On a day like this, music can feel beyond insignificant. Maybe you can’t even imagine listening to anything right now. And honestly, it can only do so much. But it still offers a way to process tragedy. Here are the songs we turned to this morning, for solace, for perseverance, for joy. We’d love to hear what you’re playing to get through the day in the comments below, too.
Maria de Lourdes: “Cielito Lindo”
Today I’m thinking about my grandmother, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico twice. The first time was in 1921, until she and her husband and children “left” during the 1930s, when the Great Depression prompted a nationalist movement for Mexican Repatriation, intimidating and in some cases forcing Mexican immigrants as well as Mexican Americans out of the country due to the unsubstantiated notion that they were stealing jobs from white Americans. The second time was more perilous—across the Rio Grande, six children by her side. “Illegal,” though no human being is truly that.
She was eventually sponsored and naturalized, but not before three of her sons fought in World War II, or her daughters spent their lives adhering to the supposed principles of good U.S. citizenship, sometimes working three or four jobs to keep above water. And I’m thinking about my family members whose status is tentative, and all immigrants who come to the U.S. and work hard and are just trying to make a better life in a country that hates them—the American dream, I guess.
Not much feels soothing, but “Cielito Lindo” does. It is essentially the unofficial national anthem of Mexico, a folk song chanted across history, from the Mexican Revolution to football matches for the national soccer team. And it’s the song my abuelita sang the most, in every circumstance—dancing around the house, under her breath sweeping the porch, humming me to sleep. Its beauty encapsulates the twin feelings of sorrow and joy, as it coos to a lovely morenita to “canta y no llores.” Sing, don’t cry.
There are a million versions of this song—Pedro Infante’s and Lola Beltrán’s are the big classics, but endless mariachis and pop stars and rockers and even hardstyle ravers have had a go. Still, my favorite is a live rendition by Maria de Lourdes, who was considered the voice of Mexico in the 1960s and ’70s, and performed this version in Amsterdam in 1991. By that time she was in her early 50s, and sang with a low resonance that this song deserves, a raspy vessel for its mix of longing and melancholy and love. Her voice implies that she’s seen it all and, despite everything, has gotten through it. —Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Blake Mills: “Summer All Over”
There were a million bad signs leading up to the election, but yesterday evening, right before the polls started to close, I saw something that made me think, Oh, we’re totally fucked. I was walking around Sutton Place, a tony neighborhood on Manhattan’s East Side, dodging elderly folks and nannies with strollers. And there it was: a Tesla. Not so unusual for an area with an average household income of around $160,000. But it had a curious vanity license plate directed at Mr. Tesla himself that read, “YOU ELON.” That’s weird. I looked closer. On either side of the plate were two words, painted onto the car in a cursive font—“THANK” and “MUSK”—completing the phrase.
The strange image speaks to our stranger moment. Of course Elon Musk is the planet’s richest man, with a net worth north of $280 billion, and a noxious troll who contributed $120 million to the Trump cause this year. At the same time, as Politico put it in 2022, he “might be the single most important individual driver of commercial renewable energy tech in the world.” For all his increasingly right-wing views, Elon has made clear that he believes global warming is a major crisis. So now we’re in the nauseating position of relying on a completely unhinged gazillionaire to be the voice of reason on climate change—that is, the fate of Earth and all of humanity—for a completely unhinged president who thinks climate change is a hoax. You truly can’t make this shit up.
Then I wake up to the news this morning, step outside my Brooklyn apartment, and it’s a balmy, 78-degree November day that could very well break temperature records—which were just broken a couple of years ago. While walking to work, I saw a group of daycare toddlers crossing the street in colorful T-shirts, and at that moment California singer, songwriter, and producer Blake Mills’ “Summer All Over” started playing in my head. The song came out in 2020, in the thick of the pandemic, and maybe its impact was dulled because everyone was compelled to stay indoors that summer. But it is really hitting now, and it will not stop hitting as the globe continues to catch fire.
“Summer All Over” is a quiet plea, a sad statement of inevitability more than a protest. “Look, it’s not gonna rain again,” Mills starts, in a near whisper over somber piano chords. (Oh, did I mention how it hasn’t rained in New York City for more than a month, and that we’re currently under a drought watch?) He goes on to describe a world without color and shade, where fish flop around in puddles that used to be oceans and lakes. “No future/No past/How long do you think it’ll last?” he asks, as an ominous drone expands and contracts in the background. The answer feels a lot shorter today than it did yesterday. —Ryan Dombal
Oddisee: “NNGE” (ft. Toine)
Whenever an election season rolls around, one of the first pieces of music I circle back to is D.C. rapper-producer Oddisee’s “NNGE,” a single from his 2017 album The Iceberg. It’s a song rooted in the go-go music of his hometown, backed by jubilant synths and clanging production, but unafraid to get direct about the state of things. “What is there to fear?” he asks upfront, arm already extended for a quick shoulder tap. “I’m from Black America, this just another year/You new to disrespect by your elected puppeteers?/Well, lemme show you how to persevere.”
