Carrier was one of the earliest canvases in the History of Rock & Roll series—a visual meditation on the migration of sound, spirit, and cultural memory from the African continent to North America. At its core, the work traces how musical traditions, carried by Africans both freely and through the brutal force of the transatlantic slave trade, seeded what would eventually evolve into rock & roll.

In this piece, both the woman and the dragon serve as symbolic embodiments of Africa. They share a breath—a luminous stream of sound—that flows between them, suggesting continuity, transmission, and transformation. Behind them, Haitian loa symbols hover like spiritual scaffolding: ritual signs used to summon spirits in Vodou ceremonies, themselves carried across oceans by African diasporic communities.

This foundation—spiritual, sonic, and ancestral—would later give rise to gospel, soul, and R&B. Carrier honors that origin, not as a static history, but as a living pulse that reverberates through generations.