himself in big trouble. The incident is unspecified but there is serious danger in the air. This atmosphere heightens and the whip gives an evil shimmer on the wall.

     Now comes the awful flogging, the centre of the piece. This takes place on Christmas Day (in 1862) so between the cruel and incessant lashes are distant shreds of seasonal carols. Chorales again describe the scene: ‘Who knows how near my end may be’, ‘My life is now almost gone’, ‘Jesus, thy deep wounds’, ‘O madness, O bitter pain’ and ‘Come sweet death! Come blessed rest’ are interspersed with ‘See amid the winter’s snow’, ‘Angels from the realms of glory’ and ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’. If people want to link the thrashing and the fact that all these quotes are from Christian sources, so be it.

     Gordon barely survives this torture, he is bedridden for two months after it. This is dungeon music, dark, with throbbing pain and faltering heartbeats. He realises that he won’t outlast another beating. He must get away, and the first glimmers of that thought can be heard.

     The Escape is pure flight, constant running quavers and quavers for running. Gordon scrambles desperately across fields, through woods and the southern swamps. The quaver sequences are formed of an escape motif based on the shape of Peter’s Theme (up then down), another similarly-shaped but extended phrase, the opening music, Peter’s Theme itself, interspersed with sudden swerves of direction as he is chased, and the dogs barking. Chorale lines again speak their messages; firstly ‘Whither am I to flee?’ returns as a question he must have thought. During his flight ‘Night has come’ is heard under the stars during the beautiful spiritual ‘Steal Away’, and soon afterwards ‘Day with the light’. Also ‘Help, Lord Jesus, send good speed’.

     But at the height of the chase, there’s an army camp ahead. In great excitement he crosses the Mississippi river and has made it! His safety is the Union Army settlement at Baton Rouge. This is all true. The heroic Battle Cry of Freedom, the great rallying song of the North during the Civil War is Peter’s great triumph, and the photo which inspired this entire piece is taken.

     The final section was going to be a disembodied, floaty sequence in which the lashes come back to haunt Gordon, perhaps in his dreams at night, but then a lovely round-and-round and quite exhilarating African riff popped into my head one day, and this change of direction became a joyous celebration of his old life in his homeland (or more likely that of his ancestors), a native party.           I’ve never managed to learn if Gordon was actually African or West Indian, sources differ, but the joyful, uplifting riff seems to me to fit both styles of music. But the lashes do return, to oppress the increasingly ecstatic music, which is thrown into confusion. It feels very cruel to interrupt and disrupt things when the party is sailing with glorious relief off into an African sunset, but the torture of the times didn’t stop just because Gordon escaped. However, the carnival music and his roots just outlast the fading cruel blows; the last word is as a free man.

     It’s often said we’re all the same, that there’s no difference between races. Slice any of us open and you’ll find the same organs, the same colour blood; we have the same brains and emotions. But there is a big difference. Black men haven’t enslaved, terrorised and treated white men with horrific cruelty for 500 years. We’re the bad guys, make no mistake about that.

Dan Jenkins, July 2023.