for mezzo-soprano and 12-piece jazz ensemble
(flute/alto sax 1, alto sax 2, tenor sax, baritone sax, 2 Bb trumpets, 2 trombones, guitar, piano, bass, drums)
2023
20 minutes Listen to the entire performance on KBOO
Purchase the music (coming soon) includes score and parts (PDF)
View perusal score (coming soon)
———
I. Nuture Nature
Shh... Close your eyes.
Imagine looking out from the top of Mt. Tabor.
There’s water
As far as the eye can see
Thirteen thousand years ago
Glaciers were melting,
Massive lakes were forming
And overflowing:
The Missoula Floods.
Fresh water finds the sea,
clouds return water to rivers and wetlands,
A cycle of renewal.
Four-hundred feet of water,
And the sky shines bright blue,
Once a generation
For thousands of years.
This visitor,
This watery visitor comes like morning,
Leaving behind beautiful layers of time
Frozen before our eyes
In the rhythmites of stone and ash.
This cinder cone island sleeps,
But the earth still weeps,
Under the weight of our human touch.
Invasive species bloom where land is disturbed,
Some take over an colonize,
Others’ beauty is recognized,
Everything just wants to thrive.
Who are you to judge?
Flood it with love.
•
II. Whose Land?
Eighteen-eighty-somethin’
It took a week to cut down just one tree,
It was misery.
Eighteen-eighty-somethin’
A mob of masked, armed men
Gathered in the night
To assert their might,
To sweep, sweep, sweep
The Chinese immigrants away
Across that river over there.
Ferry captain!
Take these people
Out of sight, out of mind
Only if you pay the fare...
Twenty-twenty-somethin’
Took but a moment to lose everything,
Simply everything
Twenty-twenty-somethin’
A truck of masked, gloved men
Gathered just before dawn
With their work boots on
To sweep, sweep, sweep
The unhoused innocents away
To who the f^$% knows where
(nobody cares)
Politicians!
Take these people
Out of sight, out of mind,
That’s somebody’s loved one...
Don’t enable injustice
Just because you’re afraid of things
You don’t understand
Sweep, sweep, sweep
Whoever’s getting in your way
Out of sight, out of mind.
•
III. Blackberry Dandelion Tea
Blackberry dandelion tea,
Starlings and English ivy...
Can you see Wakakan?
Can you hear the flickers’ calling?
Can you hear the ravens’ taunt
As you watch the dawn redwood’s needles falling
In the gentle rain?
This magical space—
We fall into place.
May all spirits rise.
Just open your eyes.
We’re filled with abundance
In the love among us.
Invasive species bloom where land is disturbed,
Some take over and colonize,
Others’ beauty is recognized,
Everyone just wants to thrive.
Who are we to judge?
Flood it with love.
———
PROGRAM NOTES: In writing a piece about Mount Tabor, I was wondering how the geological and cultural history of the area rhymes or resonates currently, asking the question of what we can learn from the past and how we might proceed with that knowledge.
Geologically, I was fascinated by David Harrelson's description of high places as prime storytelling spaces for the local Indigenous communities because the history of the land tells the history of the people (and even "ikanum," pre-human time). Millenia of glacial melt and flooding shaped the Willamette Valley. Once a network of wetlands, colonizers rerouted the waterways, filled the marshes, and developed the city we have today. With accelerated global warming due to humans burning fossil fuels, more glacial flooding has already begun to affect communities like Juneau, AK where the Mendenhall Glacial Lake just had a surprising outburst of flooding, destroying or condemning multiple homes along the river bank, and creating sea level rise that displaces coastal communities worldwide.
In terms of cultural history, I was struck by Dr. Marie Rose Wong's story about the Chinese woodcutters, many working on Mount Tabor, who were expelled at gunpoint by a mob in 1886. What really got me was the story of the ferry captain who would only agree to take them up the river if someone paid the fare, and how monied interests turn a blind eye to inhumanity and enable injustice. Similarly, today we expel the unhoused and impoverished, criminalize their mere existence, and many citizens turn a blind eye because their property and business interests rise above their compassion. These two concepts in combination led me to the title "Flood it with Love," because I have witnessed the strength of mutual aid efforts in Portland and have hope for a better future for all, if only we can find perspective.
