Through Salted Earth

for Alto Saxophone, Bb Trumpet, & Piano

This piece comes from the idea of ancient conquerors salting the fields of places they would invade and dominate to diminish the conquered population's ability to produce their own food. This piece tries to take a subaltern perspective and explore the feelings of those who find ways to carry on despite the immense oppression that they face. I think that those who grow through the salt could be anybody from people rebelling against literal conquerors to those just managing to get by in a system that is designed to subjugate them. Ultimately, their stories should be celebrated, but we cannot divorce these stories from context. Resilience is admirable, but we need to dismantle the things that make people have to be resilient, we should take away the oppressor's ability to salt fields in the first place.