Plain-Chant for America by William Grant Still with text by Katherine Garrison Chapin Biddle is the newest performance of our 2020-2021 Virtual Season. We are pleased to offer these exceptional, innovative, and engaging performances free for all to enjoy.

Plain-Chant for America bears witness to racial inequities extant in this country long before the present day and aspires hopefully toward the realization of “the dream unfinished.” Commissioned in 1941, the song references the lynchings and violence of the day and calls out America’s failures to uphold the virtues of equality and freedom, even as World War II raged across the Atlantic and we fought against “blackshirt cruelty, the goose-step mind.”

One can imagine adding a long litany of modern-day racial injustices to this song and be tempted to despair. And yet, the song also evokes hope of a better future:

Still a voice from the bruised and the battered
Speaks out in the light of a free sun
Saying…
And the strength of a hope, and the shape of a vision
Died for and sung for and fought for,
And worked for,
Is living yet.”

The work continues and we refuse to lose hope, but rather join in building the just future that all people deserve.