August 2020 Program Notes

August 17th “The Talk”-The Sacrifice in Giving August 18th “The Talk”-Lessons from Survival

August 19th Letter to a Sista String Player August 20th Deliver Us From Evil

August 17th, 2020 Program Introduction:

“The Talk”- The Sacrifice in Giving

This collection of songs has been assembled with particular attention paid to women and children. More specifically the battle women have trying to protect the survival of their children. The thread tying all these pieces together is an illustration of the terrifyingly helpless position mothers are in. The dual pain of physically giving birth combined with the pain of trying to guard against a world that thrives off destruction is in some way prevalent in this particular collection of music.

In one piece of music, a child is sold in the same manner you would a farm animal. In another we experience mom's grace while still feeling her edges of life's grind. After that we are presented with a lullaby of reflection on the birth of a child. Only for it to be followed by the reminder that mother's children are equal children of lesser status. The music that follows unravels the reasons those children suffer many afflictions. Somehow, through it all, something, somewhere, for whatever reason, seems to prevail through all of it. Thus far, there are still survivors left. As a result, faith endures.

Denial: (Spiritual) How Come Me Here

Composer: Traditional African American Spiritual

In an operatic aria, a singer expresses a singular intense thought or feeling about someone or something. If Spirituals are America’s arias, the Spiritual Lord! How Come Me Here stands out. Where the text may seem simple, the challenge is to have a delivery born out of deep sincere conviction. As a work performed by a female soloist, the very first sound can be a trickle of anguish, or a waterfall of pain. The verses in Lord! How Come Me Here speak of a brutal human experience. The singer says, “They sold my children. I wish I never was born. I wish I never was born.” The utterance of conviction in every word from the singer tears open the soul, eloquently begging for the justification of torment. What did I do to ultimately deserve this? Can this really be happening? Is there hope beyond the denial of my own lived reality?

Sadly, there are such real moments in human history. In those moments in life, people have responded by singing. I have wondered, why sing? All the evidence I have come across points to the same conclusion. In such moments, singing is the most authentic and naked representation of your humanity, it is the only thing you have left. The exhalation of honest dignity.

If fortune can change like the wind, by singing, we hold a vacant hope within the puff of our last breath. Buried within that breath is the shred of hope that some ear, some force, someone or something, real or metaphorical will receive the trickling river of our diminishing heaving gasps. It is that even deeper buried hope in the midst of our suffocation, that the slivers of wind floating our last plea will conjure and invoke change.

Anger: (Classical) Mother’s Sacrifice

Composer: L. Viola Kinney

(1890 - 1945)

L.Viola Kinney lived in Kansas and taught english and music at a school. Aside from that we don’t know a whole lot about her. Mother’s Sacrifice is her only surviving work. L. Viola Kinney was awarded a prize for this composition that was written when she was 19. Had she not won the Inter-State Literary Society Original Music Contest held in Omaha, Nebraska, it is quite possible the world at large would never have known of her.

Originally, this piece of music was written for piano but it has been transcribed for String Orchestra. It has three sections. The first and third section mirror one another. Both are reflective and contemplative in their nature. The middle section contains a very pulsating and stormy waltz. So stormy, that harmonically, Ms. Kinney dares to place minor second intervals against one another that result in some very dissonant passing tones.

What is Mother’s Sacrifice? What is the sound of pain and anger in that struggle? How quickly does it pass? What does it feel like on the other side? Who are we when we stop to take notice and reflect? When we do all of that, will we understand what she gave up?

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

The words flew by me like a hawk circling for the kill. My daughter was shrieking, and yet I could not grasp the meaning of her words: “He’s dead, mom!!” From deep within me I knew that this truth would forever change my life - and I grasped feebly for some anchor to hold, a way to un-truth what I was hearing.

Thirty six years earlier I’d held his squirming, wet little body to my breast in astonished wonder. His cry was life, and my tears were of joy. Now, in the first few moments of this awful truth, I struggled to understand how I would never hear his voice again. In agony hot tears seared my face.

The groans of childbirth and of a mother’s grief are curiously similar. They begin in a low growl - unbidden and unfamiliar - and push up through the soul with a violent intensity, giving wordless voice to the assault on the body, raging against death. While the groaning of childbirth finally gives way to inexpressible joy, the groaning of grief gives way to the staggering silence of inexpressible loss.

“O Lord, out of the Depths cry! Hear my voice!” (Psalm 130:1)

I would like to imagine that this psalmist was a woman, a lonely, heart-broken mother, groaning in private agony at the violence done to her child as he was ripped from her arms.

A mother should never have to endure the death of a child, they say. I would also add that a mother community should never have to endure the violent deaths of any of her children. It is a devastating sacrifice, a scarring wound on our history and consciousness - birthing in us a collective groaning too deep for words.

Bargaining: (Jazz) A Child is Born

Composer: Thad Jones

(1923 - 1986)

Across all of planet Earth, women are the cradle of the universe. The first thing any human being hears is the mother’s heartbeat. For this reason, the idea of rocking a baby to sleep to a rhythm is universal across the world. The Jazz Standard A Child is Born is written in ¾. Also known as waltz time. However, it is not a waltz. It is a lullaby for a newborn. The text speaks with affectionate appreciation for the tiny hands, one pair of eyes, and small beating heart of a newborn baby. It is a lullaby of celebration. This piece is often played during the Christmas season.

Anyone who has held a tiny baby can grab onto this moment, especially parents. When children are in crisis, parents sometimes look backwards hoping for second chances as they wrestle with moving forward. If life speaks in rhythms of its own, the patterns that occur for a second chance, are a divine act.

Weighing the deals to bargain to attain forgiveness can lead to new opportunities. But first, we must first learn to be still. Our second obligation is to quietly listen to the rhythm. When we have found that space we can rock it like a sleeping child, pulse it like a heartbeat, and the instructions on our next steps will begin to speak.

