Attendee 1: I'm psyched. This is gonna be a once in a lifetime kind of event. 

Attendee 3: A world renowned cellist outside of our hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky. 

Attendee 4: Yeah, we're thrilled to have someone of his caliber to come here. 

Attendee 2: The cello is my favorite instrument, and I'm a big fan of the cave. 

Attendee 5: We're gonna walk into the cave, and we're gonna see Yo-Yo Ma play his cello inside Mammoth Cave. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Are you scared at all to be in the dark? 

Attendee 5 : Yeah, it's going to be exciting and a little scary. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: That sounds how I, how I feel too. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: It's early spring in central Kentucky. The dogwood trees are blooming those white star flowers, and the air is damp from thunderstorms. I'm here outside the visitor center at Mammoth Cave National Park with a couple hundred people waiting to head down into the cave for an event. 

Attendee 6: No details have really been leaked. I hear it will be very different than anything we will probably ever see again. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: All anyone knows is that Yo-Yo Ma and the Louisville Orchestra are in the cave right now under our feet getting ready to premiere a new composition by music director Teddy Abrams titled Mammoth. 

Attendee 7: We're expecting something very exciting. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The idea of a symphony orchestra playing in a cave is a little bewildering to me, but then again, I'm not from Kentucky. 

Attendee 7: Growing up as a kid what you did in this part of the country is you explored caves.

ATTENDEE 8: I always think it's really interesting when sometimes it rains a lot and there'll just be collapses. 

And all these antique Corvettes and fancy vehicles were just sitting in the bottom of a hole and it's like, oh yeah. We live in Kentucky. It's just a reminder. It's very mysterious here,

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Nobody really knows how big Mammoth Cave is. There are speculations. Good guesses. It’s almost like a parallel universe under the soil, unphased by the changing world outside of its many many mouths. The cave itself is just rock, dust. But within those seemingly inert walls, the air holds eons of stories. 

Yo-Yo Ma: If you hold a piece of rock that's a million years old, you are actually in contact with something way beyond our present feeling and knowledge of time. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: I’m Ana González and this is Our Common Nature, a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma through this complicated country to help us all find that connection to nature that so many of us are missing. We climb mountains, play music, drive dirt roads, recite poetry, traverse rivers and oceans and our own brains –  all to figure out how to better live on our planet together. 

And today, we're going to use music to connect us to the earth’s longest cave system… that we know of. This thing is in Kentucky, and it’s beyond huge, like a world underground, made up of hundreds of miles of caverns, rivers, and passageways that human beings have yet to fully explore. In the 1880s this was one of the most popular attractions in the world – there was a train that took people straight to the cave. But today, most people don’t even know about it.  

Yo-Yo Ma: I think what's great about music is that it's something that can lock in time through how powerful a present moment is felt.

Ranger: The title of the piece of music you're about to hear this evening is called Mammoth and it was inspired by the history and people here at Mammoth Cave. It was written specifically for us, for this moment in time. 

MUSIC UP

ANA GONZÁLEZ: I didn't really know what I was expecting when I walked into Mammoth Cave. I haven't spent a lot of time in caves, so I was kind of picturing it like a long tube underground that kept going for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles, but that's not what Mammoth Cave is. 

Teddy Abrams: I think when people go into this place, they feel like they're entering into the earth itself. It's like you've entered into a different planet. It feels like there is some kind of spiritual center there. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is Teddy Abrams. 

Teddy Abrams: I am the music director of the Louisville Orchestra and I'm talking about Mammoth here. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: He wrote and conducted the piece we're listening to, Mammoth, to be performed deep underground. But he had no idea if it was going to work.

Teddy Abrams: I still don't even understand how they did it. I mean, are the percussion instruments going to make it down into the cave? Will the harp not crack and will all the strings just split? Like, you're not supposed to leave harps in a 54 degree cave, but we had to. And there were two of them in this piece, by the way.

