Can't Take My Soul: Njioma Grevious & Friends (Boulder)

As Njioma dreamed of the program she wished to bring to the Cultural Caravan, she returned to a provocative musical seed: At the Purchaser’s Option, by Rhiannon Giddens. The piece is an instrumental variation based on a 19th-century advertisement for an enslaved black 22 year-old mother whose nine month-old baby was also for sale, but “at the purchaser’s option.” In other words, the mother-and-child relationship was incidental to the transaction.
In Rhiannon Giddens’ lyrics for the original composition, the mother laments the brutal exploitation of her labor and the pain of being torn from her child. In the recurring chorus, she refuses to let go of the only thing she still feels she can control: “You can take my blood but not my soul.”
Can’t Take My Soul is a tribute to people who used their music to hold fast to the identity and agency that others wished to take from them.
Tickets are pay-what-you-wish starting at $5, students and children can join for free!
Program:
Rhiannon Giddens: At the Purchaser's Option
Germaine Tailleferre: String Quartet in Three Movements
Modéré
Intermède
Final: Vif
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Quartet in E-flat major, K. 493
Allegro
Larghetto
Allegretto
Intermission
Robert Schumann: Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44
Allegro brillante
In modo d'una marcia. Un poco largamente
Scherzo: Molto vivace
Allegro ma non troppo