“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.

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?

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.

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.