Ready, Set, Launch

The top portion of our banner at the Braver Angels Convention

I’m writing this as I fly to the Braver Angels convention in Philadelphia, where our Summit Stages team will be connecting with other peacebuilders while spreading the vision of musical theatre as a tool for building the beloved community. 

My songs “Anger” and “Biased” have been completed just in time and I’m sharing them with you here, as promised. I'll get them distributed on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube shortly, and will be very grateful if you can share the links with your friends. But in the meantime, these are for you.

Anger NB_4

3:18

Biased NB_6

3:20

I wrote last week all about the journey of “Anger” from a sloppy AI demo to fully human music. The story of “Biased” is different. My AI demos for that were too sloppy to even share, so my producer Daniel wrote a big band piece loosely based on my melody. He also found the perfect vocalists and musicians to bring it to life. It was a ton of fun. 

“Anger” is the song that I think best conveys the musical’s disarming, tongue-in-cheek approach to a topic that has many of us wringing our hands. “Biased” is important in a different way. It opens our weCourse on navigating the news toward truth and it features a song battle between the editors of two rival newspapers, each of which is blind to their own bias but quick to point out the bias of the other. I’m hoping that it also manages to pull us a little into the story of Chester Smith and Mabel Wilson. They are both graduates of Hallelujah College and they used to be close friends. But their relationship became strained two years ago, when the Supreme Court of California undermined a long-standing taboo by overturning that state’s ban on interracial marriage. Hallelujah responded like Bible colleges historically did: by banning interracial dating among its students. That response bothered Mabel. But what really got under her skin was the fact that Chester, an African American, defended the ban and the notion that interracial dating and marriage were problematic. Since then, she’s become increasingly convinced that her society’s leaders are using religion in bad faith, just to hold onto their power. And Chester has been steadfastly arguing that they’re sincere, acting in good faith, and there’s wisdom in their traditions. 

This is a subplot to the main story, but it gives you a sense of some of the tensions at play in 1950, and how they might have some resonance for us today. 

Bottom half of our banner at the convention

So tomorrow, we’ll start handing out T-shirts to delegates at the convention, inviting them to listen to our newly produced music, and to check out the media course that we are hoping will raise the funds for professional production of the music for the musical. There’s more to it than just that. The timely educational aspect of this initiative has the potential to foster a vibrant working relationship with highschools for us. That could help us blaze a new model for distributing musicals that build beloved community at the same time that they entertain.   

I need to finish updating our website tomorrow morning, before we start directing convention attendees there. If you get a chance, could you please check out our homepage at SummitStages.com anytime after noon, and let me know how the new look strikes you and if the links work? 

Thanks for your support. I’ll let you know next week how the convention went. 

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