Mississippi River Suite-Part I (video)

Pete Seeger’s reach and a new CD:  MISSISSIPPI RIVER SUITE

May 3, 2020

If Pete were alive, he’d turn 101 today.  For some Pete becomes like Joe Hill, he never died—just moved along, but not before he handed his dreams, his ethics and his encouragement to a world of people needing and nourished by the energy therein.  I count my lucky stars to be just one of the recipients of Pete’s encouragement.  

In fact he had this metaphor that he called the “teaspoon brigade” that was an answer to the question of what difference one individual can have.  I can’t quote it exactly, but it was something like this….that you imagine you’re too small and insignificant, like a mere teaspoon of sand.  But imagine that you’re one teaspoon and there are a million others who believe like you!  One teaspoon of sand can blow away in the breeze, but a million starts to make a mountain and two million might make a movement.  And it all started with one small teaspoon. 

MISSISSIPPI RIVER SUITE & WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

A year ago, on this day along with a cast of 15 others I celebrated Pete’s centennial with a show called “100 Years of Protest,”  where we portrayed the many protest movements that filled the streets of America during Pete’s lifetime, starting in 1919.  On this day, 101 years after Pete’s birth, thanks to the City of Chicago’s Dept of Cultural Affairs, I’m unofficially releasing my teaspoon of sand.  This is  a new recording called Mississippi River Suite which includes two 22-minute long performance poems—one called Mississippi River Suite and the other Which Side Are You On? 

The CD and streaming downloads will be available through Bandcamp and Spotify etc by June 1, if not sooner.  But starting today, in advance of the official release and at the rate of one every week for the next 13 weeks, I’ll be posting a lyric video—with sections of each of these works.   

The opening premise of this was brief:  using the river that divides the nation, I would create a new musical work about a ‘divided nation.’   What happened next was collaborations with many, the most important of whom is Zahra Glenda Baker.  She is my neighbor and lifelong friend.  It is her voice that you will hear delivering my words with a power and conviction, from whisper to roar, that brings this work to life.  For me it was clear from the moment she touched it, that this was hers and hers alone.  

The music behind Zahra is original with a few quotes—one from Jerome Kern’s Old Man River and the other from the traditional tune Wade in the Water.  Mississippi River Suite features a quartet of banjo, flute, bass and percussion.  Which Side Are You On? features banjo with cello and banjo with string quartet.  

BACKSTORY

My view of the world changed the day I entered the East Moline Correctional Center on the banks of the Mississippi River.  It was 9am on a Saturday, and I was there to play music for the inmates—250 black men dressed in blue and maybe 10 others who were white.  With music as one of earth’s most powerful forces, it wasn’t long before we had pounded out Sweet Home Chicago and This Little Light of Mine. In Johnny Cash-like revelry, I had found back-up singers and a drummer and even managed to share a prayerful whisper of JS Bach on the banjo.  It was intimidating and frightening really, and then magical and then it was over.  Leaving the prison, the prison guard told me to look to the sky outside the prison.  Over the river flew 6 bald eagles—the first eagles I had ever seen.  

The disturbing portrait of incarceration juxtaposed against the soaring symbol of freedom sitting right alongside the mighty Mississippi was overpowering.. It honestly felt like the inmates were just regular guys. I thought  “one mistake they don’t make, and few that I do and we’d trade places.  If my kids were hungry, would I consider robbing the 7-11—hell yes I would.”  

HERE AND NOW

Seated deeply in a torrid world of danger, contradiction, greed, as well as admirable and detestable leadership, I have the curious luxury of bringing new art to fore.  Thanks for joining me in the journey which will roll out across the next 3 months.  

Michael Miles