Alfred Howard is a songwriter, poet, and author. Howard has taken on the challenge of writing 100 songs in his new project called “Alfred Howard Writes”. Each song is represented in a watercolor painting by the artist Marian Howard, who happens to be his Mum. Howard wanted to do something that incorporated the paintings of his seventy four year old Mum. They have collaborated on projects before. What may seem daunting to most, 100 paintings and 100 songs, is a natural extension of creative work that is exhilarating and awe inspiring. Howard is determined that when the veil of the pandemic lifts, this new kind of approach to creativity, will be his way forward. He prefers the behind the scenes rather than being on stage, at this point in his life.
At the start of the pandemic he spent the first two months catching up on much needed rest from twenty years of touring as a musician and songwriter. He had been playing for five different bands and writing lyrics for eight. Music and being on stage had taken its toll because Howard always played hard and with a “bleed for your art philosophy”. It did not help that he had lyme disease and suffered from joint pain, headaches, and fatigue.
The creative side of writing always came easy to Howard. He remembered his first poem which he wrote in Kindergarten, and how he always loved to play around with words and rhymes.
For this new project, and because Howard had been touring with so many musicians throughout his career, he reached out to people he wanted to work with. When writing a song for someone, he tries to write specifically for their voice. He listens to their catalogue, studies it, finds the words that feel right, and what kind of ideas or sentiments their voice might convey. He writes a couple of songs, a process that might start with a vocalist and a guitar. Then drums, bass, band members, may be added and all are recorded at a safe distance. The hard part is not creating the music. It is coordinating a couple hundred musicians with different schedules.
On January 4th, I was fortunate enough to meet and speak with Alfred Howard via Zoom. On that day he was 57 songs into the process, and all in all, had 87 accounted for and written at some stage of production. Every song gets a different treatment. Howard describes the music as a kind of newspaper; a direct reflection of the headlines. “This project is a good way to document this slice of history with my Mum adding the visual representation. I write the songs, stories, curate for the artists, and I send the finished song to my Mum. She meditates on it and she paints it. She is a constantly innovating artist. A role model for me.” The project has music from many different genres. From Country, Soul, Spoken Word, Blues, Blue Grass, Jazz, to Indie Rock. “Mum responds to the stimulus of the song and lets it take her to wherever she needs to be creatively. She is constantly reinventing herself and her expression. I think that’s really refreshing.”
The concept is a simple one, where Howard writes all of the lyrics and partners with a vocalist and other artists to record each song, utilizing the magic of technology to share tracks and ideas. Then Mirian (Howard) creates the masterful artwork.
In 2017, Alfred Howard wrote “The Great Deceiver” which was written in direct response to the American election. Howard recalled going to the grocery store the next day after the election, and that collective feeling of malaise that everyone carried, along with the shock and the agony.
I first learned of Alfred Howard’s writings when I had watched the film Peace Through Music: A Global Event for Social Justice. Alfred Howard is featured reciting one of his poems called “I Love America”. He has several versions of the poem, the most recent of which is published here with his permission.
After four years of the obsessive focus on the maniacal archvillain in the White House, an obsession that has distracted us from the truth. We need to listen and give stage to the artists who write of a quest for freedom. Those who dream of another way of being; of the transformation of a nation. Artists like Alfred Howard who not only write a reflection of our times, but who remind us of our humanity and our collective responsibility. Howard’s writing is a response to the current times but he also writes in a way that touches the human soul or spirit. Poetry that transcends cultural boundaries, and speaks to our collective humanity, as a call for action.
WE ALL BREATHE THE SAME AIR
Written By Alfred Howard
I looked in the mirror last night and noticed I was black. I don’t think about this often, though I guess it’s everyday. A better way to put it is that I don’t acknowledge it often. I don’t break any laws these days but when a cop is behind my car I tense up as if I did. I think about it in the age of pandemic when I wear a mask that doesn’t allow me to disarm people with my smile. A tool I never consciously realized I employed, but did so every day to make folks feel comfortable, it was a situational instinct, never got a second thought. Now all I have is my somnolent eyes to convey my innocence, my passivity. I hope that’s enough. I think about my blackness when I try to talk my mother down from a worried cliff, the ledge on which she lives, plugging the same lecture into a thesaurus over and over again to make it slightly different. A lecture constructed with words that I no longer believe, propped up by the weak kickstand of my breaking voice as it runs out of the steam needed to convey anything real and true. But one that once helped her sleep at night like a child’s bandaid on a gunshot. One that suggests that if I tiptoe through America I’ll make it out alive as if careful steps through a minefield was enough. But last night when I looked into the mirror I saw the death magnet of my black skin. A felt a sudden inability to breathe, I felt the specter of the man’s boot on my neck as I gasped for a mother’s help to protect me like a maddening mantra of last hopelessness. I thought of every time and scenario where it could have been me because it could have and I was for a moment so paralyzed that it felt as if it was. It’s a risk simply to be black in a way that some will never understand. I’m a practitioner of peace but as these fires light up the night sky I pray they illuminate a situation that lives behind a veil of darkness. This disparity is real. The fear I have is based in reason and logic, not paranoia. And even if I’m a black man to most, I’ll always be a NIG**R to enough. And this is not alright.
So until it is
The mercury rising like a summer in flames
The symptom of fever is all that remains
I feel the short breath of another man’s pain
Of a mother who weeps through the night
An ocean of tears can’t undo the embers
Of a moment in amber we all will remember
When the wind blew in a tempest of tempers
And the truth was exposed to the light
And we all breathe the same air
And I feel ashamed here
And only love can pull us out the dark
And if it’s one it’s everyone
Someone’s daughter someone’s son
Etch their name into my breaking heart
Won’t wear a mask but a hood’s not constricting
I refresh the feed cause the news is addicting
And 2020 vision is a blinding affliction
Can you see by the light of the fire
Cause it’s all still burning in the morning edition
And the talking heads speak but I can’t really listen
And the leader breathes gasoline speeches at friction
And there’s no consequence for the liars
And we all breathe the same air
And I feel ashamed here
And only love can pull us out the dark
And if it’s one it’s everyone
Someone’s daughter someone’s son
Etch their name into my breaking heart
My lungs are collapsing it’s so hard to breathe and his lungs were collapsed by the weight of policemen
we’re stuck in a trap of this antique machine
Built on our sweat and our blood
Cause we’re standing knee deep in quicksand history
If we don’t turn around this is how it will be
Must the forest be ash before you need the trees
Can we turn this around with our love
And we all breathe the same air
And I feel ashamed here
And only love can pull us out the dark
And if it’s one it’s everyone
Someone’s daughter someone’s son
Etch their name into my breaking heart
AWAKE TONIGHT by MARIAN HOWARD
I urge you to go to the website to be able to read the writings of Alfred Howard. You will be able to read some stories, stream the music, and or purchase a membership. Everything is available free, but if you have the means to support, the money will be going to the musicians who created the content and to future works.
https://www.alfredhowardwrites.com/
