From The Lawrence Ledger   01/25/2007

‘Briz’ brings Black History Month to Lawrence Library next week
By: Lea Kahn, Staff Writer

David Conard has been writing and singing about politics, love and other topics for most of his life, but he never thought he would write songs about slavery.
All that changed after Mr. Conard — known professionally as “Briz” — watched “Unchained Memories: Readings From the Slave Narratives,” a 2003 documentary on HBO based on interviews with former slaves that were conducted between 1936 and 1938.
Those interviews inspired Mr. Conard’s “Freedom Trilogy” of songs, written between 2004 and 2006, which examines slavery, the Civil War and the civil rights movement.
Next week, he will bring “Freedom’s Glory” to the Lawrence branch of the Mercer County Library on Darrah Lane. The program begins at 7 p.m. Feb. 1 and is in recognition of Black History Month.
“Freedom’s Glory,” which will be heard for the first time Feb. 1, is the final piece in the Freedom Trilogy, the  Eldridge Avenue resident said. The first two pieces — “Freedom Stairway” and “Freedom’s Cry” — focus on slavery and the Civil War, respectively. “Freedom Stairway” was first performed in 2005; “Freedom’s Cry” has not yet been performed.
Mr. Conard said the “Freedom’s Glory” program includes several of his own compositions, plus 1960s-era classics such as “We Shall Overcome.” It also includes a PowerPoint presentation of black-and-white photographs of the era, which also had been shown in “Unchained Memories,” and were provided by the United States Library of Congress.
“At the end of ‘Unchained Memories,’ there is a picture of the ‘freedom stairway,’” Mr. Conard said. “It’s a black-and-white photograph of a stairway going up the banks of the Ohio River (which divided the slave state of Kentucky from the free state of Ohio).
“It’s the stairway to freedom,” he said. “That picture made an impression on me. I wanted to know more about that time, what it must be like looking at those stairs, and all I have to do is climb the stairs and I’ll be a free man.”
Inspired by the photograph, Mr. Conard went to the Lawrence Library to learn more about the slave narratives, which were the product of interviews conducted by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.
The first song in what was to become his Freedom Trilogy grew from the initial entry in the book that contained the slave narratives, an interview with a woman who said she grew up on “Old Man Foley’s plantation” — which became the title of one of the musician’s songs.
“I wrote some more songs, and my wife, Michele, said I should do a program around it,” he said. “I didn’t know I was going to do more than a concept album of songs, but seeing the interest that my two sons, Shawn and Cody, took in it, I thought it might be a good children’s program. I decided to develop a whole program around it.”
Soon after Mr. Conard created “Freedom’s Stairway,” he realized a 40-minute show could not cover all the information available. “Freedom’s Cry” was the next segment, which explored the horrors of the Civil War.
“Freedom’s Glory” was written to wrap up the trilogy, he said. The former slaves were promised the right to vote and the right to own land, but many of those promises were not fulfilled until the Civil Rights era in the mid-20th century, nearly a century later, he said.
Mr. Conard, who gained his nickname “Briz” from his sister while growing up in nearby Hopewell Township, said he has always been interested in history, politics “and, of course, music.”
“I listened to President John F. Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and, to a certain extent, Malcolm X,” he said. “I was taken by their words. I could see how they were able to move people with their words. It made me want to hear what they had to say. I was always taken in by the plight of the underprivileged, the unfortunate and the underdog. People were not treated equally.”
Though a self-described child of the ’60s, Mr. Conard eventually went on to what he called “adult things.” He married and started a family, held a series of jobs in the food industry and moved to Florida. The family returned to Mercer County and settled in Lawrence in 1994.
Mr. Conard turned to music after the lease expired on a former business five years ago. He has since taken his performances on the road to libraries, schools, museums and cultural centers throughout New Jersey and currently performs about six to eight shows per month throughout the year.
While he acknowledged it may be unusual for a white man to write and perform songs that deal with blacks and slavery, both he and the program are well received by audiences. Black audiences especially appreciate his efforts to convey the historical aspects, he said.
“An African American woman came up to me after a show and thanked me. People don’t care who puts it out or how. They just want their children to know about it,” Mr. Conard said. “The children can’t imagine what slavery was like, or what the civil rights movement was like.”

“Freedom’s Glory” will be presented at Lawrence branch
of the Mercer County Library on Darrah Lane at 7 p.m. Feb. 1.