Yo-Yo Ma: You know, it was a wild idea to do that. And it takes wild and courageous imagination and perseverance of Teddy Abrams to pull it off. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Teddy has been obsessed with Mammoth Cave, and its very special history, for years now. 

Teddy Abrams: Yes. You should see my stack of books.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And that’s because he has a mission as musical director of the louisville orchestra

Teddy Abrams: My dream was to take the orchestra and bring it to every part of Kentucky, with the goal of bridging the urban rural divide through music

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yo-Yo had worked with Teddy before and loved the idea of doing a piece inside the cave at Mammoth Cave National Park. 

Yo-Yo Ma: So much has happened in those caves. And in fact, in some ways defines, among other things, the history of our nation

ANA GONZÁLEZ: So the Park, Yo-Yo and Teddy – they’re all down to make this project happen. Only one problem: Teddy didn’t know how to drive. He lived his life in the city and he used to public transportation, which there’s not a lot of in Kentucky, especially going from Louisville direct to Mammoth Cave.

Teddy Abrams: I'm going to figure this out. And I biked myself down there, which took, you know, it took about like 10 hours

ANA GONZÁLEZ: You biked 10 hours? 

Teddy Abrams: Yeah, because it's, it's well over a hundred miles of hard biking. Like, know you, can’t go on the interstate obviously

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yeah.

Teddy Abrams: And it’s uphill.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Through a hundred miles of rolling farmlands, pedaling through small towns and farms, past horses and hazards. 

Teddy Abrams: I got chased by dogs left and right… that was, it was exciting. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: When it was safe enough, he listened to music.  

Teddy Abrams: I actually listened to most of, um, the Ring cycle. 

[flight of the valkyries plays]

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The classic Wagner set of operas famous for some of the most dramatic musical motifs in popular culture.

Teddy Abrams:  It was for a specific purpose because I had in mind that whatever we made in the cave was going to have a kind of epic quality to it, in the sense of like a big spiritual piece

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Hour after hour, the tension for Teddy to arrive at the cave mounted. It felt like a pilgrimage. Once he finally arrived at the Mammoth, ten hours later, it was even more magnificent than he could have imagined

Teddy Abrams: It gave me the perspective of a lot of the people who would have experienced getting from place to place in the 19th century up to the middle part of the 20th century, much of that would have been influenced by the challenge of just getting there. And this gave me a, you know, big window into how actually the piece should ultimately should be made because it needed to be respectful and honor the circumstances of the people that have made Mammoth Cave what it is to this day.  

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Wow. And I bet that 10 hours gave you a lot of time to think about all this. 

Teddy Abrams: Yes. And it led to some deep realizations of like, what caves mean, to people. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Caves have always been a place where human beings have been drawn to because they protect us from the elements.  They’re a natural home, and their safety gives you time to rest, reflect, and go deep within your mind.  So it makes sense that Mammoth Cave would hold the history of the people that entered it. It’s almost like a monument to them. And that’s how Teddy thought about writing this music.

Teddy Abrams: So the piece originally took on the structure of kind of a requiem mass

ANA GONZÁLEZ: A musical form based on the Catholic mass to honor the souls of the dead. For Mammoth, this means everything and everyone that the cave has held in its depths.

MUSIC

Teddy Abrams: Yeah. So the way the piece is structured actually begins long before you enter into the final room where most of the performance takes place. 

ENTERING CAVE

ANA GONZÁLEZ: As the audience files past a waterfall, down a staircase and into the underworld, a small group of musicians greet them with drums.

Teddy Abrams: You don't know what you're listening to. It's just these percussion instruments. Really deep drums, bells, and some chimes that give pitches. And then the musicians start singing these lines of chant that sounds almost like the kind of chant you would hear in the 800s or 900s in church.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Once the whole audience enters, all five or six hundred of them, the musicians join the group and walk down about a quarter mile though a mini canyon that opens up into a cavernous rotunda, set for a musical performance, aglow with lights reflecting off of limestone. And it’s as grand as any house of worship, lying just below the crust of the earth.

