{"id":55,"date":"2017-02-21T17:27:31","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T01:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/?p=55"},"modified":"2017-02-25T12:08:58","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T20:08:58","slug":"mother-of-exiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/?p=55","title":{"rendered":"Mother of Exiles"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/bKkvFMjw570\">Watch\u00a0my new music video, <em>Mother of Exiles<\/em>, on youtube.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>You can also find it by googling &#8220;gareth loy mother of exiles&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>PLEASE SHARE THE YOUTUBE VIDEO WITH <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">TEN<\/span>\u00a0OF YOUR FRIENDS, AND ASK EACH TO SHARE IT WITH <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">TEN<\/span>\u00a0OF THEIRS!\u00a0The easiest way to share it:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/bKkvFMjw570\">Follow this\u00a0link to youtube<\/a>\u00a0or google &#8220;gareth loy mother of exiles&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Under the video, click on the &#8220;Share&#8221; button<\/li>\n<li>Use the information\u00a0there to post the link to Facebook, Twitter, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mother-of-Exiles-solo-score.pdf\">Download a PDF of the solo sheet music of <em>Mother of Exiles<\/em>.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mother-of-Exiles-SAB-score.pdf\">Download a PDF of the harmony\u00a0sheet music for soprano\/alto\/baritone of <em>Mother of Exiles<\/em>.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On 2\/8\/2017, eighty of my friends and I went into Laughing Tiger Studios in San Rafael and\u00a0made this powerful video\u00a0together.\u00a0I sang\u00a0the chorus and verse of the song solo with guitar, then I\u00a0was\u00a0joined by a choir of 63 singers led by Reed Fromer, who also contributed a soulful piano backing. My friend John Ballard directed the video, which was filmed by volunteers from the Community Media Center of Marin (CMCM).\u00a0Erin Tadena recorded and mastered the audio.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/bKkvFMjw570\">Mother of Exiles<\/a><\/em>\u00a0is a simple song I wrote that\u00a0sets Emma Lazarus&#8217; sonnet, <em>The New Colossus <\/em>word for word.<em>\u00a0<\/em>Her poem\u00a0is emblazoned on a brass plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.<\/p>\n<p>Written in 1883, Lazarus&#8217; sonnet catalyzed the meaning of the Statue of Liberty as a beckoning welcome to immigrants of all kinds, even the &#8220;homeless, tempest-tost&#8221; and the &#8220;wretched refuse of your teeming shore.&#8221; Lazarus died, age 38, one year after seeing her poem installed in the base of the Statue of Liberty.<\/p>\n<p>My hope is that this simple song can help remind Americans\u00a0of the crucial\u00a0role\u00a0immigration has played in shaping our nation, not only historically, but more urgently, today.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a simple syllogism:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Every\u00a0American is\u00a0either an immigrant or a child of immigrants.<\/li>\n<li>America is the greatest nation on Earth.<\/li>\n<li>Therefore, immigrants made America the greatest nation on Earth.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Cutting off\u00a0immigration, we dishonor our ancestors and the sacrifices they made;\u00a0we dishonor the spirit of the Statue of Liberty;\u00a0and\u00a0we risk\u00a0destroying the engine that made America great in the first place.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Musical Footnote:<\/strong> I believe I am the first\u00a0to successfully set the whole\u00a0poem to music. Ms. Lazarus did not make it easy: her\u00a0poem takes the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/interestingliterature.com\/2015\/05\/25\/interesting-facts-about-the-sonnet\/\">form of a Petrarchan sonnet<\/a>\u00a0rhymed\u00a0<em>abbaabba cdcdcd<\/em>. The &#8220;<em>cdcdcd<\/em>&#8221; part easily scans in a 3\/4 meter (&#8220;Give me your tired, your poor&#8230;&#8221;). But the &#8220;<em>abbaabba<\/em>&#8221; part (&#8220;Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame&#8230;&#8221;) is a tricky mixed meter.\u00a0I figured out a way to parse it into a comfortable 4\/4 meter that preserves the meaning of the poem. However, that means the song has to shift from 3\/4 to 4\/4 and back, which I handle with cadences and ritards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watch\u00a0my new music video, Mother of Exiles, on youtube. You can also find it by googling &#8220;gareth loy mother of exiles&#8221; PLEASE SHARE THE YOUTUBE VIDEO WITH TEN\u00a0OF YOUR FRIENDS, AND ASK EACH TO SHARE IT WITH TEN\u00a0OF THEIRS!\u00a0The easiest &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/?p=55\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mother-of-exiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/garethloy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}