Might Call You Art
Jasmine Barnes

The title Might Call You Art comes from the last poem in this four-movement song cycle setting the poetry of East Cleveland native King Weatherspoon. Titled “America’s Mandatory Pottery Class,” this poem is a scathing indictment of the categorization of Black Americans as either dangerous criminals or objectified artists:

As if
“If you would just keep your hands
Where everyone could see them
And stay still”
They might call you art
And fall away,
They might indulge your life one last time,
And mark you a fine investment

These words resonated with Barnes’s experience as a Black musician, and her nuanced treatment of poetic tone reflects her deep understanding of Weatherspoon’s lyrics. Musically, she sets the poems tunefully, like operatic art song with stylistic references to R&B, gospel, and the marching band music of historically Black colleges and universities.

The final line of the work fuses the familiar words of The Star-Spangled Banner and Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child into a plaintive query, “oh say can you see (that) sometimes I feel like a motherless child?” This question sums up the invisibility and trauma of the Black experience expressed throughout Weatherspoon’s poetry.