The War and Treaty Look for Healing

@newbeats

A LOT OF THE WAR AND TREATY’S music is about trying to turn suffering into hope. In 2019, for instance, the Nashville-based duo of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blount-Trotter were among the marchers with late Congressman John Lewis over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The event was to commemorate the 54th anniversary of the day Lewis and other peaceful civil rights protestors were beaten savagely on the bridge by police.

The couple were asked for an impromptu song. They froze for a moment, stuck for something that would fit the occasion. A fellow musician suggested the gospel standard “This Little Light of Mine.”

“We got unstuck quickly,” Trotter recalls with a laugh. “You can’t script those moments, and we were so proud to honor [Lewis], to talk with him.”