bearing witness to defiant existence
- cbeeson69
- Mar 3
- 8 min read
“People say I sing politics, but what I sing is not politics - it is the truth.” - Miriam Makeba
Y’all. Real talk. February is over and it took me the whole month to gather my thoughts about this post. As usual, my overthinking and tendency to stare directly into the tea leaves until the emergence of ALL OF THE INTERSECTIONS (so. many. intersections. always. thanks a lot, brain.) has once again frozen me in place with too many entry points to consider. Apologies for the jumbled mess this post may seem to you, dear reader, but here’s what happened.
I had been planning a robust Black History Month post with all manner of super celebratory current and historical references to classical music and movements within the classical music field when, of all things, the Super Bowl absolutely threw me for a loop. Now, I’m not knowledgable about Sportsball in any way. It’s pretty much generic entertainment to me, although I do respect athletes for the same reasons I respect musicians - extreme discipline and commitment to specific goals that require body, mind, spirit, risk, and sacrifice on a daily basis. So, with friends coming over to make merry using Super Bowl as an excuse I set about to my responsibility as Snack Provider and got ready to ask all the usual super annoying questions about why they don’t just run around the wrestling flesh pile or throw the ball to someone who isn’t surrounded by a fast moving flesh pile. Instead, from the moment the big event began, I was struck by a chilling similarity to the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Black excellence in plain view
The NFL may have decided to remove the phrase “End Racism” from the scoring zones, but Black Excellence was on full display from start to finish, right in front of the face of our current US President who has made a wedge issue agenda out of White Supremacy.
Starting with Jon Batiste’s rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner”, moving to Trombone Shorty’s New Orleans jazz take on “America the Beautiful” joined by Lauren Daigle, continuing with Ledisi’s performance of the unofficial Black anthem “Lift Every Voice”, observing the head to head face-off of two exceptionally gifted team leading Black quarterbacks, and the high art multi-layered message driven halftime performance by Pulitzer Prize winning lyricist musician Kendrick Lamar assisted by SZA and Samuel L. Jackson.
My eyes were wide and my jaw was hanging open during that entire halftime show taking in the symbolism of a divided US flag borne on the backs of Black bodies, clear allusions to the ethical and moral perils of the extreme wealth gap, racially motivated profit based mass incarceration, and all of it set on a gigantic video game controller. This wasn’t just “woke” messaging. This was an entirely new and urgent call to wake up, turn off the television, throw out the mind control devices. J.S. Bach’s call to action “Wachet auf! Sleepers awake!” began running through my head, colliding fantastically with what I was witnessing on screen.
And then I thought about how my own grandparents might have felt in 1936 Berlin witnessing medalists David Albritton, Cornelius Johnson, James LuValle, Ralph Metcalfe, Frederick Pollard Jr, Matthew Robinson, Archie Williams, John Woodruff, and of course 4x gold medalist Jesse Owens running track for the US in a stadium full of people caught up in the excitement of the Olympics and contending with a fascist government leader making a wedge issue agenda out of White Supremacy.
[Photos taken by my grandparents except where otherwise noted:]
My grandparents were tourists on a honeymoon trip that took them to Hitler’s Germany as well as Stalin’s Soviet Union, visiting various destinations with an emphasis on athletics. Both my grandparents were sporty intellectuals - Grandma (1905-2002) played basketball and taught psychology, and Grandpa (1891-1971) played football, ran track, and established the Department of Physical and Health Education at the University of Texas which he chaired from 1926 to 1958. Surely they were cheering the wins of Owens and the US in spite of what that represented to Hitler and his hate fueled cruelty movement.
Just 11 months after the Nazi flag had become the official national flag of Germany, and 13 months after an incident an ocean away on US soil precipitated this official change, my Grandparents’ tourist photos included Berlin streets awash in the Nazi party swastika flag with just a few Olympic flags here and there.
What was this Incident on us soil?
In an action reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party, US resistance demonstrators in New York City boarded a German ship, the SS Bremen docked at Pier 86 in Manhattan, where they tore down the Nazi party flag and threw it into the Hudson River, leaving only the German national tricolor flag flying. It became an internationally covered incident, including coverage of the US government making an official apology to the Nazi government - eerily reminiscent of the US executive leadership’s current capitulation to Putin.
Now, back to 2025 and the Super Bowl, there was plenty for me to cheer about watching the musical performances as well as the game. But so much of it could easily fade into spectacle, entertainment, and a gluttonous evening spent with friends. I cleaned up afterward thinking about the messages that I received from all of it. Pride, hope, celebration, joy, struggle, disappointment, frustration, strategizing, striving, speaking and living truth, even love.
My mind was racing with thoughts for the next several days. How to write it all down. Would anyone care. Is this all too much. What would I have done had I lived in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union. What might I need to do living through what’s happening in the US right now. What is my role as a parent, a partner, a sibling, a friend, an ally, an artist in the time of rising authoritarianism when I am also in a marginalized class. It’s a question many of us are asking now -
what can we do?
