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Text by Jessica Care Moore
Contains sound file to be played during 4th movement
Jan 2021, New York City
Latoya Lain and Erika Switzer, Sparks and Wiry Cries 2021 Song Slam
This has been an inspiring collaboration – a composer from Canada, a poet from Detroit, a pianist from New York, a singer from North Carolina have all come together under Sparks & Wiry Cries to make a new song. For me, a song must be strongly rooted in its text – each and every decision I make as a composer needs to come back to the text in a meaningful way. This poem is so rich to set as it is already so full of its own sound and ideas: It is a complete as a work of art, hard-wired with its own musicality and phrasing, making it a joy (and challenge) to set. I set the work in 4 movements:
I. INTROIT VS DETROIT II. Songbirds begin at 4 A.M III. Strange Fruit and magnolia trees IV. The call to prayer is louder than the death toll
The first three feature sections from the poem, and the last movement features the full poem up front as unbroken spoken work in a powerful pre- recorded track by Jessica. This piece speaks to our now – it is about COVID19, and about Black Lives Matter, and about religion, and about politics. It is about being human. It is about hope and fear, and above all, for me at least, about our capacity to be made anew.
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