02/14/2024
"A healthy ear can stand hearing sick words" is one of my favorite African proverbs.
I really like Samara Joy, a young jazz vocalist getting some well-deserved recognition. Her voice is powerful and smooth. Her vocals are compelling.
So I was sad when on my feed today was an example of her singing the Star Spangled Banner at Madison Square Garden. Oh, she kilt it, and it will provide more recognition.
Remembering, "A healthy ear can stand hearing sick words." So I wrote this to her:
Samra, I love your voice. Please keep singing, and please find a better song to sing. For our people - Black people - it wasn't then, nor is it now, a land of free or home of those brave. They weren't brave enough to fight for or even extend justice and liberty to us. Most of those called the founding fathers held us in bo***ge. The white colonists fought the "Star Spangled War" with Britain mainly because they were afraid that the new Anti-Slavery position of Britain would be enforced in the colonies of the British, so they fought this war to keep Africans in bo***ge and to retain their economic and psychological advantage.
Britain's Padmore in 1775 offered Africans freedom in exchange for our fighting with the British. Washington refused to do the same.
So that star-spangled banner-waving to a victory for the white colonists/invaders meant Black people would have almost 100 more years of legalized bo***ge!
That was until, again, we fought in a bloody conflict between two groups of white people (Union and Confederate) for our freedom - not for the Union or for the flag that by then had come to be called "Old Glory."
This time, our fighting made THE defining difference, and we were victorious when our soldiered ancestors ran General Lee into the Appomattox courthouse and held him there until General Grant could arrive for Lee's surrender. This, of course, led to the passage of the 13th Amendment.
Today, school boards are passing legislation monthly that prevents the documented and lived African American reality from being taught in schools.
When they ask you to sing it again - and they will - remember we (Africans held in bo***ge) were the brave - fighting against those like George Washington, who on his day of inauguration sold some of his over 100 Africans for a keg of molasses. Thomas Jefferson beat him out, holding more than 600 in bo***ge.
Your powerful voice helps us feel an inclusion that is still an illusion. Your vocal timbre helps us image a home and embrace that we deserve, yet one which would epitomize the Stockholm syndrome.
So, sister, keep singing for the brave, so we will keep fighting to make this the land of the free. I remain a brother and a fan!
If you'd like more info or documentation, you can research for yourself or inbox me.
Keep singing. We need you.