Music to Grade By: I'll Take You There

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FOR THE MORNINGS, Rebel Girl suggests the latest from Mavis Staples: We'll Never Turn Back, a rousing revue from the Civil Rights era that bridges then and now. It's not over, folks. Keep your eyes on the prize. Just listen to Staples' own composition, With My Own Eyes. Produced by Ry Cooder with liner notes from John Lewis (!).

Lewis says it best: "The music you are listening to right now was the soul of that revolution. It was this music that gave us hope when it seemed like all hope was gone. It was the heartbeat of this music and its steady, reassuring message that bound us together as one solid force. So when we were beaten, arrested and jailed; when we stood together on picket lines or marched through the streets of the Deep South; when we faced the guns drawn, the billy clubs and the bullwhips raised; when we were teargassed, trampled by horses, or scattered by fire hoses, it was these songs that lifted us and pushed us to a higher place."

Later on in the day, turn to Ry Cooder's My Name is Buddy. Imagine The Grapes of Wrath as told from the point of view of a banjo-playing itinerant cat. Hit the road three fellow travelers: Buddy Red Cat, Lefty Mouse, and the Reverend Tom Toad. Flanked by his usual suspects plus the Seeger brothers (Pete and Mike), Cooder continues his musical chronicle of the California experience.

Toward the evening, Rebel Girl recommends Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's final recording, Neruda Songs. With music composed by her husband, Peter Lieberson and text from Pablo Neruda, Lieberson's mezzo-soprano soars full of passion and tender desperate peace.

from Neruda:
XCII

My love, if I die and you don't —
My love, if you die and I don't —
Let's not give grief an even greater field.
No expanse greater than where we live.

Dust in the wheat, sand in the deserts,
Time, wandering water, the vague wind
Swept us on like sailing seeds.
We might not have found one another in time.

The meadow where we find ourselves,
O little infinity! We give it back.
But Love, this love has not ended:

Just as it never had a birth, it has
No death: it is like a long river,
Only changing hands, and changing lips.

A final note:

Rebel Girl still dreams of the day when she gives a party and, the stereo blasting, the Staple Singers begin to sing, "I'll Take You There"—and all her friends who still can, join her and they begin to dance.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Happy grading! —RG