We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Three Songs for Baritone, Op. 41: If We Must Die

from Wide as Heaven: A Century of Song by Black American Composers by James Martin, Lynn Raley

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 USD  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Wide as Heaven: A Century of Song by Black American Composers via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $15.99 USD or more 

     

about

Of all the composers represented in this album, Robert Owens
(1925–2017) is arguably the most prolific. After World War II, Owens moved to Europe. He lived mostly in Germany and France between 1946 and 1957, studying piano with the great Alfred Cortot, and making a solo concert debut in Copenhagen in 1952. In 1957, he returned to the United States to teach at Albany State College in Georgia, where he experienced firsthand a kind of racism he had not so overtly encountered in Europe. On a trip to New York, he met Langston Hughes. The meeting proved life-changing, for he began immersing himself in Hughes’ poetry. Over time, he was to set forty-six of Hughes’ poems to music. In the spring of 1959,
he showed Hughes two completed song cycles of his poems. After hearing them, Hughes commented, “My God, they just sound so much more beautiful with music.” That year Owens returned to Europe, where he also became an actor. The multi-talented ex-pat has a body of work spanning multiple opuses, including more than eighty art songs. Most of Owens’ settings are of Langton Hughes poems, but here arehis inspired, dramatic readings of Claude McKay’s “The Lynching,” “If We Must Die,” and “To the White Fiends.” Appropriate to the texts, Owens’ music is cinematic and angry. But it is also elegant, and full of the beauty and hope of the Black American artist.

lyrics

If We Must Die
(Claude McKay)

If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry
dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though
dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common
foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us still be
brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one
death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous,
cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but—fighting
back!

And for their thousand blows deal one
death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous,
cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but—fighting
back!

credits

from Wide as Heaven: A Century of Song by Black American Composers, released March 1, 2024

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

New World Records image

New World Records Brooklyn, New York

Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., which records under the label New World Records, was founded in 1975.

We are dedicated to the documentation of American music that is largely ignored by the commercial recording companies.

contact / help

Contact New World Records

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like New World Records, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring interviews with LA music scene pillar Kamasi Washington, and new London-based duo Mrcy.

listen now