Yaz Lancaster – POWER/gone (2018)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5_idUpBw94
4 players
4 tables of auxiliary. Kitchenware, clapping
This is a percussion quartet piece premiered by So Percussion in 2018, written for auxiliary instruments and clapping, body languages.
the limited instrumentation i was presented with for this piece led me to look towards musical tradition that arose from restriction & necessity. the main inspiration became work songs & i began looking into the history & traditions tied to my ancestral past– african american slave (“work”) songs & arhoolies (agricultural work songs). i then was pulled in other related directions; to industrial folk songs, military cadences & sea shanties, all of which are founded in aural tradition and a nature of call & response. My hope is for those who engage with this piece to look back not only to these specific musical traditions, but to the history of prison labor, the prison-industrial complex, institutionalized oppression/racism and then to its present-day, ongoing persistence.
abolish police. abolish prisons.
By Yaz Lancaster https://soundcloud.com/yazjanelle/powergone
https://www.yaz-lancaster.com/chamber-works
Collected by Yueyang Shi