Top US tenor protests ‘so many senseless deaths of African-American men’

Top US tenor protests ‘so many senseless deaths of African-American men’

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norman lebrecht

July 10, 2016

Comments

  • Steve Wollard says:

    I couldn’t agree more. So many murders, especially in South Chicago and New York.

  • Carol Blades says:

    Beautiful evocation of our national despair.

    • Diane Noel says:

      Heartbreaking. We who are white in America can never know the fear and isolation felt by the majority of Black Americans. No matter how much we want to share the pain, we will always be the other. Living in Hyde Park (South Side of Chicago) in the 80’s and 90’s was my introduction to integrated life. I found so much in the culture that I admired. The families who came to picnic in the parks along the lake a block from where I lived seemed to have more fun and laugh and sing more. Just listening to the ladies talk on the bus to my job in the Loop was like listening to music. But I was stonewalled when I was at check-out stands — no smiles, no chat. I felt fear when walking alone from the train to home after work. How will we ever bridge that gap of the unknown and distrust?

      • Holly Golightly says:

        And the situation you have is a result of victimizing a group, creating grievance rather than empowerment through personal choice. You do them no service at all by pitying them and, thereby, allowing them to remain in their current situations. Personal responsibility plays a huge role in all of this and, of course, the emoting Left isn’t having any of it. Pity people on the receiving end of that kind of patronisation!! Look more closely at statistics and disadvantage and you’ll see that whites are often disadvantaged but don’t carry guns and violence to the extent that African Americans do.

        May I recommend the excellent ideas of Prager University to give you the wake-up call ( you won’t want anyway!).

  • Stephen Lawrence says:

    Let’s see if I have this right: No one composed the music, wrote the words, or wrote the arrangement? I saw the word “spiritual” rush by. Maybe it’s a spiritual. But someone wrote the arrangement. Was any attempt made to credit a composer, arranger, lyricist? If you don’t put their names on their work you are killing them too. They don’t exist.

    • clarrieu says:

      You actually seem to have it quite wrong: as stated in the video, it’s an “old spiritual”, so not uncommon to see without author’s names, as they are often unknown. Then you have a classical tenor meeting a jazz pianist (their names are clearly put in the video), who obviously rehearsed a quick “head arrangement” together (nothing written down) leaving some space for improvisation. Why don’t you focus rather on the emotional content and deep meaning of this clip?

  • Marc says:

    And, Steve Wollard, Lawrence Brownlee and Jason Moran may be well aware of Chicago &c, and not be ‘restricting’ their obvious heartfelt concern to the infamous deaths of the past week: but, it being NPR, we’ll never know.

  • una says:

    This has just come through blank. Or was it just meant to be the headline?

  • una says:

    Sorry, after posting the last comment, a video appeared so will have a look.

    Thanks.

    Una

  • Heath says:

    Yes, so many senseless deaths of African-American men BY African-American men here in the US. They’re killing each other night and day in the inner cities.

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