"Freedom Sings" and mourns and rejoices

As a poet, I am certain that words often fail. It is a sheer love of them that keeps a poet writing--love of words, craft and purpose. Poets are people that have something to say, and what is especially a joy is when poetry is the muse for other arts. Words may fail but often only because they cannot be the only justice a purpose or a people receive.

I say this because attending "Freedom Sings" last week, I am more than proud to call myself a poet. The concert, a 2-hour exploration of banned music throughout America's history, is a call (and reminder) to action. We have a right to speak, to sing, to express--as Dudley Randall did in 1965, two years after the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham that killed four beautiful little black girls.

"Ballad of Birmingham": http://www.ctadams.com/dudleyrandall4.html

His poem reads as it should. Solemn. And with much importance. It was for the little girls, Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Denise McNair (11), and Carole Robertson (14). It is for the girls and in their remembrance. But I think it is important also to note that poetry is not an expressive medium often chosen by the masses (here I send thanks to the heavens) but music is. And if done correctly, for craft's sake, the two together are hard not to hear.

The song: http://www.balladofbirmingham.org/

Randall's "Ballad of Birmingham" was set to music in 2004 by three students at Tennessee State University. The poem is given only a piano and the voices of two women. The piano is quiet, never in the way of the interpretation and never too loud to hear and understand every word. When poetry and music occupy the same realm, affect is inevitable.

And of "Freedom Sings," well, yes it does. It also mourns and it also rejoices. God bless the souls of those little girls who maybe knew too much of their time, who wanted freedom as much as the grown folk around them. May God continue to hold them and their spirits, as well as all our fallen, in the palm of His hand. . .

Nashville Public Radio talks to the TSU students behind the song "Ballad of Birmingham": http://faculty.tnstate.edu/hmaddux/balladofbirmingham/Nashville%20Public%20Radio%20-%20Welcome.htm