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

Until my son was a year old, I rocked him to sleep. “Rocky rocky, Mommy?” He’d ask as we approached bedtime. In the low light, as he drank his final bottle of the day, I watched his eyes get heavy and his chubby hands drop in sleep. I loved those moments as much as he did, and I’d give anything to have them again.

If you want to find yourself - rock a child to sleep. In those tender moments, we find our own vulnerability. As we hold the not-yet formed body of another human being, we confront that which is unformed in ourselves. The treasure in our arms transforms us - we ask for forgiveness, promise to be better. And we begin to imagine a brighter tomorrow, for the babe and ourselves.

The prophet Isaiah says: “And a little child shall lead them” (11:6). His wisdom invites us to gaze at the sleeping face of a baby, where we are transformed by possibility, unmoored from the divisions and despairs of the day and, finally, rock hope into our own weary souls.

Depression: (Blues) Aunt Hagar’s Children’s Blues

Composer: W. C. Handy

(1873 - 1958)

W. C. Handy has been called the father of the blues due to the number of Blues pieces he wrote in his lifetime. Not all Blues music is sad. Some Blues is actually happy blues. Aunt Hagar’s Children might qualify as a happy blues. In this Blues piece Aunt Hagar is sitting in church, listening to the church deacon instruct them on proper living. Aunt Hagar draws the line at music. Her children have just come home from the war. Not only is she glad to see them, but she is excited to "dance to this new music on the radio”.

The name Aunt Hagar is an interesting choice by Handy. Hagar in the Bible is Sarah's servant. In a way Handy might be suggesting Aunt Hagar, like her Black religious kinfolk, are considered and treated as an equal child of lesser status due to race. Or possibly does her sinful love of blues music make her an outcast in a religious society that sees the Blues as improper? Or is it the fear of celebrating too loudly, bringing unwanted attention and possible violence to the community that marks her as an outcast?

The joy of Aunt Hagar's exuberant "razzin" because "her boys have just come home" might suggest more about loving all of who you are in challenging times than it does about the rejection of religious moral decency or societal conventions expected of a women. In the end, her "razzin" is a fight and victory over depression.

Acceptance: (Soul) Little Child Running Wild Ghetto Child

Composer: Curtis Mayfield

(1942 - 1999)

Curtis Mayfield’s music was and continues to be popular. During the 1970’s he was the composer for a film that would become extremely popular in the U.S. The Blacksploitation movie Superfly is about a cocaine dealer named Priest trying to make fast money so he can retire from being a dealer. Having grown up in Chicago's Cabrini Green Housing Projects, Curtis found writing the soundtrack to Superfly to be particularly easy. As an explanation about the existence of Priest, Curtis offers us the piece Little Child Running Wild sub named Ghetto Child.

In the opening bars the strings stutter, shimmer and shriek. He gives us a driving bass line with a slightly uneven stress in the pulse. Over that, Mayfield sings a ballad unraveling the causes, places, people, and things that give rise to the "nothing child". The music of Curtis Mayfield was often championed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a songwriter, Curtis was extremely good at writing songs that had a deep social justice conviction and songs about hope for social change.

Curtis Mayfield's ballad about Priest, is a lesson in looking past addiction and despair, and focusing on the root causes that give rise to them. Mayfield's Ghetto Child tells us people are living consequences as a result of root causes. Sometimes these root causes are difficult for us to accept.

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

The young boy had been running wild for years. He’d lied to his father, stolen from his brother. Finally, one dusty evening, he came to the river of no return. On one side lay his drugs, his paraphernalia. On the other side, redemption. On one side, despair - and on the other, hope. And right there in the middle, acceptance.

Jacob, son of Isaac, was predestined, you could say, for a hard life from the start. (Genesis 32:22-32) His older brother had been gifted with his father’s privilege. And Jacob, the second son, couldn’t see a way out of the dismal life of servitude which lay ahead. It was understandable that he would want to take matters into his own hands. And that he did, wildly.

But trying to steal back privilege is life sucking. It drains the soul, and is never able to undo injustice, nor deliver the justice needed - no matter how hard one tries. And, sadly, (at least on this side of eternity) people always manage to create a first and second born son.

But that night, at the Jabbok River, Jacob faced off with God. All night long he struggled - with the injustices done to him, and with his own demons. Finally, he gains himself and his soul. And, despite the “painful rip in his upper hip” he is given a new name - and privilege - which he’d never imagined. He becomes “Israel”- the father of his people.

Acceptance comes in honest struggle with God. It is a life’s work, for those lucky enough to survive. Acceptance is learning to live with questions not always answered. Wounded, we pray for the courage to cross the river which separates us from despair and hope - a river which separates us from one another. And in that river, in the struggle, we find ourselves and, ultimately, God.

Faith: (Gospel) We’ve Come This Far By Faith

Composer: Albert A. Goodson (1933 - 2003)

The hymn We've Come This Far By Faith has an accidental but purposeful history. The composer Albert Goodson had just moved to Chicago from L.A. He was feeling lonely and while tinkering around on the piano at a friend's house, the words and the music for the song fell right into place. "We've come this far by faith. Leaning on the Lord. Trusting in his holy word. He's never failed us yet."

To the surprise of Goodson, no other song he wrote matched the popularity of We've Come This Far By Faith. The song is so popular, that it is frequently used to open worship across all seven Black American Christian denominations that make-up The Black Church in America. With its gospel-march like flavor, its crossover appeal represents the successful combination of Goodson's Pentecostal upbringing and his childhood efforts to sneak away to the Baptist churches to hear their choirs rehearse.