Those first four bars always snap me back into place when I’m in a funk because, as Black Americans, we’re used to being disappointed in our government and our voting blocs. However, that first message isn’t pessimistic or condescending. It’s a call to action to gird yourself for whatever’s coming next. “Apathy is a disease and we just steady sharin’ needles/Unaffected people carry evil,” Oddisee continues in the song’s second verse, a reminder to move with intention without becoming a doormat.
“NNGE” is a song about pushing through stress and anxiety, but the thing that pushes it over the top is that it’s so joyful. Go-go is nothing if not celebratory, and that bounce mirrors the steady treading above water in the lyrics—whether that’s Oddisee throwing a middle finger at complacency or guest Toine standing firm on his morals and making music that speaks to him. Disasters, atrocities, and oppression are all around us, but the only way through those walls is together. To me, “NNGE” is always a reminder that you’re no good to anyone if you’re not good to yourself. Get your money, take care of your people, stay informed and safe. The future will be as bright as we make it. —Dylan Green
Scree: “Fresh Bread”
Scree is an instrumental trio led by a good friend of mine, guitarist and composer Ryan El-Solh. Their music is difficult to describe in terms of genre, equally evoking jazz, Arabic music, and spacious post-rock in the vein of Tortoise or the Dirty Three. Jasmine on a Night in July, their beautiful 2023 album, is inspired by the work of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. It comes with an epigraph of sorts that feels suited to this era’s seemingly unstoppable accumulation of heartbreak upon heartbreak: “There is no tomorrow in this desert, save what we saw yesterday/So let me brandish my ode to break the cycle of time/And let there be beautiful days!/How much past tomorrow holds.”
The whole album is worth hearing, but my favorite track is “Fresh Bread,” which Ryan described thusly in an interview: “The main melody reminds me of a folk melody from ‘bilad el-sham’ (the Arabic term for the cultural sub-region that includes Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan), but the playful drum/bass figure feels more like something out of [Duke] Ellington.” If you do listen, I encourage you to pay special attention to the section around the 1:25 mark, where the band is getting ready to present the second theme after a few repetitions of the first. The music pauses ever so slightly, like a climber taking a big breath before his final racing steps to the top of a hill. The next melody, when it comes, brings the bracing freshness of mountaintop air, and the inspiration of a wide-open view below.
After last night’s news, I can only think of turning to local community, a reliable source of mutual strength, help, and protection at a time when one U.S. political party is quietly abdicating those ideals and the other is outright hostile to them. I am grateful to count Ryan, a tireless voice for Palestinian liberation, and organizer of small concerts that have fostered too many musical friendships to count, as a member of mine. —Andy Cush
The Joubert Singers: “Stand on the Word”
So many things about “Stand on the Word” are comforting to me, both in my own life and the music’s history. The 1982 gospel song turned disco classic shows up at the most curious times, and it emerged rather mysteriously. People like to erroneously credit Paradise Garage hero Larry Levan with a remix from 1985, which this brilliant RBMA piece debunked (blame the French!). A woman named Phyliss McKoy Joubert, then the Minister of Music at the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, wrote and put the song together, working with a children’s choir and church congregants. Local DJs far less famous than Levan heard it and played it in their sets, and one such fella—Tony Humphries—was eventually tasked with remixing it in an even zestier manner.
I prefer the original recording, from Joubert’s church-funded and distributed gospel record Somebody Prayed For This. The opening piano line blows me away in its pluck and virtuosity, and then the children’s voices and the kickdrums start. !!!!! Joy and anticipation, followed by swift relief as the rhythm section and lead vocals drop in. Never in my life have I heard a cuntier piece of religious music. No wonder this track is considered a staple of The Loft, New York disco’s longtime invite-only dancefloor.
The Loft led me to “Stand on the Word” a few years back. A good friend of mine got on the invite list, and later shared a playlist someone had Shazam’ed together from that party. There it was, this gem of hope tucked amid Steve Miller’s “Macho City” and a lot of Stevie Wonder. Flash forward to a few months later: My mom was diagnosed with stage-four cancer, while I was up in Maine with this same friend. We got out on the lake in her brother’s little speedboat the next day and blasted that Loft playlist. I swear “Stand on the Word” healed me for a moment, took away my fear.
A song like this one is so pure and perfect, I can feel God in it, even if I’m not sure God exists. My mother is a Christian, and in the worst moments of her illness I had to borrow her faith, trust in something bigger just to go on, pray with her and the hospital chaplain. That is the level of hopelessness I felt waking up this morning, sensing what the next four years will bring on a massive scale. I realize the irony of invoking Christianity on a day like today, when the religious right is celebrating a big win for the anti-abortion movement. But I gotta be honest: the only song I cued up and kept on repeat was “Stand on the Word.” If God exists, they’re probably on the dancefloor of heaven right now, fuming at these hateful motherfuckers. —Jill Mapes
