“Wherever else I feel myself to be a stranger, I will remember I have a home in Belfast.” That Frederick Douglass line is the spark behind North Star, Kwame Daniels’s new 77-minute production now running at New York’s Irish Arts Center. It is a big idea carried in a very human way: through music, memory, and the voices of young people from Belfast and New York.
Daniels, a Northern Ireland-based DJ, broadcaster, and creative producer, built North Star around Douglass’s 1845 visit to Belfast, just years after his escape from slavery. For Daniels, that moment was more than a striking historical footnote. It felt like a place to begin again. A Black abolitionist found welcome in Belfast, and that welcome still echoes.
The story behind North Star
Daniels brings his own life into the work as well. Raised in a Ghanaian household in East London, he has spoken about moving between identities at home and in public, learning early how culture and belonging can shift depending on the room. When he later arrived in Derry in the late 1990s, music helped him cross lines that politics and history had hardened.
That instinct shapes North Star. The production blends:
- hip-hop, jazz, gospel, classical, and electronic music
- spoken word and choral arrangements
- young voices from Belfast and New York
The result is immersive rather than formal, a piece that moves on feeling as much as structure. Daniels has described the musicianship as exceptional, and the show’s form reflects that ambition.
North Star runs at the Irish Arts Center through June 21. At 77 minutes, one for each year of Douglass’s life, it is precise in design but expansive in spirit. Some stories age well because they still ask something of the present. This one does. And that old Douglass line about Belfast still lands with force.
Image Courtesy: IrishCentral
