Although Daniel Bernard Roumain and Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s interdisciplinary-arts concert Blackbird, Fly is all about subverting expectations, there’s at least one way in which the show is true to the two American performers’ Haitian roots.

“There’s something that a lot of Haitian mothers tell their sons, which is that when you go into someone’s home, you don’t go empty-handed,” violinist, pianist, and hip-hop/classical crossover composer Roumain explains. “You bring a gift. And then you start the conversation, and you’re responsible for the conversation, and as much as you are the guest, you’re also the host. There’s a certain responsibility, and tradition, and etiquette.”

That’s the spirit in which Roumain and Joseph—a dancer, choreographer, poetry-slam champion, and arts administrator—are approaching their latest collaboration.

“As much as we may be confrontational in our approach to our instruments, we’re very conversational and gracious in our approach to our audience,” Roumain says.

And with each other, it seems. In a conference-call interview with the Georgia Straight, the two riff off each other’s thoughts with aplomb.

“I don’t necessarily trust art that doesn’t sweat or bleed or cry, and that’s what Daniel’s music does,” Joseph says. “The various layers of music that Daniel’s composing, and the music we make together, absolutely lend themselves to that kind of musculature, in terms of our performance.”

A similar kind of give-and-take helped shape Blackbird, Fly. Although the process started with Joseph handing Roumain some texts to meditate on, the hour-plus show quickly became something other than a conventional words-and-music presentation.

“Without revealing too much, one of the general attitudes that we decided to explore was that this was not going to be a kind of interdisciplinary, modernist, ruminative work, or a series of ruminations, but rather that this was going to be a concert. We’re both concert artists, in that sense,” Roumain says. “And let me pose this question: what’s the expectation of two Haitian-American men, steeped in tradition, one playing the violin and the other speaking, both of them able to move? What is the expectation, and how do we present that expectation, and defy it, and own it?”

“This particular offering does stand apart as something that just isn’t available on the market,” Joseph counters, laughing. “So my answer to Daniel’s question ‘What is the expectation?’ is to say that there is none, which is where the fun is. We don’t have to adhere to prescribed formats. We do play with form: there’s a section that pulls from whatever is on the front page of that morning’s newspaper in whatever city we’re in; there’s movement; there are several instruments that get used. And there are short bursts of narrative, but there isn’t necessarily the traditional western, Greek understanding of beginning and middle and end. What there is, instead, is a fully complete emotional arc that feels resonant and whole from the beginning of the experience to the end of the evening.”

How Blackbird, Fly concludes remains under wraps, but Joseph is happy enough to reveal how it will begin—and to give further evidence of how it connects to the sweet and sorrowful Caribbean heritage that both artists share.

“One of the movement vocabularies that I reference is Haitian folkloric movement, coming out of the vodoun tradition,” the dancer-poet says. “And the first words of the piece, the first words of the concert, are ‘Our ancestors hacked bitterly at sugarcane/We are the sweets never tasted by their sweat-soaked tongue/They begged for us to be here, never knowing who or what we’d become/We are their echoing elegy perpetually sung.’ ”

Generations away from the cane fields and more than 200 years removed from slavery, those memories remain bittersweet—but the songs, stories, and dances they’ve inspired will be strong.

Daniel Bernard Roumain and Marc Bamuthi Joseph present Blackbird, Fly at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Friday (September 25).