For me this is a song of hope, patriotism and PROTEST, a sonic tapestry of cadence and culture; a cacophony of diverse internalities.
In 2008, when Barack Obama was confirmed by the Democratic National Party to run for the office of President of the United States, I was inspired by a renewed sense of hope and patriotism and almost immediately the song came welling up out of me.
Some years later, the knife has turned with the Trump era, the killing and warehousing of black and brown bodies by US law enforcement, the caging of children at the border. The song has reclaimed the sentiment of its Harlem Renaissance origins and now emerges more fully as a song of protest.
While the musical treatment weaves together a tapestry of musical iterations from nearly 12 distinct cultural experiences in America, from hymnody and folk song to Native American and Latinx drumming and beyond, within the cauldron of this sonic melting pot are dissonances, syncopations, and canonic layering that express a different and perhaps darker side of this experience in America.
For me this is a song of hope, patriotism and PROTEST, a sonic tapestry of cadence and culture; a cacophony of diverse internalities.
In 2008, when Barack Obama was confirmed by the Democratic National Party to run for the office of President of the United States, I was inspired by a renewed sense of hope and patriotism and almost immediately the song came welling up out of me.
Some years later, the knife has turned with the Trump era, the killing and warehousing of black and brown bodies by US law enforcement, the caging of children at the border. The song has reclaimed the sentiment of its Harlem Renaissance origins and now emerges more fully as a song of protest.
While the musical treatment weaves together a tapestry of musical iterations from nearly 12 distinct cultural experiences in America, from hymnody and folk song to Native American and Latinx drumming and beyond, within the cauldron of this sonic melting pot are dissonances, syncopations, and canonic layering that express a different and perhaps darker side of this experience in America.
A 12:35 piano vocal performance that provides vivid depictions of the culture and caricatures of American ethos as experienced by a Black man. Through the voice of The Ancestor, Lady Liberty, Uncle Sam, White America, and Black America and others, Ishmel makes a satirical exhibition of America’s oft incongruous republic.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and in full view of all that has come before and after at the hands of the blue and badged knights of America, and in the midst of my own toil and grind as a black man in this country, the following words came to me. I offer them here as an act of protest and resistance.
Oh, say can’t you see
Down on one bended knee
What so loudly we hailed
By the blue knights assailing
“I can’t breathe!
How I wheeze.
Your choke-holds, killing me!
I’ve been tased and I been gunned. Now my neck knows your kneeling!”
Whose broad powers and badged-star,
Who in hell from you are?
Raise the Power that hath made and preserved the Black Nation!”
“Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just!”
And thus, be our motto, “In steel shall we trust!”
And the star-spangled strangler shall behave or meet the grave
In the land of the free and the home of the knave!
