PEACE ORATORIO 2021-25

"Happy Feet" Featuring Michael Robinson, Anna Louise Spencer and Ken Kuriki 
"Happy Feet" is set to a Highlife beat and has met with great success working with children. On this recording you can hear the kids from the audience singing along with us, and it's amazing how 550 kids singing in tune and in rhythm can shake the house and thrill one's ears! The melody is simple, no lyric, simply "Ba Ba Da Ba Doo Ba Ba". The soloing on this recording features the Hammond playing of the fantastic Gilles Erhart, the fiddle playing of François Michaud, and then the vocal improvs of Anna Louise Spencer and Ken Kuriki. What is interesting is that the school kids in the audience are moving their feet, clapping in the rhythm while singing "Gonna come, gonna come, our Freedom is gonna come" and at the same time listening to the musicians improvise. I think there is something really special going on here for the kids and for the musicians, too. The afternoon show for the kids was one of the finest moments of my musical life so far.
The selection of "Happy Feet" to kick off Act 2 is a deliberate one, because singing was a very important element in keeping people together as the marchers approached Washington DC for the momentous occasion that lay before them. The Freedom March was not always easy, sometimes even dangerous yet so many people believed in what was happening that there was no stopping this army of whites and blacks together in their quest for equal rights for all!
NARRATION : On August 28th, 1968 hundreds of thousands of people, black and white, young  and old, rich and poor, from almost every state in the country peacefully marched together to the seat of the Federal government in Washington DC. They bore witness to the never ending  racial barriers that  had barred black people from sharing the fruits of the most prosperous nation on Earth. This was a happening the likes of which the country had never seen before!