"Oh can't turn around, we've come this far by faith." Although the scripture reference that inspires the song comes from the New Testament, the song speaks to an Old Testament experience. Black Americans see themselves in The Exodus from Egypt. In this way Goodson's piece acts as an ode to the pillar of fire & pillar of cloud. Goodson makes it clear you can see faith at work in the rear view mirror of life but you cannot drive backward and relive what has passed.

August 18th, 2020 Program Introduction:

“The Talk”- Lessons From Survival

Unlike mother's fearing the destruction of their children, this music has us looking on the other side in the opposite direction. Age teaches us that life lessons are only understood through our process of experiencing them. Sometimes at the conclusion of that "Ah-ha!" Or "Oh!..right." moment, the advice we get from mother figures and some father/uncle figures comes to the forefront of our mind. This advice is given to us as a tool and a lesson to aid in our survival. If by some miracle we have been blessed with the ability to look backwards down the path of life, what were the rocks of wisdom you clung to while dangling at the edge of life's cliff side?

Denial: (Spiritual) Give Me Jesus

Composer: Traditional American Spiritual

This Spiritual is another one of America's arias. Spirituals are songs that arise in response to the horrendous circumstances experienced in American chattel slavery. The text of spirituals is not just a response, but a narration locked into the present moment of that experience. Every time a spiritual is sung or played, our African ancestors immediately step forward to speak to us. The past behind us becomes the present before our eyes and ears.

“In the morning, when I rise, in the morning, when I rise, in the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus. Dark as midnight was my cry, dark as midnight was my cry, dark as midnight was my cry, give me Jesus. Oh, when I come to die, oh, when I come to die, oh, when I come to die, give me Jesus.”

At every turn the text speaks of a person yearning and requesting death and seeking companionship in that moment. There is a verse of the song that references motherly wisdom. In the quiet moment of unanticipated reflection, we hear her voice; faint yet clear.

" I heard my mother say give me Jesus. Give me Jesus. Give me Jesus!" Then when she said, "you can have all this world..." was she asking to die? “ These sentiments are echoed further as the last verse concludes by saying, “I heard the mourner say, I heard the mourner say, I heard the mourner say, give me Jesus.”

Whatever has happened, is a circumstance so tragic, even the mourner wants to join the deceased. Such feelings only happen when we wish to deny ourselves any further existence.

Anger: (Classical) Mother & Child

Composer: William Grant Still (1895 - 1978)

William Grant Still is known as the dean of black composers. Out of all the composers of African Descent for Western Classical music, Still has the largest catalog of music. His work encompasses film scores, operas, ballets, symphonies, choral works, chamber music, theater works, pieces for solo voice and pieces for solo instrument. He was not one to shy away from writing about life as a person of color.

Mother and Child was originally written for violin and piano. Still later orchestrated it for strings. The title of this piece is taken from artwork by Sargent Johnson. Perhaps due to being an orphan at an early age, Johnson made several sculptures and drawings with the title or theme of Mother and Child. What can be seen in all of them is a child burning its head into it's mother's lap. The mother has her arm around the child, comforting the child. In one particular drawing, the mother's face seems to say, "it's not your fault" while the child, still angry with itself, keeps sobbing.

The musical score written and arranged by Still reflects Johnson's artwork. The first violins represent the character of an angry crying child. The rest of the orchestra plays the role of the mother and supports the first violins. There are a few spots where we hear the motherly voice of wisdom. This happens in the 2nd violins, in the violas, and in the cellos. The solo violin cadenza could be the voice of an angry frustrated child trying to explain to mom what happened. In summation, this is a lush lullaby that is meant to assuage an angry and frustrated child trying to find his or her place in the world. Hearing mom’s voice of wisdom provides solid emotional grounding for the child.

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

She was all but three years old and filled with fury. After pulling everything from the shelves and ripping off the sheets and blankets, she lay on the floor of her bedroom, amid the tsunami, wailing. Her father tried to quiet her, but his soothing words and gentle advice infuriated her. Giving up, he left the storm to me. I lay down beside her and just listened to her anguish. For what seemed like an eternity, I fought back the urge to cajole. Instead, I lay silently, leaning into her suffering. At last she was spent, and she wiggled herself across the floor into my arms.

Mother Music listens before she speaks. She “inclines her ear” (Psalm 17:6) to her children’s suffering voices before she makes a sound. She hears before she sings, and only afterwards does she try to soothe. Once we are heard, we can fall into her arms knowing that she knows and understands.

Music responds to the human “impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing it from a near-tragic. . .lyricism.” (James H. Cone “The Cross and the Lynching Tree”).

Mother Music’s wisdom lies in her ability to cradle us as we recall painful details and brutal experiences of life, and only then does she sing to us the songs we need to hear.

Bargaining: (Jazz) Round Midnight

Composer: Thelonious Monk

(1917 - 1982)

Thelonious Monk had a unique talent for making the piano speak in intense solitary colors and emotions. There is an album called Thelonious alone in San Francisco that is Monk playing solo piano. It is one of the best illustrations of how the piano can be used as a megaphone for an artist's soul. He once described his fingers as stubby and short. As a result, Monk would often strike piano keys nearby giving his music an extra funky kind of sound.

The lyrics for Round Midnight focus on a person who is missing the love in their life. We don’t know exactly what has happened. What we do know is that the person becomes sad and depressed around midnight and wishes that their love was still around. The somewhat accented block chords that seem to spiral downward, like heavy footsteps at points throughout the music, help paint emotions to match the text.

The piece “Round Midnight” is an interesting one. It is an exceptionally difficult piece of music. Even the most seasoned jazz musicians typically will not play it without practice. Like the musical lines of J.S. Bach, Round Midnight unfurls itself like a scarf, asks the listener a question, and then folds back up into itself. Monk does this in this piece over and over again as one line of music winds against the next one. Like bargaining, this is music that is in conversation. The music is in conversation with itself almost talking in circles. This tension of conversation does not resolve until the final chord offers us a tangible solution.

