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Sunday Meditation: A Dedication to Our Slaughtered Innocents

Fifty-eight pieces of gospel, jazz, classical and devotional music assembled as a memorial. This is a playlist made for grieving, and it should be approached that way.

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Sunday Meditation

The dedication in the title gives the set its purpose, and it is worth taking seriously. This is not a Sunday-morning mood playlist; it is a memorial, assembled in response to the deaths of children and young people, and its fifty-eight tracks are sequenced as a service rather than as a selection.

What makes it work is that it does not resolve. A lesser set would have moved from grief to comfort in an orderly way. This one holds both at once for nearly four hours, and it draws on several traditions rather than one because no single tradition has a sufficient answer.

What to listen for

Bobby McFerrin's "The 23rd Psalm" opens the set, and the choice matters: McFerrin's setting addresses God as female throughout, a version he wrote for his mother. It reframes the most familiar text in English-language grief from the first line.

Whitney Houston's "I Love The Lord" with the Georgia Mass Choir is the most extraordinary vocal performance here, and possibly the best thing she ever recorded.

James Cleveland appears twice, which is correct — he is the single most important figure in modern gospel, and Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace was recorded with his choir.

Marvin Gaye's "Wholy Holy" is the soul selection that belongs most naturally in this company, and Commodores' "Jesus Is Love" is the other.

Sweet Honey In The Rock's "Redemption Song" closes the set, and an a cappella Black women's ensemble singing Marley unaccompanied is the right final word.

Take 6 appears three times, and their harmonic writing is the technical high point of the whole playlist.

Lauryn Hill's "Mystery of Iniquity" live is the angriest thing here, and its presence keeps the set from becoming merely consoling.

Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight" and Aaron Neville's "Ave Maria" are the wordless and near-wordless centres.

Go deeper

Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace (1972) is the essential album in this tradition, and the concert film released in 2018 is worth seeing.

Take 6's debut and Sweet Honey In The Rock's catalogue are both worth exploring properly. Sounds Of Blackness's The Evolution of Gospel is the other record this set points towards.

How to approach it: the set does not resolve, and that is deliberate. A lesser memorial would move in order from grief to comfort; this one holds both for nearly four hours and draws on several traditions because no single one has a sufficient answer. Play it whole, in sequence, and treat it as a service rather than a selection.

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