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


  • New Data on Jail Populations: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    Alexi Jones and Wendy Sawyer
    New Data on Jail Populations: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    31 Mar 2021
    The pandemic forced many police departments, courts and jails to take steps that reformers had been demanding for decades.
  •  Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 29, 2021
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 29, 2021
    29 Mar 2021
    Expect “Lip Service” from Biden on Immigration Reform
  • Audre Lorde’s Revolutionary Contribution to Black Political Thought
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Audre Lorde’s Revolutionary Contribution to Black Political Thought
    29 Mar 2021
    Black poet and feminist Audre Lorde showed her socialist and revolutionary colors in the wake of the US invasion of Grenada, her parent’s birthplace, in 1983, said Jack Turner, pro
  •  US Black Elite Tied to Capitalism, Not Black Liberation
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    US Black Elite Tied to Capitalism, Not Black Liberation
    29 Mar 2021
    “If we want to have Black liberation, we have to abolish capitalism to do that,” said Kandista Mallett, an activist and columnist for Teen Vogue magazine who authored a recent colu
  •  Expect “Lip Service” from Biden on Immigration Reform
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Expect “Lip Service” from Biden on Immigration Reform
    29 Mar 2021
    We have already seen Joe Biden’s immigration policy, during his eight years as vice president under Barack “Deporter-in-Chief” Obama, said Deborah A., a national organizer with the
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us