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Mari Esabel Valverde
Mari Esabel Valverde
We Hold Your Names Sacred (SSAA)
Voices join with a surge up to the sky for our transgender sisters of color whose lives were taken.
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We Hold Your Names Sacred
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We Hold Your Names Sacred
for SSAA chorus (div.) and piano
In singing “We Hold Your Names Sacred,” we join our voices with a surge up to the sky for our transgender sisters of color whose lives were taken. As part of a movement for liberation, this work is best programmed with extended efforts to connect the BIPOC trans population with concrete resources local to its performance(s).
Composer’s Notes
As part of a social justice movement, this work is best programmed with extended efforts to connect the BIPOC trans population with concrete resources local to its performance(s). For remarks on the lives and deaths of our transgender sisters named in the text, turn to the end of the musical score.
Lady Dane says we say their names “to get the heavens to move for us.” Such practice hearkens back to our Indigenous ancestors whose ceremonies honor the departed. Likewise, we hold ourselves accountable for keeping our sisters’ memory alive, for the ultimate death would be that the lives within their names were forgotten. For too many of our Black and Indigenous transgender siblings of color, their humanity was ignored long before their lives were stolen by cowards.
In singing “We Hold Your Names Sacred,” we join our voices with a surge up to the sky. From the start, a stepwise bass in the piano is played in octaves like slow, determined feet marching towards justice. The voices enter wide and full, merge gradually into a single line raising supplications for joy, and then, disperse speaking our sisters’ names into eternity. In call and response, as in organized protest, various soloists invoke their memory, and upon reciting each name, each life is acknowledged as a blessing. The choir follows, rising like clouds, singing their names individually as spirits are summoned from subconsciousness. Ultimately, all voices unify to resound a demand for justice that our sisters’ loving memory will be everlasting.
We do not need to be told the traumas of members of the Black and transgender communities as a prerequisite to boldly show up for them. For those who are here, we must act now and continue learning along the way. Let us say our sisters’ names and fight for justice as they would have it.
#BlackTransLivesMatter #SingForTWOC
-Mari Esabel Valverde
Text
Sisters whose lives were taken
Memories of you
we sing
Note, chord, melody, harmony
psalm
Prayers
we offer with tears
Love
with words we give
High
we lift your spirit up
So you may know forever joy
Jaquarrius Holland
Chyna Gibson
Ty Underwood
Penny Proud
Crystal Edmonds
Islan Nettles
Angel Rose
Lexi
Layla Pelaez Sánchez
Muhlaysia Booker
Brianna “BB” Hill
Layleen Polanco
May your smile be made eternal
May justice be brought
with this refrain
Sisters we hold sacred your names
-Dane Figueroa Edidi
“We Hold Your Names Sacred” Copyright © 2020. Used with Permission of the Author.
About the poet:
Dubbed “the ancient jazz priestess of Mother Africa,” Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi is a Black, African, Cuban, Indigenous, American trans performance artist, author, a Helen Hayes nominated actress, a two-time Helen Hayes Award Nominated choreographer, a Helen Hayes Award winning playwright, dramaturg, educator, speechwriter, advocate and co-editor of The Black Trans Prayer Book. She is the founder of the Inanna D Initiatives, which curates, produces, and cultivates events and initiatives designed to center and celebrate the work of transgender and gender non-conforming artists of color. She is the curator and a co-producer of Long Wharf Theater’s Black Trans Women at the Center: An Evening of Short Plays. Her radio play, Quest of the Reed Marsh Daughter, can be heard on the Girl Tales podcast, and her play The Diaz Family Talent Show can be read on the PlayAtHome.org. She was featured as Patra in King Ester and acted as a story consultant for the series. She wrote episode 9 “Refuge” of Round House Theater’s web series Homebound and was one of the writers for Arena Stage’s short film The 51st State. For more information, visit www.LadyDaneFE.com.
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