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

Midnight is the symbolic epicenter of cathartic existential reckoning.

At midnight, the din has quieted, marred only by an occasional cricket chirp, quiet breeze and the snores of those who’ve left us alone with our thoughts. Unbidden, the hard questions of life come, their whispers belying their urgency.

Others, still reveling at midnight, find themselves suddenly alone. The couples have paired off, leaving them in the wake of sad isolation.

Midnight is a face-off, an intersection which brings with it the choice to dwell in the regret of yesterday, or move into the possibility and hope of today.

At this intersection Jazz befriends us. She is a willing companion, accompanying us in either direction, intoning both the ache of the past and the hope of the future. She is a cantor in the liturgy of life, moving us into a self-transcending determination to not be defeated by pain and suffering (James H. Cone, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree”) - but instead inviting us into what James Baldwin calls the “ironic tenacity” of hope.

Depression: (Blues) Aunt Hagar’s Children’s Blues

Composer: W. C. Handy

(1873 - 1958)

W. C. Handy has been called the father of the blues due to the number of Blues pieces he wrote in his lifetime. Not all Blues music is sad. Some Blues is actually happy blues. Aunt Hagar’s Children might qualify as a happy blues. The name Aunt Hagar is an interesting choice by Handy. In this Blues piece Aunt Hagar is sitting in church, listening to the church deacon instruct them on proper living. Aunt Hagar draws the line at music. Her children have just come home from the war. Not only is she glad to see them, but she is excited to "dance to this new music on the radio”.

Hagar in the Bible is Sarah's servant. In a way Handy might be suggesting Aunt Hagar, like her Black religious kinfolk, are considered and treated as an equal child of lesser status due to race. Or possibly does her sinful love of blues music make her an outcast in a religious society that sees the Blues as improper? Or is it the fear of celebrating too loudly, bringing unwanted attention and possible violence to the community that marks her as an outcast?

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

Life is tough enough without empty religiosity hanging around (or pressing) its neck. Blacks in the United States have always known this, literally. While forced to sit in the sterile sanctuaries of their white oppressors, they’ve formed their own vibrant churches, unmoored from the unholiness of white supremacy. No longer affixed in racist sorting, African American Christians have found a kinship with Jesus and the “terrible beauty” of his cross. His story echoes through their own experiences and brings to them something the white church could never bring - good news and hope.

Celebration is the outward manifestation of hope, a visible response to good news. Celebration is the work of faith. In the sad story of Hagar - a woman trafficked for her fertility, encumbered by slavery and eventually driven away, we also see the birth of another tribe (through her son Ishmael) which will flourish as children of diaspora.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, white theologian and martyr, found the Gospel in the streets of Harlem and the black Abyssinian Baptist Church. There, he met “Hagar’s people” and was able to return to Germany, strengthened by their theology of resistance, to confront the ravages of Nazism.

Today, Hagar’s children may be able to redeem, for all of us, the true celebration of faith, which seems itself to have been in exile in our country, at least for the past four hundred years.

Acceptance (Soul) Young Gifted and Black

Composer: Dr. Nina Simone

(1933 - 2003)

The High Priestess of Soul Dr. Nina Simone is both PhD musician & M.D. for the soul. In performance and persona she is the one who presides at mass when your soul needs direction. She is the medicine woman whose potions help uncloud your vision. She is the one at the altar preparing a sacrifice displaying herself without pretense.

Dr. Simone's favorite composer was J.S. Bach. She said that all of western music started with him. Bach wrote an extensive amount of music. This might explain why this piece, written in a gospel hymn like style, is in the neutral key of C Major. In Western Classical Music an idea grew that certain keys evoke or accompany certain emotions. C Major is considered to be a key with "neutral" qualities.

There is hardly ever anything neutral about a hymn or an anthem. Both must come from a sincere place of believing in or about, someone or something. The title is the gift the High Priestess gives to us as her children. She is telling us true acceptance means stay calm; forgive ourselves; love ourselves; celebrate ourselves; commit to being warriors for one another; and be cleansed.

Faith: (Gospel) I Need You To Survive

Composer: David Frazier

(1970 - Present)

Gospel song writer David Frazier has been in church music for over twenty years. His work has won numerous awards. The Los Angeles Times called David Frazier “One of Gospel music’s most successful and consistent songwriters.” David has written over twenty-six songs for Bishop Hezekiah Walker’s Love Fellowship Choir over a span of eleven albums and twenty-two years. In particular, the church anthem “I Need You To Survive'' has garnered Bishop Walker three Grammy awards, 4 Dove awards and 4 Stellar awards.

If there were a modern day humanitarian anthem in gospel music, "I Need You to Survive" might be it. The opening lines say, "I need you. You need me. We're all a part of God's body. Stand with me. Agree with me. We are all a part of God's body. It is his will that every need be supplied. You are important to me. I need you to survive." Making this a reality is an act of faith. Faith is the substance of things hope for, the evidence of things not seen. Textually speaking, this is an excellent distillation of everything the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached about.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, America's preacher, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. states, "In a real sense all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is the inter-related structure of reality."

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

Survival is an act of will. Beyond mere existence, it is a fastidious commitment to reach for the better - even when we cannot see what that is. The Black String Triage Ensemble’s music and work is a tenacious resistance to the violent forces which would tear down - a musical “Yes” to survival, and a resolve that music can heal - even as the yellow tape is tied and the tears begin to fall.

In every lifting of a baton and in every bow of a string - in each hour of practice and preparation - the Black String Triage ensemble turns another page of the score of hope.

