Creating Music as Space to Explore and Inform Social Construct & Change

A talk and performance by avery r. young. He performed a poem on the Middle Passage and Black women organizers ("transition from the motherland to the other land"), then a sung piece on the murder of Emmett Till built on the hymn "Were You There," before discussing Mahalia Jackson and Dr. King, Billie Holiday's and Nina Simone's recordings of "Strange Fruit," "Mississippi Goddam," Fela Kuti, and Ben Branch's 1968 album The Last Request. He took audience questions and described a play in progress about the 1968 Chicago West Side uprising. Content note: contains graphic description of a lynching and profanity.