I am generally not a fan of throwing baby out with the bath water. Culture shift is complex and requires support from all kinds of people, not just a few “burn it all down” revolutionaries who appear to be at the top of some faceless heap. Leadership toward ideals and strongly held beliefs must be adopted and supported intentionally and authentically if it is to have a lasting effect. Authoritarianism is not leadership. It relies on cruelty and force to tear people down rather than lifting people to support culture shift.
Figuratively speaking, where is my “Pier 86 ship” and what will I be tearing down from it to toss into the briny drink?
I don’t know what I would’ve done if I was visiting, or worse living in places experiencing the rise of fascism and authoritarianism in the 1930s. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I lived in the US during the Civil Rights movement, McCarthyism, Japanese internment, or slavery. But I know what I did during the worst of the AIDS crisis and the LGBTQIA+ Rights movement and I can tell you what I’ve been doing and what I will continue to do here in the US during this new challenging time. It’s something we can all do. The ultimate resistance to oppression - to lead by example with joy, celebration, creating shared experiences with and for people whose stories are different than ours, and making plans that fly in the face of dismissive cruelty for power and financial gain - To defiantly continue to BE.
I decided that when I found that ship - that cause, that purpose, that moment - I wouldn’t be tearing anything down so much as helping shift its course and its use. And I’m certain I’ll be doing this with many other people who share values centered around respect, kindness, and empathy.
Participating and bearing witness to joyful creative acts is an imperative as much as it is a blessing during times like these.
In the midst of all this I was asked to participate and bear witness to a joyful celebration of love and hope and plan making between two wonderful young women artists at the courthouse here in Colorado. In a beautiful act of resistance, they traveled a great distance to fully claim their right to marry in a place where voters have enshrined marriage equality into the state constitution.
I found my ‘Pier 86 ship’ that day and there certainly will be more of those to find, but right then we made sure it was flying all the right colors.
Playing music in a judicial courtroom, adding my signature to their marriage certificate, and celebrating in their journey felt like exactly the right way to stand strong in authenticity - to take inspiration from Black Excellence, from Artists and Resistors of different places and times, to defiantly and joyously EXIST - and to support the diversity of lived experiences that makes human culture so rich and brilliant.
how are you standing tall, bearing witness, and defiantly existing? Share below in the comments!
💛💜🤍🩷🩵🤎🖤💜💙💚💛🧡❤️
some additional thoughts and nerdy rabbit hole entry points:
There are plenty of wonderful examples of artist resistors from which to draw inspiration. People who, while enduring dire circumstances and daily extreme personal risk, created subversive things, contemplative things, and yes even beautiful joyous things as a way to stay whole and human and relevant and to communicate beyond themselves and their situation. Here are just a few:
“Song had become an organizer, and he [Vuyisile Mini] was the embodiment of this reality.” - South African poet and activist Jeremy Cronin
Composer and powerful bass vocalist Vuyisile Mini became one of the most effective resistance organizers. Arrested in 1963 for so called political crimes, he was executed by the government for not turning in fellow resistors. His song “Ndodemnyama” became a protest anthem for anti apartheid freedom fighters.
“Soweto Blues”, by Hugh Masekela for Miriam Makeba tells the history of a bloody and violent student uprising against draconian measures to suppress African culture by the Apartheid South African government.
“by no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon, and that our endeavors with respect to the arts were commensurate with our will to live.” - Viktor Ullmann
Viktor Ullmann - String Quartet No. 3, composed 1943 at Theresienstadt concentration camp
Gideon Klein - String Trio - Often recognized by Holocaust survivors as "our own Leonard Bernstein," Klein composed this work days before his transport from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz where he was murdered.
A prime example of “desk drawer music”, Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Violin Concerto No. 1 in 1948 but kept it hidden until after Stalin's death in 1953. During this time, Shostakovich feared a surprise visit from the KGB so much that he kept a packed bag and slept in the stairway of his apartment building so that his wife and children didn't have to become traumatized witnessing his abduction.
As always, so beautifully said. "The ultimate resistance to oppression - to lead by example with joy, celebration, creating shared experiences with and for people whose stories are different than ours, and making plans that fly in the face of dismissive cruelty for power and financial gain - To defiantly continue to BE."
Yes yes yes!
-- Jason
As always thank you for your succinct, eloquent syntax. We have had many conversations over the past few weeks about Trump's administration and the future of the United States. In a time where it proves difficult to find hope, you always remind me that to continue to create is the ultimate life force. I recently have been learning about the Fluxus movement in one of my classes this semester. I have particularly been drawn to the idea that if humans perform any action in a certain context then it can be considered art. It is all up to the performer to decide so, and to me that is a lesson everyone should incorporate into their daily lives. Even the most…