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


  • Aby L. Sène
    Patagonia Forest Fires Reveal Imperialist Theft of Protected Lands
    28 Jan 2026
    The arson attacks that engulfed the protected forests of he Andean-Patagonia region serve as a reminder that Western conservation models, which dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands, are…
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Trump Derangement Syndrome Is Real, And It Obfuscates the Requisite Question of Self-Determination in the Heart of U.S. Empire
    28 Jan 2026
    When political energy is channeled into opposing an individual, that energy is diverted from the work of building the popular power needed to challenge the empire he represents.
  • Hanna Eid
    Iran and the Strategy of Tension
    28 Jan 2026
    The Cold War-era "strategy of tension" has evolved into a modern system of hybrid warfare targeting sovereign nations that challenge Western hegemony.
  • Julia Wright
    The Photos of a Five Year Old ICE Terror Doesn't Want Us to See
    28 Jan 2026
    The arrest of a five-year-old captured public attention and ignited a prisoner revolt inside a U.S. ICE detention center. Powerful imagery is a useful tool for the people, but dangerous in the hands…
  • Al Jazeera Staff
    ‘If you sleep, settlers will burn your house’: fear in the West Bank
    28 Jan 2026
    The Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja has held out against violent Israeli settlers – until now.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us