The paradox of the human heart is that it has, within it, the wonderful capacity to contain both grief and hope. In the music of African American composers, which The Black String Triage Ensemble brings to us, we hear this marvelous capacity - and begin to hope that there can be a “better” in life, for all of us.

In the more than twenty seven years of my pastoral ministry, and as I near its end, I have never been so privileged to witness such an act of faith and hope that this Ensemble brings. It is my honor and joy to listen to their audible messages of love and hope, played for broken-hearted people.

May the strains of their music break our own hearts - so that they can be opened again in hope and love, leading us to a collective celebration of the gift of life - in its healing and its joy.

August 19th, 2020 Program Introduction:

Letter To A Sista String Player

(Clemency for Chrystul Kizer)

In the same way that words are used to give a poem color and texture, sound also has a dimension of color and texture. The pieces of music that make up this program are meant to be a poetic letter of musical texture and color. As a musical letter, the delivery has a lot in common with the spoken word. Words, when spoken, have a direct impact on us as individuals and collectively. Due to the nature of sound, a musical letter has an unmatched ambiance. Music carries with it all those impact dimensions. But music can permanently transform and re-shape the mood of any space in a way that words cannot.

Although the design of this music program is addressed to a singular person, by placing Nina Simone’s “Four Women” at the beginning, this musical letter takes on a much more expansive tone. The entire letter is by extension addressed directly to the plight of girls of color, women of color and transwomen of color. By including “Walk With Me” and “I Wish I Knew How it Feels to Be Free” both pieces of music, in their own way, speak to an intense solitary experience of a denied humanity locking a person into crisis.

What is most compelling about this collection of music, is the horrifying idea that we can simply be missing, absent, vacant, non-existent while our humanity is violently destroyed. At the moment we choose to assert whatever humanity we have left, we are suddenly at fault. For people of African descent in America, we are the spawn of the law. Our mother made us from the marrow of her technicalities. Even so we are still her spurned, repudiated and rejected children. The extent of that is clearly on display with this collection of music.

Denial: (Soul) Four Women

Composer: Dr. Nina Simone (1933 - 2003)

Nina wrote this portrait of four Negro Women. Each one is a different age. Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing, and Peaches have all had different experiences in life shaped by color and shaped by facets of the female experience. As a piece of music meant to be sung, the battles they have gone through are evident in the text and delivery as each narrates their own experience.

Only at the end, when Peaches screams her name does it become blatantly clear, Nina Simone's Four Women are different experiences linked by common circumstance. The scream emanating from within Peaches comes from a deep, gaping wound of torment. Given the history within her response, no one can blame her for her reaction to trauma. The scream of Peaches is an attempt to holler out a Hell No! of denial at forced subjugation.

Anger: (Spiritual) Walk With Me

Traditional African american Spiritual

This is another one of America’s arias.The focus in the text is on walking. The tone of the music and the pacing of the tempo of this are very heavy. It is a natural dirge. Sonically, in listening to it, we can feel the weight shackled to our own ankles. Sonically, it is like dragging a sleeping person or a dead body over long distances. Sonically, we can feel the struggle. It does not matter if it is played fast or slow. No matter what, “Walk With Me” still seems to drag. It is a piece both sad and angry burdened by circumstance. For that reason, in times of great difficulty this piece of music always seems to be an appropriate fit. Whether you are at the hands of someone else's mercy or at a crossroads about your own conduct or someone else's, this Spiritual is always relevant.

Bargaining: (Jazz) I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free

Composer: Dr. Billy Taylor

(1921 - 2010)

Dr. Billy Taylor loved his daughter. The jazz pianist wrote this piece of music in tribute to his daughter. Dr. Taylor was an educator, composer, arranger and bandleader. It should be no surprise that a man so active in various musical circles would meet Nina Simone. The High Priestess of Soul added words to this jazz tune and gave it added popularity.

As a central musical figure of the civil rights era and the 60’s and 70’s protest movements, Nina’s use of this song held great significance. In all her music Nina was an expert at acknowledging the unvarnished reality of what was happening to people. She did exactly that with this song while also projecting a hopeful possibility that all people could be reconciled to one another and live peaceably together.

The text of the second verse illustrates that duality. “I wish I could share all the love that's in my heart. Remove all the doubts that keep us apart.” The text makes it clear, the challenge in sharing love, means accepting its existence. Getting there, is an act of bargaining about what we are willing to lose so that we can gain more.

Depression: (Classical) Tears for A Burned Village

Composer: Dayvin M.A. Hallmon (1985 - Present)

Dayvin M.A. Hallmon is the musical grandchild of Jascha Heifetz, Dr. Thomas Dorsey and Dr. Mattie Moss Clark. Since the age of 9, Mr. Hallmon has been building ensembles in churches and helping congregations craft a strategic vision for their music ministry. Perfectly at home in both Gospel and Western Classical, Dayvin was Assistant Concertmaster of the Church of God In Christ International Orchestra for seven years. Mr. Hallmon has been studying music since the age of 5. He plays Violin, viola, clarinet, piano, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, flute, and pipe organ. Dayvin was born in Chicago, grew up in Racine, Wisconsin and is currently a resident of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The title of this composition comes from a conversation Mr. Dayvin had with a 5th Grade teacher. This particular 5th grade teacher is an old school Black grandma. Citing the historical nature of people in Black communities looking out for each other and assisting with the raising of children she said, “Mr. Dayvin, the village has been destroyed and we are all that is left.” The imagery embedded within her words forced the composer to confront a depressing scene. What do you say when you arrive home and your eyes are greeted with scorched, smoldering earth and burned out ruins scattered in the distance? What do you say when community leaders charged with custodial duties are complicit in the destruction of their own community? What do you say when others are taken captive, and some for one reason or another through no fault of their own, others are simply incapable of shouldering the burden? What do you say, when the soil that grew you and others cannot sustain life any longer?

