Music in My Soul

Marcus Garvey Academy. Detroit, Michigan. 2003

This mural, Yamasaki’s third, celebrated the legacy of Marcus Garvey through one of his poems Music in my Soul.

I painted my third mural in 2003 at the Marcus Garvey Academy, a public school in Southeast Detroit with an African Centric curriculum. It was based off a poem by Marcus Garvey, which the school had arranged into their school song, “Music in My Soul,” written in 1937. I painted it over a winter break when the school was closed and the custodian and/or principal stayed with me the entire time I painted, the principal, Dr. Harvey Hambrick, was an epic storyteller and he accompanied my painting of this mural with his epic tales of his work in the Black Panther Party and later in the ministry.

When I look back at this image, I feel like my work has changed a lot over the years, but the reason I love doing murals has not. The school building was condemned the year after I painted the mural and the entire building was raised. It was a quick lesson early in my career of the impermanence of murals (and everything else), but as with loss, these stories will always live inside. 

The remarkable school put the poem to music and made it their school song, also creating a theatrical piece about the mural.