With 'Code Listen,' A Violinist Brings Police And Citizens Together To Address Gun Violence And Race In Boston
Shaw Pong Liu ‘s "Code Listen" project is a civic arts initiative that leverages the transformative power of music, storytelling and performance to support healing and spark dialogue around gun violence, race and law enforcement practices in Boston.
On the third floor of the Center for Teen Empowerment in Roxbury, more than a dozen people, including youth, local police officers and moms who’ve lost their children to gun violence, gather in a too warm room. In the bright, cobalt blue and brick-walled space, they embrace, devour pizza and chat easily before the official agenda. Once it begins, smaller groups form to recite poems, monologues and stories around grief, forgiveness and motivation.
"I became a police officer so there’d be one less of those [kinds of cops] on the street," says Jeremiah Benton, as he recalls getting harassed by police as a teenager in Dorchester.
Benton, a member of the force for nearly 30 years, and the others have been working together — with classical violinist and composer, Shaw Pong Liu — to find common ground through the "Code Listen" project.
Liu's civic arts initiative leverages the transformative power of music, storytelling and performance to support healing and spark dialogue around gun violence, race and law enforcement practices in Boston.
The Performer Cover Story - Curtis Harding: The Soul Powerhouse on Shitty Guitars, Bum Notes and Being a Control Freak in the Studio
Curtis Harding is no stranger to spreading the good news through music. Born in Saginaw, MI, the guitar playing vocalist (whose aptly-named Soul Power album just dropped on Burger Records) spent his childhood touring with his evangelist mom. But while she was singing for Jesus, he was writing rhymes as he and his family moved from town to town.
From the outside looking in, the lives of the Hardings may have seemed like a great adventure. “You don’t think about it that way when you’re in elementary school and you have to leave your friends,” says Harding. But the family’s nomadic lifestyle afforded him a different kind of education. The kind of education that might be partly responsible for the quiet confidence/borderline arrogance he embodies. It’s that can’t-put-your-finger-on-it something that makes him intriguing and powerful, yet approachable. Read more