Teddy Abrams: Then, the audience, or, as I call them, the congregation, forms a ring around this massive room. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Singer Davóne Tines is wearing a black sleeveless cloak -- it goes all the way down to his boots. And he's carrying a lantern that lights his solemn face. He walks to the middle of the hall.

Davóne Tines (performing): We are together here in this deep place within the earth. This is the realm below. [fades down and under]

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Davóne is the narrator through the piece 

Teddy Abrams: The way I've structured it is first you hear the natural history of the piece. So you tell the story of how the cave came to be.

Davóne Tines (performing): The water made this place. 

MUSIC

YO-YO PLAYS

Teddy Abrams: Yo-Yo enters and begins basically the overture to the piece, which presents all the themes that you're then going to hear, 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: What was your first impression of Mammoth Cave? 

Yo-Yo Ma: Dark and cold. Big. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Mammoth, even. Yeah. 

Yo-Yo Ma: Yeah! Very apt.

MUSIC: HARP

Percussionist 1: There's notated, improvised water sounds. So to do that, we have these mic’d aquariums to mimic the flowing, dripping water. 

Ana Gonzalez: Whoa!

Percussionist: Yeah. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: These are members of the percussion section 

Percussionist 1: One bass drum was not enough for this piece. We had to go mammoth, so we have four of them, plus a kick drum.

PERCUSSIONIST 2: For the earthquake, I have a bucket full of rocks that are shaking around. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Where'd you get the rocks? 

PERCUSSIONIST 2: From here. 

PERCUSSIONIST 1: Authentic. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Authentic. That's what it would really sound like. Wow. 

EARTHQUAKE SOUND

ANA GONZÁLEZ: After the natural history section, Mammoth, the musical piece, opens up into the human history of Mammoth, the cave. From its early discovery by prehistoric people, right up until the complicated modern history of the park guides who have been leading people through these caves for over a hundred years.

(fading in) Lived here.  And today, many of us still have our families here. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is a moment in the piece where park guide Johnny Merideth comes on stage. He paces back and forth against the cave walls and talks about his family who were all guides.

Johnny Meredith: They're resting in cemeteries above us. And at this time, I would love to introduce you to a man who has his own story to tell. I give you Mr. Jerry Bransford.

ANA GONZÁLEZ:: Jerry walks onstage. He’s an older Black man wearing a crisp National Park Service uniform. And he takes off his flat-brimmed hat and holds it in his hands.

Jerry Bransford: Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I've got an American story I want to share with you. About some old kinfolks who were in slavery here 185 years ago. It’s an American story…

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Jerry’s family were guides too. They were enslaved people – and that was one of their jobs. But that history was lost for generations until the cave brought it back.

Jerry Bransford: So our family stay on here. This become our home. So when I walk through the cave, I see their names on the cave wall: Matt 1850. Nick 1857. It bring a tear to my eye. What hardship they must have endured.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Do you remember that performance and the things you were feeling when you were telling that story? 

Jerry Bransford: Well, I think probably, I may have got a little emotional. It was almost unbelievable, and I felt that this is my one opportunity to tell the story in a way that maybe it's never been told before, and that's what I tried to do. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ; Jerry Bransford has been a guide at Mammoth Cave National Park for 20 years, but the Bransford name goes back more than a hundred years before that. And after the break, we hear that story.

BREAK

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our Common Nature is back. I’m Ana and I’m talking to Jerry Bransford about Mammoth Cave.  Jerry is in his seventies today. It's his last year being a guide at Mammoth Cave before he retires, 

Jerry Bransford: If you think the cave is friendly everywhere, it is not. There's parts of that cave you can fall 50 feet off the edge. There's parts of that cave that's wet and muddy. There's parts of that cave that's wonderful. There's parts of that cave that can be very unforgiving.

