Published as part of the Dualisms collection (below.) We’ve Got To Find a Way starts on page 21.
Recording available here.
for tenor, electric piano, and fixed media.
after "What's Going On" by Al Cleveland, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, and Marvin Gaye
Video features Denzel Donald (vocals) and Michael Malis (Fender Rhodes electric piano.)
Premiered at Sidewalk Festival, Detroit MI, August 2019.
A recomposition of Marvin Gaye’s seminal piece What’s Going On, We’ve Got To Find A Way expands on What’s Going On by featuring newly composed material for electric piano and voice. This newly composed material is interwoven with an electronic backing track that samples the original track extensively, bringing the recomposition into conversation with the poignancy of the original recording. The track consists of nearly 200 individual samples, and is comprised almost entirely of samples from What’s Going On.
What’s Going On is a song that asks deep questions about peace, power, and utopia. Set in the civil unrest of the late 1960’s, Gaye gets straight to the heart of many of the issues that faced society at that time. In many ways, it’s staged as a lament for the ails of society (“brother brother / there’s far too many of you dying.”) But it also strikes a hopeful tone (“you know we’ve got to find a way / to bring some loving here today.”) This classic song transcends the times that it was written for and is extremely relevant to our current era of social and political unrest. Furthermore, What’s Going On has an extra layer of importance in Detroit, the city that birthed this masterpiece.
Almost 50 years later, it’s appropriate to ask: what, if anything, has changed? We’ve Got To Find a Way highlights that question, and gives audiences the opportunity to investigate this question themselves. Some of the recomposed elements of the piece are a radical departure from the original, allowing the audiences to meditate on what has changed. But by using samples from the original track, this piece stays tethered to the original, allowing the audience to meditate on what has stayed the same, for better or for worse.