One of America’s largest exports is our music. Our culture. And with the release of brea(d)th, a landmark classical-and-spoken-word album composed by Grammy-nominated Carlos Simon as a response to George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and America’s century’s-long embrace of anti-black bias, the struggle now has an extended soundtrack.
The work, performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, was recorded live in May 2023 in Minneapolis, in the same city where Floyd was murdered. The release at the top of September makes the 37-minute seminal recording available on all streaming services.
“Give us this day, respect for the breath,” says the artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who speaks the poetic libretto asking us to consider breath and bread as the basics of the American promise. The song plays upon The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13 Version KJV), which includes this verse: “Give us this day, our daily bread.” It’s a verse often used in church services, and within it holds the expectation and promise that a human can ask for, and should be granted, the right to do those daily things that keep a human alive. The prologue continues: “Go on… give us this day, the breath of repair, the breath of the labor. The held breath of the witness watching life progress to death. I too, am a witness.”
The five-part suite encompasses several moods from sorrowful and tense to hopeful and peaceful. It bears witness to the continued racial reckoning of America and notably, the lyrics go on to say that America- which the FBI states is experiencing a 12% increase in hate-based crimes since 2021 – is “healing in public.”
The album also includes “elegy,” a piece composed to honor the memory of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was murdered in 2012 by a neighbor who wrongly assumed the teen was committing a crime.
Simon, the winner of the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence and Composer-in-Residence at the Kennedy Center of the Arts, describes himself as “a conduit, a vessel used by God to deliver music to the people.” His commissions are sought after and he has worked with the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, PBS
PBS
The concerts that comprise the album recording were conducted by Jonathan Taylor Rush, associate conductor for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, at Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall. In addition to Joseph, who is the inaugural recipient of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative and vice president and artistic director of social impact at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C, the recording features the Minnesota Chorale, Vocal Ensemble 29:11 and Twin Cities Choral Partners.
The album is distributed by Decca Classics. Listen here:
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