“This is an odd piece. I don’t know if the end result was exactly what I had in my mind when I wrote it. It was raining outside. I turned off all the lights. I opened all the windows and just listened to the sound of the rain. I let my hand wander around the piano keyboard. In some ways this sounds more like a child’s music box partially buried in the dirt. As you take in and survey the landscape, This is the music that you hear in the background.”-D Hallmon

Acceptance: (Classical) Lyric For Strings

Composer: Dr. George Walker (1922 - 2018)

The composer Dr. George Walker was the grandson of slaves. He is the first Black graduate from the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. He is also the first Black composer to win a Pulitzer prize, earning the award in 1996. The pianist and composer wrote nearly one hundred compositions. His music possesses a voice of individuality but you cannot discern his race from listening to his music. Dr. Walker does use Blues and Jazz elements in some of his compositions but in terms of style, Dr. Walker’s music is in line with other contemporary classical composers.

Lyric for Strings is the second movement from his first string quartet. The composer later arranged that section of the string quartet for full string orchestra. It is his most famous composition. He wrote this piece as a student at The Curtis Institute. It was written in memory of his grandmother. His grandmother had been enslaved in America. In speaking to her grandson Dr. George Walker about slavery, she said, “They did everything but eat us.” Those words resonated with Dr. Walker all of his life.

The stunning beauty in this slightly dissonant piece of music is found in the range of colors of sound that slowly move and meander through the various instrumental groups. Lower instruments and lower notes provide darker tones. Higher instruments and higher notes provide lighter colors and brighter textures. As the melody is passed back and forth from one section to another approaching the crescendo in the piece, the sound unfolds and grows like a ribbon being spooled. This mastery in using the string orchestra locks the listener into an emotional roller coaster. From the first three bars of music, it is clear why this piece is so well loved. At the close we are finally met with a peaceful harmonic resolution that allows us to accept finality in its fullest form as the music descends into contemplative silence.

Faith: (Gospel) Precious Lord-The Last Request

Composer: Dr. Thomas A Dorsey (1899 - 1993)

At the start of his musical career at age 11, Dr. Thomas Dorsey was primarily a blues pianist. He played in vaudeville theaters, brothels, and at after hours parties. His inspiration came from seeing Ma Rainey and The Empress of The Blues, Bessie Smith. He was the son of a preacher and a church organist. He suffered nervous breakdowns twice in his life that left him unable to play music. Each time he continued to press forward and try to confront the problem. His mother and a prominent Bishop both told him to turn away from the wickedness of The Blues and play gospel music.

Dr. Dorsey is known as the father of Gospel music. He wrote over 400 compositions. He merged some of the rhythms and musical figures from the Blues and infused them into Gospel. Many pastors did not like this. The Blues was considered the Devil’s music because of its association with alcohol, sex, drugs, and wallowing in sorrow. Dr. Dorsey was thrown out of some of the most well known churches in America. He went back to focusing on the Blues for awhile until life circumstance called him to write his most famous piece, “Precious Lord”

The inspiration for “Precious Lord” came to him after his wife and child both perished as his wife was giving birth. This should have been a moment of despair but instead it turned into an opportunity for hope. Dr. Dorsey lost a wife and child, but he gave birth to the song Precious Lord. This hymn is so well loved, it is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s favorite hymn. The Rev. Dr. King loved it so much, it was played by his request at the end of nearly every sermon he gave. To further illustrate the song's significance and intensity, right before the assassin's bullet tore through Rev. Dr. King’s chest, he was on the balcony of The Lorraine Motel looking down into the parking lot talking to his music director Benjamin Branch asking him to play “Precious Lord”. This piece of music in the history of Black America and The Black Church is known as The Last Request.

August 20th, 2020 Program Introduction:

Deliver Us From Evil

They told us as children that rather than be enslaved, some Africans jumped into the ocean. One child asked the elder why. The elder said, "because they saw what was on the other side." I have always wondered what that meant. What did they see? Maybe they saw what happened to Ahmad Arbury, George Floyd and Christian Cooper and decided death was a better option?

It has been said that if the United States of America did not have racism, it would be the most equitable and successful in the world. In a world of theoretical data that might perhaps be exciting. However our lived reality in the United States is one that says, the American identity requires the violent killing and economic exploitation of Black people. Without it, the nation does not know who it is.

Denial: (Patriotic Hymn) Lift Every Voice & Sing

Composer: James Weldon Johnson (1871 - 1938)

John Rosamond Johnson

(1873 - 1954)

Written in 1900 in Florida, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was meant to be a Black American patriotic song for school assemblies, civic association meetings, church activities, political rallies, festivals and commemorations. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has served that purpose very well. James and John could not foresee that their song would embrace and endure every form of Black political and economic thought the United States has ever had. As Black Americans participated in international gatherings and congresses, the song has been sung and embraced by people of African descent across the world. This might be the first international song written on the shores of America that the United States has.

Beginning this program with “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a protest statement of dual denial. Part of the denial is a refusal to acknowledge that America needs a new national anthem. The beginning and founding identity of America is tied with slavery. The Star Spangled Banner is not a song that uplifts the Black experience in America. It celebrates enslavement. The fourth stanza in The Star Spangled Banner “No refuge could save the hireling or slave” is Francis Scott Key’s way of saying Black American slaves who joined the British to fight against America should be killed. The other part of the denial is the message within the song. It is a lesson about what it means to be a nation. This sense of America’s refusal to define nationhood from the point of departure of the Black experience is the internal salient struggle Colin Kapernick’s kneeling unearths.

