"Requiem For America" launches nationwide!

​Can you recall a land that time forgot? No, I’m not speaking of a mysterious island from the imagination of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The land that’s been forgotten is Turtle Island—America before it was America—and all the invisible people living here, even today, the American Indians.

​REQUIEM FOR AMERICA is a powerful and courageous journey into America's un-remembered past by Mohican composer Brent Michael Davids, who spins the traditional Death Mass on its head giving voice to America’s invisible people. The lyrics juxtapose genocidal texts from America’s founding against historical letters by the American Indians themselves. Chauvinist Bible verses, the Papal “Doctrine of Discovery,” and writings of prominent US leaders are contrasted with the cries of abuse and desperate pleas for survival articulated by American Indians. The Requiem’s standard 18 movements are reworked into provocative confrontations that challenge both the norms of the traditional Requiem genre and the sanitized rhetoric of American history.

​Choruses and orchestras are invited, from all 50 states, to join REQUIEM FOR AMERICA, as a Collective Consortium partner. For a one-time tax-deductible contribution, partners will receive all the printed music, the Native American flutist, and other perks, such as the composer’s assistance in collaborating with local Native American communities in whose homeland the premieres will take place. Inviting indigenous people to collaborate is vital to this project’s mission.

​By joining forces, each premiere hopes to build good relations with, and foster greater insights from, America’s First Nations. REQUIEM FOR AMERICA will — in musical message and collaborative purpose — strive to bring the founding of our great America out of the shadows, and with it, America’s first nations. Please visit our website, www.requiemforamerica.com, and consider joining our ambitious country-wide project. Will you join us?