Grief into grace

April 5, 2018 10:51 AM

The President Sang Amazing Grace (Joan Baez)

The Atlantic Selects has produced an animated video of Joan Baez's cover of Zoe Mulford's beautiful song about former President Barack Obama's eulogy of Reverend Clementa Pinckney (previously on the blue).

* from the article -

This video was produced by Rick Litvin and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. It is the first of a 10-part visual album in collaboration with NYU that coincides with each of the 10 songs on Baez’s new album.

posted by DigDoug (15 comments total)

No, that's just some dust that got in my eye...
posted by PhineasGage at 11:10 AM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Heartrending.
posted by merriment at 11:31 AM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Wow.
posted by jferg at 11:40 AM on April 5, 2018

Wow, that first sentence in the description is hard to parse.
posted by DigDoug at 11:45 AM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

2015 seems like a century ago.
posted by CheapB at 11:50 AM on April 5, 2018 [6 favorites]

Oh wow. Everything about that is really moving. Thank you for posting that.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 11:54 AM on April 5, 2018

(Can we have a Zoe Mulford tag on this post?)
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 12:44 PM on April 5, 2018

Fixed!
posted by DigDoug at 1:14 PM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Just beautiful.

From the original post, here’s a link to the President’s full eulogy. You can skip ahead 35 minutes to the part where he sings, or you can do what I did and spend 35 minutes mourning not only the loss of the innocent people who were murdered that day, but also the loss of dignity, honor, respect, grace and humility in the office of the President of the United States of America.
posted by mammoth at 1:31 PM on April 5, 2018 [28 favorites]

Yes! I just a few weeks back heard her sing this in concert! it was, what can I say, even more moving, if that's even possible.
posted by Namlit at 1:54 PM on April 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

Here's the YouTube of just Obama singing. Just rewatching it, I had to wipe away some random moisture that got into my eyes.

I couldn't help but think two thoughts. One, I am proud to have voted for this man twice, as he was the best President in my adult lifetime. Two, this is the man so many white evangelists have vilified, putting into office the mangled apricot hellbeast.
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:54 PM on April 5, 2018 [5 favorites]

"Mangled Apricot Hellbeast" - that's great - will have to add that to this Trump description generator...
posted by PhineasGage at 5:09 PM on April 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

Wow...

I remember how happy and proud I was to vote for Obama, and how excited I was when he was elected. *sigh*
posted by bunderful at 6:02 PM on April 5, 2018 [4 favorites]

Back when we had a leader.
posted by 4ster at 6:08 PM on April 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

I didn't think too much about Obama's singing at the time because this is what he did during times of mourning - try to take as much of the pain of the people affected on to himself and provide whatever comfort he could. But seeing how low the presidency has fallen so quickly under Trump, watching the video of Obama singing chokes me up. You had a great person as your president for 8 years and so much of your country stifled him while he was in office and then elected someone so lacking in humanity's higher qualities. As your current president would say, so sad.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:25 AM on April 6, 2018 [4 favorites]