Anger: (Classical) Meditation on Psalm 137

Composer: Dayvin M.A. Hallmon (1985 - Present)

Psalm 137 has resonated with many people throughout the history of the world. The psalm text is about being taken captive, mocked by those who have taken you, then your captors demand that you entertain them by singing joyful songs...all while they destroy you, your family and your culture. Psalm 137 is used for the Jewish day of mourning. This lament is so significant, it is the source material for Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermon “God Damn America”. It is the source text for Frederick Douglass’s most famous speech, “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”. It is the text used for Verdi’s famous Hebrew slave chorus from Nabucco. That particular piece of music is so significant, it is the unofficial national anthem of Italy.

During Hurricane Katrina, someone in the media used the word refugee to describe the masses of mostly Black and Brown bodies rightfully expecting their government to come to their aid. Many people saw the Black and Brown bodies struggling to survive drown in water. With the most recent video of the Aurora Colorado Police Department forcing Black women and girls to the pavement and the killing of Elijah McClain, Black Americans are not refugees in their own country. However it can be hard to argue that Black Americans are not treated as refugees by the United States of America. Psalm 137 is a text about being a refugee. The most frightening part of the text is a lesson for us to internalize. When we treat others with extreme cruelty, someone else will come and do the same against us and when they do, they will kill our children eliminating any possibility for hope and a future.

“Before the musicians gave this a first sight reading, I said to them think of the Aurora Colorado Police Department. One of our violinists replied by saying he remembered the time his body was slammed on the hood of a car and asked if he spoke English.” - D. Hallmon

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

“I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind. . . Yet I do marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!” (Countee Cullen)

Slowly, they came out of their houses. As police roamed with dogs and set the yellow tape, the sound of soft strings wafted over the scene of a recent shooting. It was strange - this bizarre intersection of sweet sound and terrible violence. People began to surround the musicians, awed by a “concert” at such a time. What could it mean? “No one has ever done this for us” a man said, listening to the healing music.

Front line health care workers strained to look out the second-story windows of Children’s Hospital - as a fellow worker filmed live video from her phone at the ER door. Quarantined and afraid for their lives, nurses and doctors, technicians and janitors watched and listened - amazed by the music of the Black Strings Triage Ensemble below. “No one has ever done this for us” said a masked nurse, eyes glistening with tears.

“What are the words you do not yet have?” Writes philosopher and poet Audre Lorde. . .what are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you sicken and die of them, still in silence?”

The Black String Triage Ensemble and the African American music they play, bows salvation’s voice into the broken hearts of neighbors affected by gun violence and into the ears of front line workers selflessly caring for others amidst of pandemic. It’s music gathers together the collective sense of suffering, and gives voice to the pain of people still oppressed, still afraid. Their music is not a postlude to the events of suffering, but a song sung in the midst of it - an astonishing testimony to the vision of Jerusalem Justice, even at the rivers of Babylon.

Bargaining: (Jazz) Come Sunday

Composer: Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899 - 1974)

Duke Ellington wrote three sacred masses. In this particular selection from one of those masses, the text asks God to come down to earth and save humanity. “Dear Lord above, God almighty, God of love, please look down and see my people through.” In making that request, the person acknowledges that there is some pain in life that they must endure. The text contains the line, “I don’t mind the gray skies cause they’re just clouds passing by and by.” Bargaining is always a conversation with God or the universe. It is a human questioning the trade off between how much suffering is necessary and when divine intervention begins.

Depression: (Blues) Wall Street Blues

Composer: W. C. Handy

(1873 - 1958)

W. C. Handy has been called the father of the blues due to the number of Blues pieces he wrote in his lifetime. Born in Florence, Alabama his family discouraged him from playing instruments. Handy’s grandfather was a African Methodist Episcopal pastor. Handy’s parents passed on that strict religious upbringing to their son. He was promised music lessons but only if he stuck to religious music. Handy started playing the organ and took lessons for a bit. As a teenager he joined a band and was able to purchase a cornet from one of his band mates and started practicing it. At 19 He was teaching music. Around the age of 30 Handy had settled himself and his wife in the Clarksdale, Mississippi/Helena,Arkansas area. It was there that Handy came in contact with the Blues. Ten years later Handy moves from playing the Blues, into composing and then into publishing. This allowed Handy to profit and distribute his music all over the United States.

The “Wall Street Blues'' was written in the wake of the 1929 wall street market crash. The lyrics speak to the depression of that reality. “I can sing the blues from the bottom of my heart, I can sing the blues from the bottom of my heart, All my profits gone 'fore I even got a start. Never had the blues like the blues I'm blue with now,Never had the blues like the blues I'm blue with now, Oh! what I recall of the street called Wall and how! Wailing Wall, Oh, Jerusalem! There's one in New York, too, Where I got a-whaling Now I'm ailin', Wailin' cause I'm blue. Margin callin' brokers, miles of ticker tape, Got a many poor old sap-head wearin' crepe, Wailin' Wall Street, I just can't enthuse, Boo-hoo-hoo-in', I've got the Wall Street Blues. More margin that's the broker's call, More margin, I can't meet his call, No more margin, Now he's got it all. No more margin, now he's got it all. Oh Wall Street you've got me depressed, Down-hearted, you can guess the rest, River's East end, graveyard's at the west.”

We are in the midst of a global pandemic. The idea of working and the ability to we may or may not have to work all become complicated because it is intertwined with our physical health. It is a healthcare problem and political problem that has caused an economic one. Nearly everyone is in some way concerned about jobs, finances, food, shelter, and water. Economic downturns are unique to the circumstances that give rise to them. Whether it is the stock market crash of 1929, the savings and loan crisis of 1980, the housing market crash in 2008, or the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the depression that results from shattered life dreams, delayed plans and anticipations is very real.

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

Of the stages of grief, depression is the longest and most dangerous. Anger, bargaining, acceptance and faith are active responses - but depression is the place of helplessness and despair. St. John of the Cross,16th century Spanish mystic, referred to depression as the “dark night of the soul.”

