The Sound of Us

[sound of school bell ringing and tense music]

Sid: Whoa, what happened?

Ezra: The spring music show might get cut. No funding. The bake sale flopped, and the singing Valentines fell flat.

Ollie: No way. They can’t cut it.

Sid: It feels like arts programs are always the first thing that they cut.

Ezra: Well, unless we can convince the school of that, I might as well get the rental deposit fee back on my guitar.

Ollie: Music isn’t just something extra. It matters. It’s… it’s…

Sid: It’s music.

Ezra: Tried that argument. Didn’t work.

Ollie: Then we need a better way to make our point. Let’s go.

[upbeat music]

[sound of metal locker opening]

Ollie: Here’s the deal. We’re trying to make a difference, and we want decision-makers to see why change matters. So we’re using journalism. Our cameras, our mics, and our voice to tell real stories about what’s actually happening around here, and what students can make happen when we work together to make our school work for us. I just need to figure out how to explain that music isn’t just for fun. It’s part of who we are.

[sound of metal locker closing and jazz music]

Ezra: Oh, this one’s good.

Sid: Oh, I haven’t heard this one before.

Ollie: You really know your music.

Ezra: Yeah. It was huge for my mom. And she inherited a lot of these records from my grandpa. It feels like our family history is in these records. It’s our culture.

[transition]

Ollie: I figured if anyone can help us explain why art and music matter, it’d be someone who studied it.

LeRonn: Hey, guys.

Sid: Nice to see you.

LeRonn: Oh, same, good to meet you.

Ollie: Nice to meet you.

LeRonn: Hey. Same here.

Ezra: Hey, it’s good to meet you. Thank you for having us over.

Sid: Hey. Oh, love this! Why is her hand on fire?

LeRonn: Well, the fire is the representation of a torch song.

Sid: A torch song?

LeRonn: And the traditional blues. You have the idea of “I have a flame for you.” And so what Alison Saar did here is that she made a literal representation of a flame. She’s so into this yearning, into the passion of expression that she loses herself. Her eyes are rolling back. You see, she’s singing a song that we can’t hear. But we can feel.

Ezra: This song is lighting her up.

LeRonn: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, it’s really a metaphor for how we feel when we’re actually passionate about something or someone. And so this idea of the flame is so powerful because we see the figure in the midst of something we’ve all felt. And that brings us closer to her and her closer to us.

Ollie: And how old are these?

LeRonn: Well, these were made between 2018 and 2019, so they’re fairly recent. But it brings us back to the 1920s and the era of the Harlem Renaissance.

Sid: Harlem Renaissance. We talked about that in English class. 1920s and 30s. Langston Hughes?

LeRonn: Langston Hughes, one of America’s greatest poets. And Langston Hughes was known as a blues poet. Friends with the writer Zora Neale Hurston. Friends with the painter Aaron Douglas. And so we have all this talent coming to New York to really figure out how they could bring traditional African American culture into the discourse of what modern poetry, modern music, and modern expression was.

Ezra: The music. That’s definitely my favorite part.

LeRonn: I mean, we can hear Bessie Smith, we can hear the jazz, we can hear all of that. If we really just take a deep, deep listen.

[jazz music]

Ezra: I can’t help but notice her eyes. It’s kind of like she’s so into the music, she doesn’t even need her eyes.

[jazz music]

Ezra: Okay, that sounded dramatic, but you know what I mean.

LeRonn: That was me in my car this morning.

[Ezra, Ollie and Sid laughing]

LeRonn: No, no, no, but. But imagine singing against the world. Imagine singing with the world. Imagine you know you are in a space where you just have to get something out.

Ollie: So songs were like a form of activism?

LeRonn: Songs continue to be a form of activism to this day, and so this goes way back to a reference of a rebellious culture. The blues was a definite rebellious culture, and so it was a form of activism that expressed African-American humanity, but also political ambitions. What did it mean to actually want to gain full citizenship during an era of American segregation?

Sid: It’s calling for freedom.

LeRonn: Absolutely. Absolutely. In a burning way.

Ezra: Music brings people together back then and now.

Ollie: Okay. I’m convinced. But how do we convince a school?

Sid: How about this? I think we got it.

[jazz music]

Sid: What’s up? Where are you?

Ollie: The Getty Library. It’s just about to close. I did some research with LeRonn on that artist Alison Saar, and everything clicked.

Sid: Lay it on me.

Ollie: Two things: first, Alison Saar’s mom and two sisters are all artists. They all create art about identity and community experience. It reminds me of how Ezra’s grandpa passed down music to his family.

Sid: Well, art does connect people.

Ollie: Yep. And the other thing is, I found some of Alison Saar’s art and her mom’s too, actually. In the Black Women of Print collection. It’s a collective that gives Black women printmakers visibility across generations. It’s basically a space where Black women printmakers hype each other up and make sure their stories actually get seen.

Sid: They lift each other up, like how we’re trying to lift up our music community.

Ollie: Wait. That’s it. Music connects people to each other, to their history, to who they are.

Sid: That’s what we need to show the school.

Ollie: Yes. Let’s actually show them.

[inspiring music]

Ollie: Saar’s family are all artists. It’s in their DNA. Just how music is in yours.

Ezra: It’s literally identity. And community.

Ollie: Okay, so here’s the plan. Everyone contributes a song, and we make a playlist of what matters most to our class.

Sid: I’m pretty sure the jazz band will be down for a flash mob.

Ezra: That will draw attention to the fact that we want change. And we could use it to raise funds.

Ollie: Yes. And I’ll turn it into a story for the school.

Sid: Keeping our priorities straight, I see.

Ollie: You know it. Okay. See you tomorrow. We won’t just save the music show. We’ll show them who we are.

Ezra: Thanks, Ollie.

Ollie: To know ourselves, we listen to the memories we’re given, the histories we uncover, and the communities that shaped us.