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


  • The New White Supremacist Consensus Part Two: Shootings in Buffalo Solidify the Cons
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    The New White Supremacist Consensus Part Two: Shootings in Buffalo Solidify the Consensus
    18 May 2022
    The latest mass shooter in Buffalo, New York was clearly a racist, and identified with Ukrainian and other neo-Nazis. But white supremacy has a stronger hold on European and U.S. society than is…
  • REFLECTION: Choosing Ourselves: Black Women and Abortion, Beverly Smith, 1989
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    REFLECTION: Choosing Ourselves: Black Women and Abortion, Beverly Smith, 1989
    18 May 2022
    A 1989 talk by Black feminist Beverly Smith reminds us that for Black women, the right to abortion can be a woman’s right to life.
  • Notes from Ethiopia, Part 4: The TPLF Destruction of Afar
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Notes from Ethiopia, Part 4: The TPLF Destruction of Afar
    18 May 2022
    Contributing Editor Ann Garrison continues her reporting from the Horn of Africa. She is once again in Ethiopia.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Camera and Pen
    18 May 2022
                                                         
  • Fact Finding Mission to Donbass
    John Parker
    Fact Finding Mission to Donbass
    18 May 2022
    John Parker is the Socialist Unity Party candidate for U.S. Senate in California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. Parker is on a fact-finding trip observing the U.S./NATO proxy…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us