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


  • Report from Port-au-Prince, Haiti:  How People Protect Their Communities in the Absence of the State
    Jean Ronald Montas
    Report from Port-au-Prince, Haiti: How People Protect Their Communities in the Absence of the State
    03 May 2023
    Note that all western coverage of Haiti over the past ten months has centered on “gang violence” and not the protests by the people against an illegitimate Prime Minister, unending U.S. imperial…
  • Mayotte Crisis: Putrid Leftover of France’s Imperialist and Colonialist Scrooge?
    Gilbert Mercier
    Mayotte Crisis: Putrid Leftover of France’s Imperialist and Colonialist Scrooge?
    03 May 2023
    Mayotte is a French overseas territory located in the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar. It is also near the Comoros Islands, whose citizens travel to Mayotte as undocumented…
  • Slavery and Prior Accumulation in Venezuela: A Conversation with Enrique Rivera
    Cira Pascual Marquina
    Slavery and Prior Accumulation in Venezuela: A Conversation with Enrique Rivera
    03 May 2023
    The brutal exploitation of life in colonial Venezuela was key in the making of capitalism, but the process also met fierce resistance from enslaved peoples.
  • Black Agenda Radio April 28, 2023
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio April 28, 2023
    28 Apr 2023
    In this segment we discuss the shooting of Black teenager Ralph Yarl, how restoring voting rights of those convicted of felonies increases public safety, and Margaret Kimberley's thoughts on Joe…
  • Gerald Horne on U.S. Foreign Policy - Part 2
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Gerald Horne on U.S. Foreign Policy - Part 2
    28 Apr 2023
    Dr. Gerald Horne is an author and historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us