By Darlene Donloe
Contributing Writer
LOS ANGELES — The unearthing began with 40 views on YouTube.
It became “The Sound of Gordon Parks,” an immersive exhibition at the California African American Museum running through Sept. 13.
The show argues that Gordon Parks, the celebrated photographer, filmmaker and writer, was also a serious composer. Most people have never heard that side of him.
Everyone knows about Parks, the photographer. He also had groundbreaking career in film — as director, screenwriter, producer and composer. In 1969, he became the first African American to write and direct a major Hollywood studio feature film, “The Learning Tree,” based on his best-selling semiautobiographical novel.
His next directorial endeavor, “Shaft,” was a groundbreaking blockbuster that helped launch what was then known as the Blaxploitation genre and brought audiences one of the first Black action heroes, portrayed by Richard Roundtree.
Justen LeRoy learned about the musical side of Parks by accident.
It was 2024. LeRoy, who grew up on 59th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard and now runs Art + Practice in Leimert Park, was watching “Half Past Autumn,” the HBO documentary on Parks. He got stuck on a 30-second aside.
“There was a small clip of him working on a musical composition with Mario Sprouse,” said LeRoy, director of curatorial affairs and programs at Art + Practice. “I became really obsessed with trying to find out more about Gordon Parks as a musician.”
He tracked the clip back to YouTube. It had 40 views at the time.
“So I felt like I really was in on some unearthing of some wild fossils,” LeRoy said.
On July 23, that unearthing continues at CAAM with a conversation between LeRoy, Sprouse, Parks’s longtime musical collaborator; and jazz pianist Jason Moran, the inaugural Gordon Parks Foundation fellow in music.
Together they will discuss Parks’s approach to composition, the complexities of archiving his sonic works and his view of music as poetry.
The exhibition invites visitors into Parks’s soundscape through music, video and rarely seen archival materials.
LeRoy hopes attendees leave hearing something different, in Parks’s photographs and in jazz.
“I hope they feel a sense of urgency,” LeRoy said. “I really want people to investigate themselves and their own gift.”
“The Sound of Gordon Parks” traces the full scale of his ear, from his 1952 “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra” to the score for “The Learning Tree,” his 1969 film debut as a director.
But the revelation is what hasn’t been heard. Rare demos and unreleased compositions pull Parks out of the archives and into the present tense. What emerges is not a side project but a central part of his practice.
He wrote concertos. He scored some of his films. He arranged pop songs. He sat at a piano and thought in measures. Most people have never heard it.
Parks was a piano player first, and this exhibit tracks the musical core of his creative practice. It spans works from as early as 1919 through 2006.
The archive was there. The path to an exhibition wasn’t.
When LeRoy decided the HBO clip wasn’t a footnote but a show, he had a problem. He had no show. No money. No venue. Just a name: Mario Sprouse.
“I probably held on to his information nervously for about six months because I didn’t have a plan,” LeRoy said. “And I sent him an email, and he responded to me immediately.”
Sprouse, 77, is a composer, arranger, and musical director with credits across jazz, theater and film. He said Parks taught him things about the music business he couldn’t learn in school.
In 1985, cabaret singer Donna Zencoff wanted to perform Parks’s “Don’t Misunderstand” from “Shaft’s Big Score!” Sprouse called for five months before Parks finally picked up.
“In September, I made one more call,” he said. “He answered and said, ‘Come on over.’”
Parks needed his songs notated as lead sheets. They started with “Remember” from 1984’s “Solomon Northrup’s Odyssey.” Not long after, Parks said, “Let’s work on a movie,” and a partnership began.
“At that point in his life, he was advanced in his career,” Sprouse said. “It was like working with a gentle giant, unassuming, very curious. We formed that kind of professional relationship.”
That relationship is why LeRoy’s nervous email turned into a meeting at the Gordon Parks Foundation in New York.
LeRoy sat down with Sprouse and the foundation’s director.
“I walked in there with a lot of big dreams and ideas with no money, and no pathway to make any of it happen whatsoever,” LeRoy said.
LeRoy brought the idea home. He called Cameron Shaw, executive director at CAAM.
“I told her, I think I got something for us,” LeRoy said. “She was interested.”
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Parks’s death. It also bumps against the 25th anniversary of Parks’s 2000 retrospective at CAAM.
For LeRoy, who took over as executive director of Art + Practice in February 2026, the show connects his two worlds.
Art + Practice runs free arts education and exhibitions for Black artists and youth out of Leimert Park.
CAAM is the state’s museum for African American art and history. “The Sound of Gordon Parks” argues that sound belongs in both places.
This isn’t a photo show with background music. Here, Parks’s scores, lead sheets and recordings are the exhibition. Parks didn’t just try his hand at music. Music was a first language.
That’s where Sprouse and Moran come in. Sprouse is the witness. He was in the room when Parks moved from hummed melody to notation to arrangement. Moran is the translator. A MacArthur Fellow and jazz pianist, Moran is the inaugural Gordon Parks Foundation Fellow in Music.
The upcoming conversation puts all three together. Sprouse to remember it. Moran to extend it. LeRoy to frame it.
The goal is not to add a new chapter to the Parks biography. It is to show that the chapter was always there; the audience just wasn’t listening.
As someone who worked directly with Parks, Sprouse wants Moran and other young composers to understand the parts of Parks’s music that liner notes can’t capture.
“One of the things that I would emphasize is that Gordon developed his own notation for music,” Sprouse said. “What would not be in the liner notes would be how he approached creativity and artistry as a whole. He responded to what was in front of him with whatever artistry he had at his disposal.”
Sprouse believes that if Parks walked into CAAM the night of the discussion and heard his music presented as an immersive exhibition, “He’d be happily overwhelmed.”
“In Conversation: Justen LeRoy, Mario Sprouse and Jason Moran” takes place from 7 to 8:30 p.m. July 23 at the California African American Museum, 600 State Drive, Exposition Park. Admission is free, but RSVP is recommended.
Darlene Donloe is a freelance reporter for Wave Newspapers who covers South Los Angeles. She can be reached at ddonloe@gmail.com.
