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

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


  • Joy James
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Confronting Counterinsurgency: Cop Cities and Democracy's Terrors
    12 Sep 2025
    Joy James is a scholar and a political philosopher who works with organizers. She is editor of the new book Confronting Counterinsurgency: Cop Cities & Democracy’s Terrors, which is published by…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Super Predators, Born Criminals, and the Black Misleadership Class
    10 Sep 2025
    The treachery of the Black misleadership class knows no bounds. While Trump’s latest racist dog whistle about “born criminals” is condemned, double-talking scoundrels may pretend to be horrified…
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Extended Remarks from UNAC Webinar: Troops Out of Our Cities! ICE Out of Our Communities! September 7, 2025
    10 Sep 2025
    The Trump administration’s declaration of war on American cities is a logical escalation of the white supremacist project. This is not a policy shift but a clearer revelation of the settler state's…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: The King Alfred Plan, Gil Scott-Heron, 1972
    10 Sep 2025
    “...white paranoia is here to stay/The white boy's scheming night and day/What you think about the King Alfred Plan?”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Ethiopia: National Aspiration, Identity, and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
    10 Sep 2025
    “Ethiopia just changed the continent of Africa forever.” - African development economist and electricity activist 
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us