Emma Resmini: Wish by Valerie Coleman

Emma Resmini (flute) and Michelle Cann (piano) perform Wish by Valerie Coleman on April 6, 2018.

Composer's notes:
WISH is based upon a historical journey called the Middle Passage: the selling, trading, and transporting of enslaved Africans from Africa to the New World, as referenced in the poem of the same title by Fred D’Aguiar.


Wish by Fred D'Aguiar:

I wish those tall ships at Africa’s shore
Had dropped anchor to plant crops there:
Sugarcane, tobacco, cotton and coffee.

Instead they filled the hungry bellies
Of hulls with Africans and set sail
Wanting nothing from that big place

That wasn’t diamond, gold, ivory, flesh.
I wind the clocks back and turn the ships
Around, not a single bullet, whip, or cutlass

Sound to deafen our ears for centuries.
No Atlantic road of bones from people
Dumped into the sea to form a wake