If you happen to be flipping through radio channels tonight, you may hear something pretty unexpected in between all of the usual pop suspects like the Biebz and T-Swift: a harpsichord.

No, it’s not the product of some new über-hipster band. The harpsichord is actually just one part of a small orchestra performing "The Ethiopian Ball," a new 70-minute radio "comic opera" created by father-son team Roger and Eric Beaumont and premiering on WMSE Thursday at 6 p.m.

The radio musical dips far back into American history – a February day in 1782 in Charleston, S.C., to be precise – to tell the mostly forgotten story of the Ethiopian Ball, a formal dance hosted for white British officers and emancipated African women. The event serves as the perfect historical setting for the Beaumonts’ to set a tale of interracial romance and tension, centered on Lucy Lou and Gerald (voiced by Skylight vets Cynthia Cobb and Jason McKinney). Narrating the story is a young slave, voiced by Ashley Jordan, telling the story of the ball to a fellow disheartened slave 80 years later during the early years of the Civil War, sharing the hope of equality and trying to keep it alive.

"When I listen to Ta-Nehisi Coates talk nowadays, every time I hear him talk I think about the Ethiopian Ball, because he talks about how restless he is – his desire, his absolute zeal – for black people to have total freedom and equality in this country right now," Eric Beaumont explained. "If you imagine the frustration of hearing this wonderful story, and 80 years go by, and it’s year two of the American Civil War – a god-awful, bloody, miserable, horrible experience."

Eric’s father Roger, a historian, was the one to first begin work on "The Ethiopian Ball," inspired not only his travels to Charleston and research into the dance, but also the 1927 classic Broadway musical "Show Boat."

"It was such a popular stage play and such a popular film, yet so subversive and so direct in its criticism of how black people have been treated for hundreds of years in this country," Eric noted.

About a decade ago, Roger sent Eric a one-sheet summary of the play he had in mind, followed by draft after draft of "The Ethiopian Ball." Eric responded with ideas for the music, starting broad but eventually honing the songs and arrangements toward a particular style and era – particular that of the icons of early turn of the 20th century musical theater, a genre close to Eric’s heart.

"It wasn’t that much of a stretch because I grew up listening to Gilbert and Sullivan of all things – a lot of operettas and light comic opera – because my grandmother had just stacks of Gilbert and Sullivan 78 RPMs, which I internalized by the time I was really young," Eric recalled. "I have tapes of myself singing, ‘I am the monarch of the sea, the ruler of the Queen’s Navee.’"

After getting a copy of the final script, Eric flew down to his father’s current residence in Bryan, Texas, and locked himself in his father’s library with a guitar and a cheap synthesizer. Combining his deeply-rooted appreciation of Gilbert and Sullivan with a dash of George Gershwin – namely the composer’s ability to brush his arrangements with a touch of jazz, gospel and blues – and a helpful assist from De La Buena members David Wake and Kevin Christensen, he arranged songs simultaneously old and new for "The Ethiopian Ball." With the songs and script all set, now it was just a matter of finding a place to put it on – a task easier said than done.

"We spent a couple of years – up ‘til about 2008 or 2009 – trying to get the interest of agents and theater companies across the country," Eric said. "The people who liked it didn’t have the money to put it on, and the people who had the money to put it on didn’t like it, or didn’t care."

Defeated, but by no means done with "The Ethiopian Ball," Roger and Eric decided to change courses. Influenced by the mostly forgotten but well received 1969 Richard Attenborough film "Oh! What a Lovely War" – a radio play turned stage play turned feature film – and a BBC contest for radio plays, the Beaumonts began to reshape "The Ethiopian Ball" for the airwaves. 

"We didn’t win (the BBC contest), but we were happy to do it because we’ve got a radio version that we can actually think about putting together a recorded version for the radio," Eric said.

That’s exactly what happened. Despite losing the contest, the two pitched the radio play to WMSE’s Tom Crawford, and he agreed to air their production. A decade after the father and son began working on the show, "The Ethiopian Ball" was finally going to reach an audience – and, considering current events, just in time as well.

"Anybody who’s serious about doing something like this properly has to ask, ‘Is this worth doing?’ and I thought yes, because this is the biggest problem we have facing Milwaukee today: the violence that threatens (black) lives – not just from corrupt police officers but from their neighbors and gunmen in their immediate area," Eric said. "This play is a very extravagant way of saying black men’s lives are absolutely critical for the survival of this city and this state and this country and this world."

On an intimate and personal level, the show means something special to the duo as well as Eric looks back fondly at the time spent with his father on the long journey to bring the show to life.

"My father and mother split when I was 9, and I remember the day he left quite vividly," Eric recalled. "It wasn’t like he disappeared from my life – he stayed in close contact, called, wrote, visited and then when he moved to Texas, we visited all the time – but the reconnecting process was very lovely and very painful at the same time. By the time we finished this, I sort of felt like my dad and I had both come home to each other. We did something together, like we went fishing – and we caught a whale."