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


  • Letters from Our Readers 
    Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers 
    01 Jul 2020
    This week community control of police and the failings of the Biden campaign were on your minds.
  • BAR Book Forum: Nicole Fleetwood’s “Marking Time”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Nicole Fleetwood’s “Marking Time”
    01 Jul 2020
    Incarcerated activists have so many tools and skills to teach about resisting brutal regimes.
  • BAR Book Forum: Edward Onaci’s “Free the Land”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Edward Onaci’s “Free the Land”
    01 Jul 2020
    The desire for US citizenship was never the sole consideration of African and African-descended people.
  • My Student Comes Home from Prison
    Chris Hedges
    My Student Comes Home from Prison
    01 Jul 2020
    In 1990, Lawrence Bell was 14, orphaned and living in an abandoned house when three Camden cops pressured him to sign a confession of murder.
  • Interrogating Systemic Racism and the White Academic Field
    Nelson Maldonado-Torres 
    Interrogating Systemic Racism and the White Academic Field
    01 Jul 2020
    The US university is marked by the dominance of intellectual white liberalism in tension and complicity with conservative nationalism and neoliberalism.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us