Скачать или смотреть Wirecutters play "Meditation For A Pair Of Wirecutters" @ Hibernian House

This piece of music - called alternately "Meditations on Integration", "Meditation for a Pair Of Wirecutters" or "Praying with Eric" - is a Charles Mingus opus on civil rights first recorded in 1964.

Mingus himself wrote of the piece "On stage I could feel the presence of my musicians like they were touching me. Anyone could play "Meditations" on that day in this time of ours when everyone is fighting everyone else all over the world. Man, woman, religious sects, people in general, colors. I felt like I was playing for God. Well, it's time that people get together and try and fight their way through to love with something that warms them and brings them together. Look what you're doing! Look how sad you make me feel!"

Mingus also proclaimed before one performance "there is something similar in the South of the United States as the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. The only difference within the barbed wire is that there are no gas chambers and crematoria. So I wrote this piece to get us to get wire cutters before anyone organizes rifles"

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To play this piece in Australia today is our way to shout against the inhumane treatment of refugees, the low respect afforded fist nations people, the outrageous rate of male violence against women, the increasingly mainstream politic of racial hatred, the ongoing struggle for LGBTIQ+ rights, the curtailing of civil liberties and privacy in the name of anti terrorism, or any other injustice the player feels in his or her heart. The music does not however strive to be divisive, but rather to continue to take passages of musical conflict and find unification.

The band on this occasion features

Oscar Neyland (double bass, arrangement, MD)
Miles Rooney (trumpet)
Sam Gill (alto)
Shaun Rammers (tenor sax)
Nick Mielczarek (guitar)
Chloe Kim (drumkit)

The performance took place on October 16 at the "Lamps" music night at Hibernian House, Surrey Hills, Sydney on the stolen lands of the Gadigal tribe of the Eora nation. Sovereignty has never been ceded.