Calling All Souls
Keith LaMar and Albert Marquès
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When people typically think of an artist What usually comes to mind Is someone who uses their imagination To capture and convey reality as it is seen and felt In the main, what we do (O leave undone) in the course of our everyday lives Is viewed as insignificant Unless or until we are thrown into the crucible of adverse circumstances And forced to demand from Self the strength and focus necessary To overcome seemingly insurmountable odds I write and recite these words on January the 2nd 2022 Less than two years away from my proposed execution Which is scheduled to take place on November the 16th 2023 In other words, I'm standing on the brink of my existence Staring directly into that terrifying darkness that awaits us all It's a difficult dilemma to be in, I won't lie But the only way to face it is to make it mean something; It is in this very strict sense of the word That I consider myself an artist: someone who's trying to make a way out of no way The music you are about to listen to comes out of the realm of the impossible Something that, in reality, should not have been doable Whether or not I am successful in stopping these people from killing me You are right now listening to my last will and testament The embodiment of everything I've endured, learned, and conquered Because of the courage and vision of some very remarkable people Who believed when there was no reason to believe This project has come to fruition My friend and brother, Albert Marques (Who's accompanying me on piano right now) Is foremost among these fearless souls On paper, he and I shouldn't have anything in common After all, we speak different languages and come from two very different worlds Where there exist barriers that aren't always easy to overcome But music is a bridge, and all we need do is open our hearts and minds To be able to comprehend the complexities that constitute our shared humanity Ain't that right, Albert? You see, for the past three decades I've lived out my existence in a cell on Ohio's death Row Trapped in the carceral silence of solitary confinement For the uninitiated, this means I've spent the bulk of my life (22 hours a day!) Inside a cage no larger than the average closet How have I survived without losing my mind? Music! When I first arrived here almost thirty years ago I was a deeply wounded and bitter person And if it's true to say, as James Baldwin has said, that "Hate, which can destroy so much, never failed to destroy the one who hated," I was surely on my way to a definite undoing That an innocent man could be thrown into the depths of hell is an unspeakable horror One that stretches back to the agony and pain that attended the middle passage Indeed, what I am going through is not unprecedented; It has been done before, a long time ago and recently It took a fellow prisoner to point this out to me An old man named Snoop who turned me on to the healing powers of music It is to him that I owe my sanity He gave me the means to sublimate my pain and the tools to reconstruct my mentality Which, in turn, allowed me to see and understand that what I'm caught up in is In fact, the continuation of a centuries-long struggle against oppression and greed John Coltrane was my introduction to improvisational music The music most commonly known as jazz And served as the entry point into the vast reservoir of resistance And accumulated wisdom that accompanied would-be slaves on their journey to the New Land Put in its proper perspective, This music is the blood-drenched document of man's inhumanity to man and the Overcoming of it John Coltrane's A LOVE SUPREME should be seen in this light: As the recapitulation of the fight to hold on to one's humanity In the face of the unspeakable, unthinkable, one must not only speak and think clearly But one must also strive to find the fortitude to love supremely That's the moral of the story, folks When heard separately, the crashing of a cymbal can be likened to the sound of a wave; The snare to that of a heartbeat; The bass line is the rising and setting of the sun; The piano is how the wind blows; And the horn is the blood-curdling scream of someone trapped inside a dream gone mad And it's only when these polyrhythmic sounds abound And come together that the Creator's voice can be heard: EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL! Planted within the perilous plight that awaited my ancestors was a seed of hope, Which was watered and cultivated by music Through the lifting up of every voice came the singing, Came the ringing of this glorious thing called freedom, Which is love's true destiny. Indeed: Love is the only freedom. Love is the only freedom! LOVE IS THE ONLY FREEDOM! We assert our true value when we persist When, in spite of all and everything We insist on the highest and best from ourselves and each other This music is about trust and faith About stepping out even when you can't see the stairs And believing that your foot WILL find something solid to stand on Following your heart is the purest form of improvisation Being true to that voice that calls you forward and then doing With dignity and grace, the thing that needs to be done To change this system, to change the world We must first change ourselves! That's what John Coltrane believed It is to this that we are calling all souls Calling all souls!
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"Calling All Souls Lyrics." Lyrics.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.lyrics.com/lyric-lf/7686254/Keith+LaMar+and+Albert+Marqu%C3%A8s/Calling+All+Souls>.
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