By Sarah Downey
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Nor is it entirely finished. The 49-year-old composer made his first journey back to Vietnam last year, seeking inspiration to expand the piece. “All I know is I had this need to go back. It’s like facing the enemy finally. I’m able to look at my experience in Vietnam from many different perspectives. As a soldier in Vietnam, I always felt a camaraderie with its people. I feel this had to do mostly with the fact that they as a people were fighting for their basic freedoms. As a black man, I related, and I think that’s what motivates me to go back.”
Williams tempers his moments of reflection with a wicked laugh; with a father in the army, laughter became a survival skill. He’d lived everywhere from Canada to Louisiana by the time he was 14 and his parents split up. A year later he left an aunt’s home in Baltimore to join his father on a military base in Biloxi, Mississippi, where he learned to play guitar at the airmen’s club. But after a year in the heart of segregated Dixie, father and son headed for Hawaii, where Williams became a leader on his high school’s track, football, and basketball teams.
“It’s like going back to where I performed before, but instead we’ll be playing for the people who used to be the so-called enemy,” says Williams. He wants to show the Vietnamese who he is as a person rather than who he was as a soldier. “Maybe I’m curious, maybe I feel guilty. Who knows? But by showing them my artistic side, I’m showing them I have more than an M-16; I also have notes on a page.” ArtSynergy is still in its formative stage, but Williams’s efforts have attracted the attention of Pham Zuan Sinh, deputy director of international relations for Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture and Information. Pete Peterson, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, is helping Williams arrange a trip that will bring Vietnamese musicians to Chicago this winter.