MUSIC

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Jerry’s known about the cave his whole life. From the stories of his ancestors.

Jerry Bransford: Nick and Mat Bransford. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: By all accounts, Nick and Mat were close like brothers, but not related. They were both owned by Thomas Bransford – a white slave owner – but Mat was actually Thomas Bransford's biological son. We don’t know too much more than that, but it could have been a good reason to get teenage Mat out of the house. 

Jerry Bransford: So they were rented for 100 a year each.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Rented to a man who owned a cave that he wanted to open up as a tourist attraction. And this man owned another enslaved teenager, who was already tasked with exploring and mapping the underworld. So when Mat and Nick showed up, they joined him underground. 

And so you have this one 17 or 18 years old, teaching these two other guys who had probably never been in a cave in their lives, how to explore the underworld, how to spelunk down 50 foot walls, how to cross underground rivers, how to keep your lanterns lit while guiding groups of the world's most elite into the heart of the earth. 

Jerry Bransford: You got your lantern and a candle, and you'd go out to places where no one ever been. And it scares me to death to go out there with co-workers and modern-day lighting equipment. Let alone going with a candle or a lantern. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The three of them were like the Indiana Joneses of the deep dark below. Mat was especially good at catching the eyeless fish that lived in the cave’s rivers to sell for some extra cash. They were hobnobbing with rich white folks who trusted their lead underground and even taught them how to read and write their names on the cave walls. But at the end of the day, they were all still enslaved. And Jerry grew up hearing stories about these guys.

Jerry Bransford: How would it be for you to take people through the cave, and they have a wonderful and enjoyable time, they would go their way, and after the stagecoach pulled away, guess what? You're still in slavery. I can only imagine how they must have felt. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Mat got married eventually. 

Jerry Bransford: To a girl named Parthena, isn't that a lovely name? 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And because Mat and Parthena were enslaved, their kids were considered the property of their slave owners. And three of them were sold off to other families. 

Jerry Bransford: I'm really overpowered about how Mat must have felt, he and his wife seeing those children led away.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Mat used the cave as a solitary place to grieve. He was quoted in a book written by a cave visitor. 

Jerry Bransford: He said, “I’m a man and I can bear it. Though it went mighty hard. Men don't supposed to cry, but sometime I go down in that cave to the river where don't nobody see me. I cry my eyes out.”

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Mat Bransford stayed on the land around Mammoth Cave for the rest of his life. He stayed through the Civil War, through the abolition of slavery. He stayed because he had a home there. He had work as a guide. And he stayed for his children, who would hopefully know where to find him if they ever came back.

And they did. Matt went on to have grandchildren and great grandchildren. He died an old man with a good job as a cave guide. And the Bransfords were leaders in their community of Black and white cave guides who lived up on the ridge above the main entrance. That is, until the United States government decided to make Mammoth Cave a national park. More on that after the break.

BREAK 

Our Common Nature is Back. We’re in Mammoth cave in Kentucky with Jerry Bransford talking about how becoming a national park changed everything in this community. It started in the 1920s

Jerry Bransford: Five hundred and seven rural families were alerted that this could become a national park. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The U.S. government identified roughly 45,000 acres of land around the cave they wanted for the park. In the end, around six hundred families were asked to leave their land. Jerry Bransford was told about a relative who asked a park official:

Jerry Bransford: He says, “I've had restless nights thinking about losing my place. I was born here, my daddy was born here, his daddy before him. Is there a chance that we could be spared?”

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The answer was no. The Bransfords and all the families on Flint Ridge Road, Black and white, had just 16 months to vacate their land, which was full of farms and houses, schools and churches, built by hand. Jerry’s family even had a hotel, the Bransford Summer Resort, that they ran so Black visitors would have somewhere safe to stay. And all of it had to be abandoned. Much of it was demolished in order for the land to turn back to forest.  

