World Music Day Met Cloisters.

From Thapelo Masita:

In times of turmoil, we all choose to focus on that which is most essential in our lives. Our species has survived this way for thousands of years. Only once all danger has subsided do we try to heal. For me, the challenges the world faces today demand that we rethink this process. I believe that it is during this time, while we are in the fiery furnace, that we must transform our thinking so that we might come out better than we were before. The alternative is far too dangerous.

The music you will hear is a meditation on this very idea. A conversation between J.S. Bach, Negro spirituals, South African hymns, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, this program is a metaphor for the kind of transformation we so deeply need. If all this music can work together to create a sound-world full of love, joy, peace, and belonging, then so can we. After all, we wrote it.

—Thapelo Masita (June 2020)