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


  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    INTERVIEW: The Problem of Haiti is the Same as Latin America: Gerard Pierre-Charles, 1983
    15 Jan 2025
    Despite selling out Haiti, former Haitian leftist Gerard Pierre-Charles’s 1983 diagnosis of the imperialist assault on current movements still resonates today.
  • Manley greets a crowd
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor , Riva Enteen
    Remembering Jamaica in the East/West Crossfire, Part II
    15 Jan 2025
    Both class and color barriers were broken down during the Michael Manley era, but class barriers re-emerged.
  • Sign of one of the children in the Guayaquil four
    Clau O'Brien Moscoso
    The War on Africans in Ecuador: an Interview with Uriel Castillo of MANE
    15 Jan 2025
    Over a month after the killings of four young boys in Ecuador, now known as the Guayaquil Four, the community is still reeling but is also activated. This case has sparked a movement that is…
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis’s Book, “Abolish Rent”
    15 Jan 2025
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured authors are Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis. Their book is Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can…
  • JP Sloan
    all their deaths were ruled suicide
    15 Jan 2025
    for Aiyana, for Tommie, for Jordan.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us