Sky Is the Only Roof

Inside the gondolas of Union Station’s St. Louis Wheel, patrons could experience city views while listening to Sky Is the Only Roof, a sound installation made in collaboration with St. Louis storytellers and performers Jackie and Papa Wright.

Installed in Union Station, Untitled (Ripple) was a monumental sculpture of decommissioned theater drapes and scenic canvas flats.

In the center of Union Station’s south entrance, Untitled (Press) was a functional penny press with fragments of lyrics invoking freedom sung by Baker (“sky is the only / roof I’ve ever had”).

Baker’s early career in vaudeville and dance is associated with many St. Louis venues formerly clustered near Union Station, including iconic Black theaters and cinemas such as Club Riviera, Ruby’s Zodiac Lounge, the huge Booker T. Washington Theater, and others, which were subsequently entirely destroyed. The project pays homage to this lost history by producing symbolic and real tokens of change and exchange.

All money collected through Untitled (Press) was donated to The Black Rep, a 45-year-old legacy Black arts organization in St. Louis committed to producing, re-imagining, and commissioning work written by Black playwrights and creating opportunities for new voices and youth.

Sky Is the Only Roof began as a meditation on movement, travel, and performance in and through St. Louis, a meditation on Black life and the legacy of live performance generated by one of the largest Black communities in the United States in the twentieth century: Mill Creek Valley. When I arrived in town, one of my first tasks was to explore the neighborhood on foot. I came prepared with a spreadsheet and map plotting two dozen Black performance spaces active in the 1930s and 40s—concert and vaudeville halls, nightclubs, theaters—all clustered within a radius of a half mile. (Continued here.)

Click here to read.

Performers: Jackie Wright, Glen “Papa” Wright

Recording: Shock City Studios

Additional recording: Justin Hicks

Edited by: Steffani Jemison

Mixed by: Sean T. Davis

Diffraction. Noun. In optics, “the spreading of light or deflection of its rays,”

Diffraction. From a Latin root that means “break apart in pieces.”

I have been a rover since I was a child,
No one to love or care for me.
Knocked around all over, kinda grew up wild –
My home’s wherever I may be.
Ain’t no someone yearnin’, wonderin’ where I be;
I’m gone, but no one’s missin’ me;
Ain’t no light a-burnin’ ev’ry night for me;
I’m like a bird that’s flyin’ free.
I’m just breezin’ along with the breeze,
Trailin’ the rails, roamin’ the seas.
Like the birdies that sing in the trees,
Pleasin’ to live, livin’ to please.
The sky is the only roof I have over my head;
And when I’m weary, Mother Nature makes my bed.
I’m just goin’ along as I please,
Breezin’ along with the breeze.