I was interviewed, along with film producer and activist Leila Conners Peterson (11th Hour), in LA Yoga last week for a film we just finished called Urban Roots. The film is about the revolutionary urban farming movement in Detroit. I composed the music and provided several songs for the film, in an effort to give it more emotional impact and feel more like the Detroit (aka Motown) I grew up in. I was actually in Detroit taking care of my father when Leila called me. When she described the nature of the project – a story I already knew about my birthplace and my dad’s home for 88 years, I knew I had to help with film. It was more like a calling than a work call – a chance to bring some national attention to the issues facing Detroit, and to show the heart of its people.
Check out the article. More importantly, check out the film. More info at www.EarthTones.org.
Below is an excerpt from the LA Yoga article, “Urban Roots: Documenting a Backyard Revolution on Film.”
When people think about Detroit, two things often come to mind: cars and music. For this reason, music is an important part of Urban Roots. The soundtrack was created by LA-based composer, filmmaker, social entrepreneur, and Earthtones founder Frank Fitzpatrick, a native of Detroit who saw his participation in the project as a way to give back to his hometown.
LA YOGA: What influenced your choice of music in the film?
Frank Fitzpatrick: You can’t actually make something about Detroit without the throughline of music being an essential component. Its music has had an influence on our own country and globally. Detroit was a hard city when the music came out of it in the ‘60s. It was going through a rough time, but music was available everywhere.
Music engages the viewer emotionally in the character studies of the people who are at the heart of the film. They are loveable, and have a kind of charm. When they’re talking about the vegetables in their hands, they have a sense of purpose. The emotional impact of their self-empowerment is the inspiration for the film itself, and that is what I wanted to express
musically.
The farming creates shifts in their lives, allows them to have some control over their own destiny, and the music helps to raise that to an emotional level. One of the things I find interesting about farming is that there are no walls on farms. Isolation happens because people are separated by walls. When they are in an outdoor space together, doing fundamental stuff with the Earth, a different process takes place. Community—and music- provide an emotional lifeline between people. People can survive the hardest of times if they have something to hold on to.
LA YOGA: Being so close to this story, how have you felt about Detroit?
FF: The story of Detroit is the country’s greatest national disaster. There is a lot more devastation throughout the city than there was in New Orleans after Katrina, but people don’t know about it since the decline took thirty years as opposed to one day. As the industrial era is shifting so fast right now, Detroit is an example of what could happen to many cities at some point.
Personally, I feel a sense of loss; Detroit was once a thriving city, the fourth largest city in America, the highest-paid middle class city in the world. All of that shifted dramatically from 1975 – 1980. It is sad to have people not be aware of the contributions and value of Detroit to the world. Before the realization of the contamination of industrialization, it was the road to the American Dream.
Farming now provides a sense of empowerment to people. It’s hard to know where it will go because it is all rogue but in such a positive way, that if there is enough attention brought to it and if it happens en masse, hopefully that will keep it from being shut down. The belt around the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater supply in the world, contains some of the most fertile agricultural soil in the nation. After cleaning up the lead contamination, there’s no reason it can’t be flourishing farmland again.
People who were only used to eating at McDonald’s are now eating organically grown vegetables from down the block. Their changing relationship to food has helped to change their ability to be self-sustaining.
Although Detroit is never going to repeat its history — it is never going to become the thriving industrial city it once was — there is the potential to come back to people’s core values of depending on community.
LA YOGA: Did the film make you feel hopeful?
FF: Whether urban farms will save Detroit, I don’t know. The sense of hope and pride, though, can shift the consciousness of people. In the past twenty-five years, there hasn’t been much hope and pride. The solutions for cities are often more of the same, such as more buildings, rather than something like this that involves people being engaged in their communities.
Look for the rest of this article in the April 2011 issue of LA Yoga Magazine or online at www.layogamagazine.com/