But It is also the place from which the miracle of the human spirit arises and becomes most brilliantly manifest.

Paul Tillich, one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century tells a story which came to light during the Nuremberg Trials after WW II. During the Occupation of Poland, several Jews in the town of Wilma tried to escape the Nazis - by hiding in graves of a nearby cemetery. There, in that unlikely place, a young woman gave birth to a child. Analogous to this brutal narrative, Tillich explained that true faith and hope aren’t disembodied from despair - but born there.

The blues is the sound of hope arising from the grave. From the depths of the black experience comes what Richard Wright calls “the endemic capacity to live.” The blues echoes a spirit stubbornly clinging to hope. It’s sultry sounds arise from despair, and insist that distress and mental anguish do not have the last word.

It is curious that the blues have for so long been vanquished from religious gatherings and the so-called sacred community. Perhaps instead the “holy” and honest places have been the juke joints where despair’s hymns “confront the most unpromising circumstances and make the most of what little there is to go on, regardless of the odds.” (Albert Murray)

Acceptance: (Soul) A Change Is Gonna Come

Composer: Sam Cooke

(1931 - 1964)

Sam Cooke was also the son of a preacher. He was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi. At the age of 2 his family became part of the great migration to northern U.S. cities settling in Chicago. With Black Americans coming to Chicago from the east and south of the country, Chicago was quickly becoming a hub of American musical innovation. As a teenager Sam Cooke led a gospel group. Before he was twenty, Cooke instead of making the typical crossover in genres from Gospel to secular, blended the two styles. As a songwriter the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was impressed with Sam’s work. The Rev. Dr. King felt that Sam had a gift for writing songs with deep humanity.

One of the most iconic songs of the civil rights era of 1960, “A change is Gonna Come” is a song written by Sam Cooke after an incident at a hotel. Sam, his wife and members of his band had booked a reservation at a hotel in Shreveport Louisiana. When the hotel clerk found out they were Black, they were not allowed to stay at the hotel. Naturally, screaming and yelling occurred. When Sam and those accompanying him got to a hotel where they could stay, the police were waiting for them to take them to jail.

The only thing we can be sure of in life, other than death, is change. It is the one constant thing that we as humans can be sure of. It matters little if the change is bad or good. We almost never know the details of when that change will come, how it will come or what it will feel like. The challenge for us is to dwell in the tension that all those unknowns create. Living in that space requires some degree of acceptance. Acceptance does not mean settling. Cooke makes it clear our tomorrow does not have to be our today.

Faith: (Gospel) Redemption Song

Composer: Bob Marley (1945 - 1981)

Bob Marley was born in Jamaica. His father was a White man that was captain of a ship. Capt. Norval Marley was a superintendent of lands for the British government. Bob Marley’s mother, Cedella, was a descendant of the formerly enslaved Cromantee tribe. Capt Marley promised the young 17 year old that he would marry her. Once she became pregnant, Capt. Marley abandoned her and the child. Marley and his mother moved to Kingston in a neighborhood called Trench Town. It was there that a young Bob Marley found friends that were insistent on making music. American R&B and American Funk had become of interest in Jamaica. Locally, calypso and mento had been popular. Local people were starting to experiment with the sounds of those styles of music. Marley joined a popular local band called The Wailers. The outgrowth of this new sound became what we now call Ska and Reggae.

Some have described “Redemption Song” not as reggae, but as an acoustic spiritual. Marley’s body was in severe pain from cancer that had started in his toe and eventually spread throughout his body. At the time of writing “Redemption Song”, Bob was constantly reflecting on his mortality, upbringing, Jamaican history and colonization. “Old pirates, yes, they rob I. Sold I to the merchant ships. Minutes after they took I, from the bottomless pits. But my hand was made strong. By the hand of the Almighty. We forward in this generation, Triumphantly. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourself can free our minds. Have no fear for atomic energy. 'Cause none of them can stop the time How long shall they kill our prophets, While we stand aside and look? Some say it's just a part of it. We've got to fulfill the book”

“Redemption Song” could be seen as Bob Marley’s ultimate prayer petition. By singing together we are collectively transported and taken to a different place where full freedom is possible. Song, as part of the human soul, comes from within us. The voice that we have is as ephemeral as life itself. Once our life force permanently leaves us, the voice that gives that life shape, color, texture and dimension, goes too. “Redemption Song” is an exhalation of the soul, seeking and inspiring unity as the sound rises and drifts above our heads, to the heavens like smoke. Setting that in motion as the sound leaves our bodies is an act of faith.

Rev's Comments: Lead Chaplain Rev. Ronald Ballew

It continues to be an honor and a privilege to serve as the lead chaplain for The Black String Triage Ensemble. On the other hand, I continue to be surprised the God has called me into this exciting Ministry.

The scripture that guides me is I live in to this call comes from 1st Samuel 3:1-12. When the Lord called Samuel, he did not recognize God's call the first or second time. With the third call, Samuel realize God was speaking to him. This summer I have had many opportunities to watch and listen to The Black String Triage Ensemble as they go about their work. One particular experience that comes to mind happened during the second taping session of the music video that The Black String Triage Ensemble has been working on, a family stopped to watch and listen to this outdoor event. The 6 year old African American Girl said she was excited because she had never before seen black ballet dancers nor heard black string musicians. This young lady said she wanted to be a dancer. Her family a firm her passion in her desire. It seemed as if The Black String Triage Ensemble gave her permission to dream her dream and hope that one day it would come true. In closing, The Black String Triage Ensemble is answering a call from God on so many fronts. Most impressive to me is the mission to educate the public they black and brown musicians can and do play and enjoy classical music. I hope and pray many more black and brown young people will catch the spirit.

Lead Chaplain

Reverend Ronald Ballew