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


  • Expect Police-Military Repression Amid the Crisis of COVID-19 and Its Aftermath
    Netfa Freeman
    Expect Police-Military Repression Amid the Crisis of COVID-19 and Its Aftermath
    08 Apr 2020
    The rulers are concerned about the class war becoming sharper in the current crisis and they are preparing to send in the military and police to quell dissent.
  • Letters from Our Readers 
    Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers 
    08 Apr 2020
    This week you discussed Black Marxism and the Bernie Sanders campaign.
  • BAR Book Forum: Xavier Livermon’s  “Kwaito Bodies”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Xavier Livermon’s  “Kwaito Bodies”
    08 Apr 2020
    The author examines how Black youth in post-apartheid South Africa imagine freedom under tremendous systems of constraint. ​​​​​​​
  • BAR Abolition & Mutual Aid Spotlight: Chicago Community Bond Fund
    Dean Spade and Roberto Sirvent, BAR Contributors
    BAR Abolition & Mutual Aid Spotlight: Chicago Community Bond Fund
    08 Apr 2020
    This arena of the mutual aid movement is energized by “a vision of the absence of prisons, jails, detention, and criminalization.”
  • Blacks May be Bearing the Brunt of Covid-19, But Access to Data is Limited
    Elizabeth Cooney
    Blacks May be Bearing the Brunt of Covid-19, But Access to Data is Limited
    08 Apr 2020
    The feds don’t keep racial data on the coronavirus, but local reports show Blacks are dying at multiple the rates of whites in some cities.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us