Lara Downes: Migration Music

November 25, 2021, 9:00 am

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Pianist and curator Lara Downes continues her transformative Rising Sun Music series of monthly digital EPs with Migration Music, a three-part focus on music commemorating the Great Migration—the exodus of Black Americans out of the rural South during the first part of the 20 th century. Downes says, “From about 1915 to 1970, there was a great migration of more than six million Black Americans, following a ray of light out of the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West. They left behind everything and everyone they knew…But what they brought with them—their dreams, their courage, their faith in a brighter tomorrow—transformed American life and culture in every possible way. This music tells the story of migration and metamorphosis, the first light of a new day.”