making music you are uncomfortable with (notes on composing 'after without sanctuary'

i recently decided, after thinking about it for a long time, to buy 'without sanctury: lynching photography in america' and, after reading it, to work on an album based on it's contents.

there where several problems associated with this; firstly i wondered if i had any right to work on something connected with the history and struggle of another group - if i, as a white person, was not infringing on the struggle of people of colour. secondly there was a simple issue of taste involved, could i make music based on other people's pain and suffering. lastly there was the question of doing the topic justice and it is this where i feel the piece fails but i could not see how to make it succeed.

though i chose to set the names of individuals who's fate is featured in the book (and a free improvisation based around abel meeropol's song 'strange fruit') this approach left me unable to discuss the historical context of lynching, it's nature not as a manifestation of the darkness that lies within society but as a manifestation of a particular set of political and economic conditions in the southern states of the usa. lynching was not a sociological event but a historical one as leon f. litwack makes plain in his essay 'hellhounds' contained within 'without sanctuary'

i have been accused before of having an 'unclear' political outlook but in reality i do not have an ideological position to promote but rather an obsession with easing the suffering of others, a need to focus on the individual rather than the group or the wider political or historical context. as such my choice makes sense to me but leaves this album open to an accusation of not recognising the reality of lynching as a phenomena.

of this i stand guilty and for this reason i consider the album a failure.