“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Monday, December 18, 2023

My Dad Wrote the Orchestral Arrangement for "To Be Young, Gifted and Black"

 I know it sounds incredible doesn't it. But in the Sixties my father made a living in part by writing orchestral arrangements, and Nina Simone's classic was one of them. I can hear my Dad's fondness for suspended chords, a significant overlap with African American music, where Vaughan Williams hangs out in the disco. 

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