Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Play, Black Girl, play! (For the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music’s girls)
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
18 Mar 2026
🖨️ Print Article
Nina Simone

“The music is the magic through a raging storm …” 

— Abbey Lincoln

Play, Black Girl, play —
Play your piano, now
Come, now, let Sister-
Master show you how

Play, Black Girl, play —
Play your hot saxophone
On shoulders of giants
You don’t stand alone …


© 2026. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet, BAR's Poet-in-Residence, and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC. You can vote for his work at GoFundMe and PayPal.

Music
Black children
culture
Oakland
Black Women

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Declaration of Independence (for Donald "Duck" Bailey)
15 July 2026
Drummer men, drummer men, fluid loose-limbed rhythm-masters, were you born free?Did you drum? Did you drum? Did you drum
Photo: Kevin W. Thorbourne
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Bird, strings, Big Chief: 100: Harlem (For Charlie Parker/Donald Harrison/Harlem Symphony Orchestra)
08 September 2021
Bird, strings, Big Chief: 100: Harlem (For Charlie Parker/Donald Harrison/Harlem Symphony Orchestra)  
BAR Book Forum: Symposium on Sarah Haley’s "No Mercy Here"
Marisa Fuentes
BAR Book Forum: Symposium on Sarah Haley’s "No Mercy Here"
06 May 2020
This is a book about the ideological construction of black women as “non-human” and exploitable for capitalist profit in the making of the New Sout

More Stories


  • A Black Scholar on How Today’s Abolitionist Movement Can Fundamentally Change the Country
    Jeremy Scahill and Robin D.G. Kelley
    A Black Scholar on How Today’s Abolitionist Movement Can Fundamentally Change the Country
    01 Jul 2020
    If there’s ever a time when a Reconstruction might actually lead to democratization and the end of American imperialism, this is the opportunity, says Robin D.G. Kelley.
  • The Self-Confessed Bankruptcy of Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba
    Adofo Minka
    The Self-Confessed Bankruptcy of Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba
    01 Jul 2020
    Jackson, Mississippi’s Black mayor is celebrated as a “radical” in some quarters, but his cops kill, maim and abuse Black people just like police forces everywhere in the US.
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of June 29, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of June 29, 2020
    29 Jun 2020
    Inequality: The American Ethos
  • Reading During “Perfect Storm” of Crisis
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Reading During “Perfect Storm” of Crisis
    29 Jun 2020
    Medical, economic and political crises have combined to create a “perfect storm for reading, because of the ways that the ideology of whiteness has come to its limits,” said Aparna Mis
  • Blacks Need to Rethink “Positive” Images in a Racist Country
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Blacks Need to Rethink “Positive” Images in a Racist Country
    29 Jun 2020
    A segment of African Americans has long been obsessed with promoting images that are positive representations of The Race, but recurring police atrocities show the necessity to “expose the regime o
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us