02/10/2021
✨TMEA IN 3 DAYS✨
Our commissioned piece, “Stardust”, was written by Spelman grad and Atlanta-based composer, B.E. Boykin. Using a poem penned by Pershing’s own creative writing teacher and fellow Spelman grad, Brittny Ray Crowell, Ms. Boykin’s setting of “Stardust” is an earnest offering that pulls from Virgina Hamilton’s collection of folktales “The People Could Fly”. In a story passed down through generations, we learn that African people once had wings to fly, but enslavement took away their magic. By saying the words “Kum buba yali, k*m buba tambe”, the enslaved people were able to fly to freedom.
In Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he describes negative peace as the “absence of tension” and positive peace as the “presence of justice.” It is our hope that “Stardust” fills a void, not only in the choral canon, but in the hearts of all who hear it and might be stirred to call for justice in America... not only for Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, but for all the people of color taken from this world before their time and without concern for their humanity.
