Traditional
Arrangement by H. T. Burleigh
Adapted by Nick Platoff
Marques Jerrell Ruff, voice
Nick Platoff, trombone
We released this video on Juneteenth 2020 and my always-elegant friend wrote some words to give listeners some context.
Some words from Marques:
Juneteenth is the day we commemorate when enslaved Blacks in Texas finally received the news of their freedom. While the Emancipation Proclamation, issued two years prior in 1863, had virtually freed slaves the news was slow to reach those in former Confederate states. We celebrate this day because the heinous, inhuman act of slavery had finally been abolished, but in reality we know that this was just the beginning of the uphill battle Blacks would endure to achieve equality in this country.
While slavery was no longer legal, southern states were quick to replace the physical chains with metaphorical ones disguised as Black Codes. This ultimately gave way to Jim Crow Laws that would maintain, if not further exacerbate, the quality of life of Blacks during the Reconstruction era.
During the 1890’s a young Black man named Henry (Harry) Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) began his musical studies at the National Conservatory of Music in New York. It was there that he met famous Czech composer Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) and blossomed as a composer, vocalist, and pianist. Dvořák admired the Negro spiritual along with Native American chant, and encouraged American musical students at the time to embrace the music of its own people, rather than continue to seek the European stamp of approval for American classical music.
This musical collaboration is dually inspired by this pioneering work of Burleigh’s which revolutionized the concert spiritual, and also by the musical friendship he shared with Dvořák. It is not lost on either Nick or Marques that just sixty years ago, a performance like this wouldn’t have been possible under the ever watchful eye of Jim Crow. That we, as friends united in the fight for social justice and racial equality, could celebrate Juneteenth with this famous spiritual that depicts a promised land is symbolic of hope. A hope that this land, this American land which belongs to us all, will one day fully acknowledge the value of Black lives and be cleansed of the sins of her past by the renewing water of this deep river.
Негізгі бет "Deep River" - Marques Jerrell Ruff and Nick Platoff
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