Jerry Bransford: It was not an easy transition. There are people that are still bitter about that. There's people that were forced off their land. They said they will never come back to that national park. One of the more heartbreaking things for me is that they didn't know at that time that not only were they going to lose their land, they weren't going to be tour guides anymore. By 1941 it was over. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: 1941 was the year Mammoth cave became a National Park, a public space in a Jim Crow state. Everything about Mammoth became legally segregated, including its workforce. Not only did the Bransfords lose their homes, they lost their jobs as cave guides because the park no longer allowed Black guides. It was a whites only position. Black men could only work manual labor jobs in the park. 

Jerry Bransford: Fourth generation guide. And now you are a pick and shovel guy in a cave working to build trails that you have walked over for 30 years. It just breaks my heart.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Jerry's father was in his twenties when this happened. He had to move to another county to find work. He never became a guide. No Black men his age did. But he always talked about Mammoth Cave with a lot of love and pride. 

Jerry Bransford: We went to Cave often when I was a kid. We would go up to where the homestead is, where Mammoth Cave's colored school was, and where Pleasant Union Baptist Church once stood. So Daddy would drive down this country lane. He says, over there is where I used to run up and down this hill barefooted. What it really meant to my father to go back up in those woods, he was actually going back home. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Jerry grew up about 20 miles away from Mammoth, in a small, segregated town in Kentucky. He said it was happy, but controlled, by race. 

Jerry Bransford: You know, going downtown to the local theater, people of color had to sit upstairs. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And when he and his family went to visit Mammoth Cave, it was the same deal. Jerry's dad still knew most of the guides that were able to remain at the cave, because he grew up with them, but they were all white.

Jerry Bransford: And I used to wonder, how would it feel if I could wear that uniform? What is, what is it like where they've been? Well, of course, at that time we weren't even allowed inside the hotel restaurant, so I never ever thought about working down there. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Actually, no Black person was a park ranger at Mammoth Cave until the 1970s, and still to this day, the overwhelming majority of park rangers at Mammoth and across the country are white. In one generation, the presence of Black cave guides at Mammoth was reduced to memory. All traces of the Black Bransford family above the ground in the park were gone.

MUSIC

ANA GONZÁLEZ: But underground? 

Jerry Bransford: There's places in the cave that my great great grandfather's name is scratched on the cave wall in the limestone: Materson Bransford, 1850. Looks as though it was done yesterday.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Throughout Mammoth cave, there are what looks like layers of graffiti all over the cave walls. And today, that's illegal to do, but back in the 1800s, the people who came to Mammoth cave before it was a national park would have been carrying torches, lanterns and candles. And then they would burn their names, the date, and even the outline of their faces, into the soft limestone. And the cave, at 54 degrees day in day out, preserved it. At least that’s what one of the park guides, Dominique, told me. 

DOMINIQUE: Because they made it to the ends of the earth, so everybody that comes after them, they want to know they were there, too.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Dominique is leading me down deep into Mammoth cave into what they call the Hall of Signatures. Because it’s just filled with the names of people who walked these steps into the utter darkness.  

DOMINIQUE: You said you had a flashlight, right?

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Oh, I see it though. Right there? MAT. 

DOMINIQUE: Yeah. MAT there. 

Ana: Whoa. 

Dominique: That's Mat with the year 1850 over it. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Cool. 1850. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: M-A-T. Short for Materson Bransford. The cave never forgot. 

Yo-Yo Ma: I think to put your name in the cave, that's to say, you know, I was there. You're building the scaffolding of your life way into the next century, right? 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. To me, it's as simple as saying, like, yeah, I was here. I mattered. I'm part of history, and if no one's gonna write it, I'm gonna write it, because I have the ability to do that.

MUSIC

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The Bransfords lost their land above the cave. And their jobs within it.  But in 2004, Jerry got a chance to write a new ending to the story. 

