Ballade (1953) by Hendrik Andriessen (1892-1981)
This is our lament for our country and for the black lives we are losing. Ballade commemorates the experience of the Dutch people under German Fascist occupation in World War II, and by extension, all victims of Fascism everywhere. The Nazis murdered three quarters of all Dutch Jews, and hundreds of thousands of Dutch Gypsies, resistance fighters, journalists, artists and the ordinary citizens who tried to protect them. Ballade tells their story without words, first in a traditional Jewish lamentation, then in the sounds of marching troops, aircraft engines, falling bombs, and a funeral march. The Nazis were afraid of this music. They imprisoned its composer, Hendrik Andriessen, and prohibited performing his compositions.
We must not tolerate the drift of our country towards Fascism, for this is where it leads. Viva Knight and Ted Rust add our voices to the worldwide protest against the state-sanctioned murder of black people in the United States of America.
We say their names:
We deplore the loss of over 100,000 Americans, a disproportionate number of them black, due to our nation’s failure to contain the coronavirus pandemic and to tolerate peaceful protest.
For white people asking what they can do about racism in America, here is a response from Light Watkins: https://youtu.be/sjhz594Am6g
photo ©Christine Wu, 2020