Yesterday, The radio opera was “LAN Huahua” (WFMT puts Chinese surnames in all caps to remind everyone that the surname comes first), an opera comissioned for the NCPA in 2011 (completed in 2017) based on a flok ballad about a beautiful young woman who makes the mistake of believing she can think for herself in feudal China (and even have bodily autonomy.) It doesn’t end well, at least not in my opinion. It ends with all the villagers singing her ballad, so that she will never be forgotteen. But that to me does not compensate for all the bullying and the eventual suicide. Lovely music, though. Interesting fusion of Chinese ans western musical traditions put together so smoothly it’s not really easy to find the joins. At least some of that has got to be because the composer worked so hard to find analogies between aspectss of the two traditions.
I’m sorry that this article from the 19th is heartbreatking. I’m even sorrier that it is just one more heartbreaking thing in a world of heartbreak. And that we dare not close our eyes to it.
Apparently there are people who did not see this coming. I am not one of them. I can’t tell whether the Atlanta Black Star saw it coming or not, but I can say they do report on it fearlessly. And this article is aimed at all decent people. The evil empire has another plan just for people of color.
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