Jerry Bransford: I can only imagine the things that I would have missed out on and things that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't have accepted that job. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ:  Jerry was offered a job as a park guide, and he took it. He finally got to put on that uniform and that flat brimmed hat. 

Jerry Bransford: Perhaps it will give due to the family that was there for so long. And they felt so badly when they left. Perhaps this closes that gap a little bit. 

Yo-Yo Ma:  It's funny. Listening to Jerry's story is like doing some time travel. connect to a human whose family went through all of that. And for them to have this deep connection to the cave and to land and, in a way, to reconciliation, is unbelievably moving.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And playing this piece, Mammoth, this grand epic cinematic musical story, let all of us feel the pull of the cave. 

Teddy Abrams: And I feel like that encapsulates both the permanence and the limitations of the human experience of the music that we make, of the lives that we lead. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ NEW: Louisville Orchestra Music Director Teddy Abrams again

Teddy Abrams: And somehow in that cave, in that spiritual place, those all converge. You know, the, the forever and the fleeting are all there simultaneously.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Back in the performance, Jerry, being the park guide that he is, wanted people to feel what he feels when he’s underground. 

Jerry Bransford: So when I walk through the cave and see their names on the cave wall, sometime a tear comes up in my eye. I feel the emotion and the power. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: He started to sing a song. The lyrics refer to the River Jordan, heading to the promised land. But in Jerry's family, that river was the Ohio in Louisville, Kentucky, where enslaved people would cross in hopes of finding freedom far from the South.

Jerry Bransford: But it's called “Deep River,” did you ever hear that? [sings] Deep River, Deep River, Deep River, Help me cross over to the other side. 

Davóne Tines: [sings] Deep River, Deep River 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our musical guide, Davóne Tines, emerged again from the crowd and joined Jerry.  He’s still carrying his lantern, wearing a long black cloak.

Davóne Tines: [sings] Deep River, Deep River 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Davone held Jerry’s hand while Jerry looked away, biting his bottom lip. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: One more question, and you don't have to answer this, but is, is there a Jerry Bransford signature anywhere in the cave? 

Jerry Bransford: No, I can't do that. Well, there's something, there's something better, there's something better than that. There is a newly discovered passage in the cave. The Cave Research Foundation recommended to the Mammoth Cave National Park that they would name that “Jerry Bransford's Way.” So that should never ever change. My name should remain on the cave passageways forever.

Davóne Tines: [sings] Deep River, Deep River 

In this next episode, we go to the Smoky Mountains to meet 2 cherokee women and the son of a jazz great who are working on reclaiming their histories. 

CREDITS:

Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and Sound Postings 

Hosted by me, Ana González

Produced by Alan Goffinski

With editing from Pearl Marvell

Sound design and episode music by Alan Goffinski

Mixed  by Joe Plourde

Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado

Executive Producers are Emily Botein, Ben Mandelkern, Sophie Shackleton, and Jonathan Bays.

 

Our advisors are Mira Burt-Wintonick, Kamaka Dias, Kelley Libbey, and Chris Newell

 

Special thanks to: Mammoth Cave National Park and Louisville Orchestra for their recording of Mammoth used throughout this episode. Find out more about their projects and concerts by visiting 

louisvilleorchestra.org  

 

If you want to learn more about all the history of enslaved guides at Mammoth Cave, you can read the book Making Their Mark: The Signature of Slavery at Mammoth Cave, written by Joy Lyons, who was also responsible for getting Jerry that job, all those years ago. 

 

And if you want to listen to more music from this series, you can check out the Our Common Nature EP, featuring Yo-Yo playing with Eric Mingus, Jen Kreisberg and an Icelandic choir, now available on all streaming platforms.

This podcast was inspired by a project of the same name, conceived by Yo-Yo Ma and Sound Postings, with creative direction by Sophie Shackleton, in collaboration with partners all over the world.

 

Our Common Nature is made possible with support from Emerson Collective and Tambourine Philanthropies.

 

######