How Sweet the Sound

Gr 2-5–In a free verse panegyric to African American music, Alexander begins with talking drums and praise songs of “the motherland.” He then unfolds a rich, historical panorama of singers and song titles, instruments, landmark recordings, and musical styles, from field hollers and “Congo Square ring shouts” to Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 album Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers—all identified and given additional appreciation and context in an expansive section of end notes. Listen, he urges, to “the hymns/ that carried us away from home/ across a blue unknown,” to the “Amazing Grace/ of the Jubilee Singers,” to jazz and bebop and scat, to “the reggae/ and the rumba/ to the country/ and the folk/ to the highlife/ and the house.” Palmer cranks up the visual energy with increasingly populous and sometimes kaleidoscopic images of people with various shades of brown skin: of dancers raising hands and fists, of singers belting lyrics into microphones, and of musicians on horns and guitars, drums and ­keyboards combining in, as the author puts it, “a symphony/ of refuge and redemption/ the sweet sound of a people/ surviving and thriving.”