A Timely Remix of \u2018Lift Every Voice and Sing\u2019 Out of a New York Prison<\/p>\n
Listen if you like: Terence Blanchard, Kem, Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019<\/p>\n
The pageantry of July 4th can make you cynical, as you look at America\u2019s failures and cruelties and think, What, exactly, should I be celebrating here? Alfred Roberts was feeling a similar disillusionment at New York\u2019s Sing Sing Correctional Facility on January 6, 2021, as he watched a mob storm the U.S. Capitol from a television in his cell.<\/p>\n
He wondered aloud to his friends about how the mostly White rioters would have been treated had they been Black. \u201cYour mind does go back to marches on Selma and the visuals of water hoses and dogs,\u201d he told me recently.<\/p>\n
He worked out his reaction to that moment by writing a song called \u201cVictory.\u201d He borrowed lyrics and melodic fragments from \u201cLift Every Voice and Sing,\u201d the James Weldon Johnson song<\/a> written in 1900 that is now known as the Black national anthem.<\/p>\n \u201cI wonder if there\u2019s another fight in us,\u201d Roberts sings. \u201c\u2018Cause it\u2019s hard to see the signs that we\u2019re still marginalized.\u201d<\/p>\n Roberts wrote the music with his friend Xiao Bao He, who goes by Yoshi. The two had developed their skills through Carnegie Hall\u2019s Musical Connections program,<\/a> which sends professional musicians to teach and collaborate with men in Sing Sing. The program has birthed more than 300 original songs over the last 15 years, some of which are captured in a recent series of videos on YouTube called \u201cSing Sing Voices<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Roberts himself entered New York prisons in 1999 on a murder conviction. When he got to Sing Sing in 2013, he joined a band that covered songs by John Legend and Pharrell during prison college program graduations. Nearly a decade later, he got to sing \u201cVictory\u201d onstage at Sing Sing before his peers, and the rapper Common joined him with an impromptu verse<\/a>.<\/p>\n Roberts told me some men inside had written off arts programs like this one as \u201ccorny\u201d or \u201csoft,\u201d but as they watched other incarcerated men perform with stars, the culture shifted: \u201cIt went from guys being indifferent to saying \u2018Wow, you really did your thing!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n When Roberts left prison, in 2022, he applied for a job as a porter at Carnegie Hall. \u201cI just wanted to be connected to the music community, because they\u2019d invested in me,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/NjA2MzAuanBn.jpeg\")
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