“We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our checks and shades our eyes,
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.”
When Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote his famous poem, “We Wear The Mask,” over a century ago to describe the protective personas that Black people publicly display to the world to hide their pain and shield themselves from the vagaries of racism, surely he believed Blacks would be past the need for such protective measures by now. Unfortunately, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And, over the ensuing decades other thinkers and artists have found it necessary to build on and riff off this idea, from the “double-consciousness” concept introduced in W.E.B. Dubois’s landmark, The Souls of Black Folks, to the stripping of masks revealing the hurt of Ntozake Shangé’s choreopoem, For Colored Girls…, and Nina Simone’s “Four Women.” Exploring both the masks and what wells lie beneath arrives the young, internationally renowned bandleader and singer-songwriter Dannis Winston with his searing “4 Black Men” debut.
“Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.” – Paul Laurence Dunbar
Continuing this artistic tradition of cultural interrogation and provocative social commentary, Winston boldly steps into a path followed by Simone in excavating the interior life of endangered Black bodies both residing in and resisting such masks. That he does so in a mellifluous baritone that’s mahogany smooth while singing lyrics melodically traveling from a confessional blues to a surprisingly optimistic conclusion of uplift is only the icing on a weighty song tackling timely topics.
As a buzz cut, “4 Black Men” is a powerful introduction for the highly anticipated five-track Master/Class EP to be released by the Ubiquita Worldwide label later this month. After watching Winston’s performance portraying four very different Black men, I’m sure burgeoning fans have been slyly goosed to wonder who is this talented black man behind these masks? And, how much more of this activist spirit from Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, Stevie Wonder and Ms. Nina Simone can we dare to hope for from their brave and studious child?
By L. Michael Gipson
Dannis Winston – “4 Black Men”