Emma Resmini: Wish by Valerie Coleman

Emma Resmini (flute) and Michelle Cann (piano) perform Wish by Valerie Coleman on April 6, 2018.
Composer's notes:
WISH is based upon a historical journey called the Middle Passage: the selling, trading, and transporting of enslaved Africans from Africa to the New World, as referenced in the poem of the same title by Fred D’Aguiar.
Wish by Fred D'Aguiar:
I wish those tall ships at Africa’s shore
Had dropped anchor to plant crops there:
Sugarcane, tobacco, cotton and coffee.
Instead they filled the hungry bellies
Of hulls with Africans and set sail
Wanting nothing from that big place
That wasn’t diamond, gold, ivory, flesh.
I wind the clocks back and turn the ships
Around, not a single bullet, whip, or cutlass
Sound to deafen our ears for centuries.
No Atlantic road of bones from people
Dumped into the sea to form a wake