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The 90-minute television documentary "DuSable to Obama: Chicago's Black Metropolis" is truly a tale of two cities. There is the legendary Chicago that emerged from hardship and misfortune on the prairie to attain world-class status. There is also a less known, but remarkable aspect of Chicago's history &emdash; the essential contributions of African Americans to the city's vitality, from Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable to the Columbian Exposition; the Chicago Renaissance to Chicago politics and from the journalism of the Chicago Defender to the new musical sound of the city. This compelling film reveals the lives of the celebrated and the unsung — from the establishment of the first Black community in the 1840s by free men of color and enslaved Africans seeking freedom, to the election of the nation's first Black president, Chicago's own Barack Obama. Celebrating the history of this powerful community and bringing recognition to the African American experience in Chicago is to better understand the rich heritage of America itself. It is a story of our time and of all time. The original Orbert Davis score for the television documentary was commissioned by WTTW and generously underwritten by Northern Trust. For more information, visit wttw.com/dusabletoobama.

Each epoch had its sound and its style, and Davis draws upon these characteristics to conjure moments in time. All of his music, though, radiates Davis' signature lyricism, his haunting melodic lines deepening the emotional content of the scenes unfolding on the screen. — Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune (Score is Soul of 'DuSuble To Obama' — June 1, 2010)