This American Song Released for Public Listening
This summer, the Make Music Alliance hosted This American Song, a project which invited fifty songwriters (one from each US state) to tell the stories of ordinary people from across the country. After these stories were told, the songwriters were tasked with writing songs about them in observance of Make Music Day 2020. For more information, check out Big Heavy World’s spotlight of this process from back in June of 2020 or watch the trailer on YouTube.
These fifty songs have now finally been released for public listening. Vermont’s entry was written by Dominick Brown, a seventeen-year-old hip-hop artist releasing music primarily via Soundcloud with plans to expand to other platforms. His entry was inspired by Damien Garcia, a fourteen-year-old boy from Waterbury, Vermont, who spoke out this summer about his experience as a biracial kid in a state that is 96 percent white. Dominick also pulled from his own experiences to complete the nearly five-minute song.
A song with this kind of message is especially powerful in an era where the Civil Rights Movement has come back to the national spotlight in full force. The focus is on racism and specifically police brutality following the horrific murder of George Floyd by Minnesota officer Derek Chauvin. I can only hope that more people begin to open their ears and minds to stories like the one told for the Green Mountain State’s This American Song entry. It is incredibly difficult to tell stories with such dark themes, especially when they are real and personal. The least we can do is listen and support the movement in any way possible.
Big Heavy World hosted a livestream to honor these stories on Make Music Day 2020, which consisted of a day-long concert involving artists from across the entire spectrum of genres. Dominick Brown was the last guest featured in this talented lineup of Vermont musicians, and was interviewed live by DJ Craig Mitchell to close out the day.
“I got in touch with this kid named Damien (Garcia) who went to the Montpelier Black Lives Matter rally that happened last week or the week before,” he said during the Make Music Day live stream. “Basically I touched base with him and talked with him about his experiences as a biracial kid in Vermont, in society, and just overall what it’s like to grow up being black. And from there I worked on a song about his experiences… a takeaway from our conversation. What he really wanted was it to not be a personal thing about him, but more so about everyone’s story. So from there I went on and tried to figure out a way to make it about him but also make it about everyone in the same sense.”
You can listen to the song on YouTube, and it is also at the top of this page.
Resources to support the BLM movement:
Black Lives Matter of Greater Burlington
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Vermont
NAACP – Rutland Area Chapter
Champlain Area ChapterVermont Racial Justice Alliance
Vermont Coalition for Ethnic and Social Equity in Schools
Showing Up for Racial Justice – BTV chapter
Vermont Peace & Justice Center
Text by Kevin Desmond