Tags
- “Why do you have your guns out?” – Kenneth Chamberlain, 66
- “What are you following me for?” – Trayvon Martin, 17
- “Mom, I’m going to college.” – Amadou Diallo, 23
- “I don’t have a gun. Stop shooting.” – Michael Brown, 18
- “You shot me! You shot me!” – Oscar Grant, 22
- “It’s not real.” – John Crawford, 22
- “I can’t breathe.” – Eric Garner, 43
- more at Wiki
In half a dozen times listening I have yet to get through without an emotion surfacing – sometimes the words, sometimes the sound of an instrument, the choral harmonies, the faces of the conductor, the soloists, the lives lost.
An article about the composer, Joel Thompson, and Eugene Rogers, the conductor of the piece by Giulia Heyward
“There were people in the chorus who didn’t want to perform it. We had alums of the club who had a problem with it. But Dr. Rogers’s pedagogy was crucial, and needs to be adopted by other predominantly white choirs. He made sure all the men did their research about these deaths, that they were educated. Everyone’s cultural competency went up like five notches.
I found this performance and was listening to it last month. Very moving.