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


  • Justice was served from Warfare States’ gaslit woks
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Justice was served from Warfare States’ gaslit woks
    29 Apr 2021
    Justice was served sweet and sour in pepper spray soup—tear- gas gumbo—tears mixed with milk and milk of magnesia in crimson curry sauce; Served from warfare states’ woks on
  • The Class Collaboration of “Justice” 
    Erica Caines
    The Class Collaboration of “Justice” 
    29 Apr 2021
    After the guilty verdict, the clarity that was collectively growing became squandered with the words “it’s not justice, it’s accountability.”
  •  Reflections on Cuba’s Black Radical History, Revolutionary Health, and Grassroots Media
    Semassa Boko and Jeanette Charles
    Reflections on Cuba’s Black Radical History, Revolutionary Health, and Grassroots Media
    29 Apr 2021
    It is vitally necessary to bridge the gap in knowledge and dismantle US misinformation campaigns against Cuba’s realities for international English-speaking audiences.
  • Compliance Will Not Save Me
    Ibram X. Kendi
    Compliance Will Not Save Me
    29 Apr 2021
    American policing is defended as good despite its unmatched amounts of lethal violence.
  • Notes From the Underground
    Scott McLernee
    Notes From the Underground
    29 Apr 2021
    Richard Wright’s 1942 novel was testing the limits of what the white novel-reading public would have found imaginable.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us