Saheem Ali may currently be directing the hit show Buena Vista Social Club on Broadway, but the Kenyan-born director was never supposed to do theatre. In fact, when he immigrated to America for college, his parents wanted him to study computer science. “I came as a computer science major. My parents wouldn't let me study theatre, and I switched my major to theatre,” he says with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “I was very sneaky. I didn't tell them until six months before I graduated. They were not happy…I felt like I found my calling. It was definitely going to be the theatre.”

A variation of that same story, of going against familial expectations and finding your calling through the arts, is what Ali is currently dramatizing in Goddess, a new musical he created that’s now running Off-Broadway. Fittingly, both Buena Vista and Goddess are about, as Ali describes it, “the transcendent power of music.”

“I was a kid growing up in Kenya who spoke Swahili, who listened to a Cuban album [Buena Vista Social Club] that moved me, that never left me. Then, when I had the opportunity to create a show, I said, absolutely, because I believe in the transcendent power of music,” he says, his excitement so visible he almost vibrates as he speaks. “For Goddess, it's transcendent, it's something that only a deity could create. We have to appreciate it and honor it and use it to access emotions and feelings and a sense of self. So, for me, that marriage of theatre and music is one that I love and respect very deeply.”

Ali first conceptualized the show in 2007, while pursuing his directing degree at Columbia. He wanted to create an “original African musical” about Marimba, a figure he’s been obsessed with since he was 16 years old. She is the goddess of music who, according to African legends, taught the world to sing and invented a number of musical instruments, including the one that bears her name.

“She witnessed hate and discord, and created music to bring harmony,” explains Ali. “There is a fear of uniting people with music, because division is control, and so music is healing. Music brings community. Music creates connection. Music is a language that we can all understand regardless of the language that we're actually speaking. So, I think we want to create something that elevates and uplifts the power of music.”

Goddess first premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California in 2022 to rave reviews. Now, the show is finally making its anticipated New York debut, at the Public Theater until June 8, extending before it even began performances. It stars Amber Iman as Marimba, who comes down to Earth because she wants to know what it is to love. Having renamed herself Nadira, she also gets to witness firsthand the effect of the gift she’s given to the world. She also helps convince a young man named Omari (played by Austin Scott) to follow his passion for music instead of bowing to what his parents have planned for him. The parallels to Ali himself are clear, which also points to why he’s continued with the project even after he’s gone from a theatre student to a Broadway director. As he says wryly, “I could have made three shows in the time that I made Goddess the musical.”

Iman has been attached to the project since 2018; she and the show’s composer, Michael Thurber, have been with the show the longest. It’s Iman’s follow-up project after last season’s Lempicka on Broadway—though this time, it’s her face on the posters. Though Lempicka only ran for a month, Iman did receive a Tony nomination for it and looks back on the experience with gratitude. “That was the show I worked on the longest. It was a show I helped build. There were songs in there that I asked for because I knew they were what I needed—and to see them blossom and grow…To me, it was all a success.” She then adds, with a dash of playfulness: “My goal during my Tony campaign was to have fun and look better than everybody. That's what I did.”

To Iman, everything happens for a reason. And because she’d been part of the development process for Lempicka and Goddess at the same time, she thought at one point, “I wasn't going to get to do them both. I would have to choose. But I believe everything happened the way it was supposed to.”

That’s not to say everything’s been smooth sailing with Goddess—is that ever the case with any musical’s creation? Though Ali had the initial idea for Goddess, he knew he needed to find collaborators to help realize his vision. He approached playwright Jocelyn Bioh and composer Thurber to help write the show. Then back in March, a month before the musical began performances, Bioh departed the project and James Ijames joined to provide additional book material. Ali has also written some of the script, as was clear one rehearsal day that this writer observed, where the director had given the cast new pages he had written that morning—taking notes furiously as his cast gave input.

To Ali, it’s all been in service of figuring out how best to represent his homeland on the stage, that could showcase Kenya and its cultural heritage—without falling into stereotypes. That was why he set Goddess in the modern day instead of in the past, so audiences think of Kenya as a living, vibrant place.

“I'd always wanted a version that was contemporary, that was eclectic, because Kenya is very eclectic,” explains Ali. “Kenya is very contemporary, but it's also very earthy and spiritual. And I was afraid to lean into the earthy and spiritual parts, because those are so often made into stereotypes…So I really had to find the confidence in myself to allow those versions of my impression and my upbringing to come through in the storytelling.”

In the show, the characters do speak and sing in Swahili, a language that originated in Kenya (Karishma Bhagan is the cultural consultant). For Iman, what will help audiences of all ethnicities connect to the story is the music. The score is written by Thurber, who is a good friend to Ali and who’s been able to write music that carries a variety of influences—not only are there African rhythms, but there’s also jazz, R&B, gospel, and soul. The show's released an EP, Moto Moto Presents Nights in Mobasa.

“I remember in an early workshop, one of our greatest musicians, Jon Batiste, came, and the thing he kept saying was, like, ‘all the colors are there,’” recalls Iman. “Thurber’s score, there are so many different colors, and there's so many different styles and feels, because that's what music is. It's universal. There's something that a drum does to you, no matter what you’re feeling, it moves you.” Iman says that she was dancing in her seat during Buena Vista Social Club for that same reason. She hopes audiences will experience that same need to move when seeing Goddess, and she is not shy in wanting a bigger life for the show beyond the Public. “Goddess really has a beautiful hand in just showcasing so many different colors of music. I don't think it's something we've seen or heard on Broadway.”

Ali is more humble—his focus is on making sure this story he’s been wanting to tell for the past 18 years is finally fully realized: “What a gift to have had a story that I cared so deeply about from my homeland,” he says passionately. “There's no IP, there's no catalog. People are going to be learning the story as they're experiencing it. Because there's nothing that we can really say that, ‘it's like this,’ or ‘it's kind of like that.’ It's its own thing. And so, it's taken that long to find it, to build it, to harness it.”

close gallery

0 of

Goddess at the Public Theater

Next Slide  

You may also like

• 
  Nicole Scherzinger Receives Sardi's Portrait
• 
  Photos: Shucked at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre
• 
  Photos: Ali Louis Bourzgui and Myra Molloy in Hadestown on Broadway