Скачать или смотреть Supremacy (toccata) - Garrett Schumann

"Supremacy (toccata)" was composed by Garrett Schumann for the #45miniatures project
Nicholas Phillips, piano

Composer note: Supremacy (toccata) is a piece about white supremacy. From the conquest of North American indigenous peoples, to slavery, to the Three-Fifths Compromise, to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, to the Texas Revolution, to Bleeding Kansas, to the Dred Scott Case, to the Confederacy States of America, to Jim Crow, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the massacre of Tulsa's Black Wall Street, to Japanese Internment, to Emmet Till's murder in 1955, to the Civil Rights Act, to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, to the murder of Vincent Chin, to the imprisonment of the Central Park Five, to the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland, to the Muslim Ban, and to the detention of non-white asylum seekers on the US's southern border, white supremacy has always exercised a presence in America's history.

This piece explores white supremacy by gradually removing notes from its melodic palette until only one remains. My approach comes from my recognition that, because I'm a white person, white supremacy won't necessarily make me uncomfortable. To paraphrase scholar Robin DiAngelo, white supremacy depends on the myth that white people do not also suffer when people of color are marginalized.

Therefore, as Supremacy (toccata) unfolds, I hope you consider that the piece transforms at a cost to its potential - that, as its materials become more limited, even though the music sustains its capacity for beauty, its ultimate vibrancy has suffered.