American Ledger No.3

In an ongoing series of original musical compositions, American Ledger, Raven Chacon responds to the nation’s contested history and the places where each work is commissioned. For Nine Lives, he dedicates a new musical score—taking the form of a large flag—and a printed newspaper to Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), a prominent journalist, suffragist, and anti-lynching activist. The newspaper, available in print in the gallery and digitally here, includes instructions for performing the score; it also bridges past and present, as Well’s writing from a century ago appears alongside a list of police murders in 2020.