PROJECT 100:
KATAHJ COPLEY
★ AMERYKAHN GRAFFITI ★
FOR WIND BAND
2025 | GRADE 6 | ~35- 40 MINUTES
“Graffiti is not art. It’s crime.”
- Rudy Giuliani , former Mayor of New York City
“Graffiti is art and if art is a crime, please God, forgive me.”
- Lee Quiñones , artist
​Graffiti can be war paint
It is a serenade of spray paint and brush strokes.
It is survival written in hue.
It is history in technicolor.
Graffiti has long stood at the crossroads of controversy and creativity. For some it is a sign of failure. A forecast of urban decay. But for others it is the truth—unfiltered, unapproved, and unbought. What others feared was the brilliance in the chaos, the power in color that never asked for permission to exist. Graffiti is not vandalism. It’s a conversation. It's an expression. It’s a voice that refuses to be silent.
For the artists, instead of being in society’s frame by being held within museums, they built their own—on trains, on walls, on canvases people tried to forget.
Amerykahn Graffiti is an homage to that gallery. It is the canvas. It is a sonic offering.
A reimagining of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, painted in sound and soul, it is a journey through the Black experience—our joy, our wounds, our beauty, our rage. Each movement is a mural. Each sound, a heartbeat. Each note, a stitch in a story quilt.
It moves through the sounds once called “noise”—hip-hop, gospel, funk, jazz and other black music—sounds born in basements, communities and backstreets, now cornerstones in music creation. Like graffiti, these sounds were ridiculed, erased, feared. But they endured. They transformed. They became the soundtrack of the human soul.
This isn’t background music.
It’s a living, breathing, unapologetic portrait of a people who refuse to be silenced.
This is a tribute.
This is a love letter.
This is a cry.
This is a testimony
This is Amerykahn Graffiti.
AMERYKAHN GRAFFITI - INSTRUMENTATION
Piccolo
1-3 Flute
1-2 Oboe
1-2 Bassoon
Contrabassoon
1-3 Bb Clarinet
Bass Clarinet
Contrabass Clarinet
SATB Saxophone
1-3 Trumpet
1-4 F Horn
1-2 Trombone
Bass Trombone
Euphonium
Tuba
Piano
Harp
Double Bass
Timpani
5 Percussion
AMERYKAHN GRAFFITI - THE ART
CLICK TO EXPLORE
Based on Cey Adams - "American Flag"
Based on Gordon Parks - "American Gothic"
Based on Kerry James Marshall- "Slow Dance"
Based on Tony WHLGN- "Untitled"
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh - "Stop Telling Women to Smile"
4 OF 10 MOVEMENTS
(MORE TO COME)
AMERYKAHN GRAFFITI - THE AUDIO & PERUSAL*
* PERUSALS ARE EARLY DRAFTS AND NOT THE FINAL PRODUCT OF THE MOVEMENTS AND INTERLUDES
PROMENADE
"Imagine you want to walk in the exhibition but they won't let you in"
The opening of this project. Similar to Mussorgsky's Pictures (Maurice Ravel's transcription) the work starts with an opening solo and from there the colors begin to blend into one another ultimately creating the framework of this project.
A feeling of oppression breaking with the hope of expression.
i. Gothika
The Gnome by Mussorgsky illustrated a disgruntled figure not fitting of society's image. The original is fast, aggressive and intense. For me I wanted to highlight a group of individuals that were and to a certain extent like gnomes, African Americans in the blue collar work force. This movement is built as an intense hymn- based on "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair". The movement is relentless and harsh with only a brief moment of relief. Dedicated to my father and to all the countless African Americans who worked their entire lives to make their dreams and others dreams happen.
ii. Love is an offering...
Based on “Slow Dance” by Kerry James Marshall One of my reimagining goals is to take a movement and give it a different look. While the old castle movement is stoic and mysterious, I wanted to take a look at a different approach to stoic and mysterious like love. Displayed in so many forms in media, love in the black community means strength and passion.
Imagery I was trying to get is a couple dancing/persevering/being vulnerable to each other through tough times- whether from internal or external forces. As the music gets increasingly intense the love does as well. “Love is an offering, love is a fortress”
iii. playas garden
“The Tulleries” movement
With a Afro-Latin & Gospel blend, Playas Garden- based on Tony WHLGN's "Untitled"- is a response to children playing-imagining themselves as different things. Featuring only woodwinds and percussion, Playas Garden grows with intensity, colors, and technique. Similar to The Tulleries it is playful and lively.
CONSORTIUM LEADER
DR. HENRY DORN &
THE ST. OLAF BAND
Henry Dorn (b. Little Rock, AR). Each of his compositions builds distinct narratives based on lived experiences of being a musician and African American, taking ideas and putting them in places where they do not seem to belong. Dorn has enjoyed performances by noteworthy ensembles across the country, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, the Grammy-winning Harlem Quartet, Aizuri Quartet, Argento Ensemble, and the Dallas Wind Symphony.
Dorn is Assistant Professor of Music and Conductor of the St. Olaf Band at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. He is the former assistant director to the Memphis Area Youth Wind Ensemble, and former director to the Memphis-based Nu Chamber Collective. Dorn has also worked with musicians of the United States Army Field Band, the United States Air Force Band, and has guest conducted the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own.” He’s proud to have received multiple
awards for his unique style, including an Inaugural Future of Music Faculty Fellowship from the Cleveland Institute of Music and an ASCAP Foundation’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award.
Dorn holds two Doctor of Musical Arts degrees – one in wind conducting and another in composition – from Michigan State University and has completed studies at The University of Memphis and at Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. He has studied conducting with Kevin L. Sedatole, Harlan D. Parker, and Kraig Alan Williams, and composition with David Biedenbender, Ricardo Lorenz, Alexis Bacon, Oscar Bettison, Kamran Ince, and Jack Cooper.
AMERYKAHN GRAFFITI - CONSORTIUM
STUDENT BUY - IN ($90)
+ Name in Score
+ KC Merchandise Item
* MUST BE A STUDENT IN HIGH SCHOOL OR COLLEGE *
INDIVIDUAL BUY - IN ($125)
+ Name in Score
+ KC Merchandise Item
+ Score and Parts
​
ORGANIZATION BUY - IN ($250)
+ Name in Score along with organization's name
+ 2 KC Merchandise Item
+ Score and Parts
+ Exclusive Performance Rights for 1 Year