Sounding a note of peace during strife
Copeland addresses our troubled times with ‘Uncivil War’
who are just ignorant to it. And I don’t want to say I’m mad at them. But I just wish people would listen more. I wish that when someone puts up a sign that says ‘Black Lives Matter,’ you wouldn’t have someone say ‘all lives matter.’
“I really can’t stand the whole term ‘blue lives matter.’ Being a police officer is a choice. I don’t get to decide whether I want to be a Black person.”
Yet with “Uncivil War,” Copeland is striking a note of palpable hope rather than understandable anger, calling out for justice rather than conflict.
“I’m a true believer that you can only change people one person at a time, and I always hope that we can do that through music,” she says. “My mama used to always say you can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar. And I always feel like in order to get someone’s ear, you have to come with a message of peace and hope first, and maybe you can hope to change someone.”
Though Copeland didn’t write “Uncivil War,” she was central to its creation. As with much of her repertoire, the song’s genesis began as she conversed with her longtime manager-songwriter-friend John Hahn.
“Shemekia and I talk about three times a day, and we’ve been doing that forever,” says Hahn, who lives in New York and clearly spends a significant amount of time on the phone.
“We had a lot of success with ‘Ain’t Got Time for Hate,’ ” the vibrant opening track from Copeland’s 2018 album, “America’s Child.”
“The response that we got for that song was so positive, with people saying our tendency today is to say ‘I hate this’ and ‘I hate that,’ ‘This is wrong’ and ‘That’s wrong.’ And it gets spread by Facebook and all our social media. So we end up talking about ourselves, and no one is listening.
“So we thought — and we discuss this a lot — let’s do something that would give people hope and not be partisan. And ‘uncivil’ popped into my head.”
Hahn crafted the lyrics two years ago, read them to Copeland and received her wholehearted approval. He then sent the text to Will Kimbrough, who produced the “America’s Child” album and the forthcoming one.
Kimbrough wrote the music for “Uncivil War,” and a new Copeland anthem was born.
“When I first got all the words, I thought to myself: You need somebody with a pretty voice to sing this song,” says Copeland, whose mighty instrument can breathe fire. “Because my voice is not pretty, and I don’t want to sing this song. I don’t want to mess this song up.
“And everybody heard me do it (in the recording studio) and they said, ‘No, you’re absolutely wrong. You’re the perfect person to do it. Be quiet and sing the song and stop fighting it.’ ”
Copeland’s throaty, smoldering version brings out the song’s gravitas, making it a plea to our better angels. Her recording of “Uncivil War” and the rest of the new album were supposed to come out in August on Alligator Records, but the pandemic predictably has delayed the full album’s release.
With protests erupting on the streets in recent weeks, Copeland and colleagues decided the time was right to bring out “Uncivil War.”
“When someone like Ahmaud Arbery or George Floyd or Breonna Taylor” gets killed, says Copeland, “it does something to your soul. It almost is like you just get a gut punch and a piece of your soul gets chopped away.
“A good friend of mine — I love him … he loves me and my family — sent me a message that said: It’s a shame about all of this looting, and it doesn’t help anything, and what would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. think?
“And I found myself getting annoyed. … I can’t stand that people pick out the looting and make that an issue but don’t say anything about the other stuff. If you’re going to be angry, be angry about all of it.
“Be disgusted with everything. Don’t just be disgusted with one thing.”
Or as King put it in 1967: “Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood.”
Rather than tune out her friend, Copeland made direct contact.
“He and I had a conversation that wasn’t email or text message, and we both totally understood and got each other,” says Copeland. “So that’s just what we have to do now: have conversations.”
Those conversations indeed appear to be happening now with increasing frequency: in the streets, over the airwaves, in Congress, in the arts and in music.
By expressing hope via “Uncivil War,” Copeland is creating it.
“I try desperately to be hopeful,” she says. “I have my moments where I get down, and I’m not as hopeful.
“I saw the Central Park Five, the whole Rodney King thing. I grew up in Harlem, where I was stepping over dead bodies, and nobody ever came there (to help). They didn’t come.
“So I’ve been through a whole lot. It’s difficult to be hopeful, but I’m a praying woman. And because I believe in God, I can be hopeful, no matter what.
“But it’s tough times now.”
Which is why people need to hear “Uncivil War.”