Cassandra, Illinois
4 voices (SSMM)
4'
2018
Commissioned by Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble
Premiered October 30, 2018, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Text by composer
I wrote the text and tune for Cassandra, Illinois after driving through a particular, eerily empty rural village en route from Chicago to Peoria. A cluster of silos loomed over the main road. There was a deserted baseball diamond at the base of the silos; it and the surrounding fields were dry and carpeted in dust. When Quince asked what I might want to arrange for a program themed around Dust Bowl-era folk bard Woody Guthrie, this song came to mind. Because here we are, setting the Earth on fire, hastening another, vaster increase of parched fields and displaced people. We can't say we weren't warned....
Like a river flows the grain
In the silo’s shadow eighteen men
Run the dusty diamond
Til the sun sinks down again
Like a river running dry
The elevator grits and grinds
The men have left the diamond
Yet the dust is on the rise
Where once it swelled its shore
The farmers’ river runs no more
And where the eighteen lie today
I could not say for sure