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


  • Biden is Anti-Haiti, and His Haitian-American Press Person Doesn’t Give a Damn
    Pascal Robert
    Biden is Anti-Haiti, and His Haitian-American Press Person Doesn’t Give a Damn
    02 Jun 2021
    The current Haitian president is perhaps the most ineffectual US stooge to date, but Joe Biden and his Haitian American press person couldn’t care less.
  • BAR Book Forum: Tamika Nunley’s “At the Threshold of Liberty”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Tamika Nunley’s “At the Threshold of Liberty”
    02 Jun 2021
    How Black women gave the term “liberty” its meaning and expanded the scope of liberty in the nation’s capital during the nineteenth century.
  • BAR Book Forum: Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger’s “Extraordinary Threat”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger’s “Extraordinary Threat”
    02 Jun 2021
    Western media outlets, NGOs and powerful governments allied with the United States work in unison to deceive people about foreign policy.
  • Jackson Mississippi’s Black Ruling Class Collaborates to Give Cops Cover to Kill
    Adofo Minka
    Jackson Mississippi’s Black Ruling Class Collaborates to Give Cops Cover to Kill
    02 Jun 2021
    The “radical” Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has presided over the police killing of eight Black citizens since 2017.
  • How Corporations Buy—and Sell—Food Made With Prison Labor
    H. Claire Brown 
    How Corporations Buy—and Sell—Food Made With Prison Labor
    02 Jun 2021
    The small world of prison food production is a microcosm of the American food system, which all too o#en functions as a race to the bottom.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us