Weathering

Weathering continues my fascination with the

classic trope of depiction in American music, as

found in Amy Beach, Charles Ives, Thomas “Blind

Tom” Wiggins, Elliott Carter, Duke Ellington,

and many others. This new work is part of my

series of musical meditations on the sound of

decolonization that ask, “If we get what we want,

what will it sound like?”

The music of the new Black improvisors

of the 1960s prompted a New York Times

characterization: “Black, Angry, and Hard to

Understand.” John Coltrane’s response was a

cryptic statement of resistance: He was trying to

show “the many wonderful things he knows of

and senses in the universe.” This was “stoic” (with

a small “S”): enduring pain or hardship without

showing feelings or complaining.

Public health researcher Arline Geronimus calls

“weathering” a continuous fight-or-flight vigilance

and stress response in reaction to an unrelenting

anti-Blackness that can be experienced at

any time, transcending class position, with

lingering effects long after the experience is over.

Nonetheless, the targets of the abuse are expected

to respond “stoically.”

Here, we can turn to JID’s song “Kody Blu 31”

(2022), which tells us that the only way to survive

this Sisyphean cleft stick is to “keep on swangin’

on,” a form of New Testament hexis. Weathering

(the music) is about the sound of that struggle,

part of a larger call for new histories, new

subjectivities, and a new identity for classical

music. I am hoping that this music will provoke

not stress, but empathy, since diverse forms of

weathering affect us all.