American Skin (41 Shots) // I Just Wanna Live

Keedron Bryant is twelve years old. This morning he brought me to tears.

6am, June 26th 2020. I lay awake in bed, coming up on two hours of sleeplessness, and after a couple podcast episodes and some silent tossing and turning, I succumb to the ever-awakening sensory overloader: Instagram.

Sliding down the rabbit hole, I meander through the collage of vintage music gear, social justice action items, fixed gear bikes, political satire, landscape photography, and videos of unspeakable police brutality, slowly arriving at the video of a young black man with a voice like I have not heard before.

And that’s when I lost it.

Keedron’s voice is devastating not only because of it’s technical ability, but, more importantly, because of the weight of the words that it so effortlessly delivers.

I’ve heard twelve year olds sing and sing well. We’ve seen marvelous performances from pre-teens on competition shows, and I’ve even had some of my own students wow me with their ability. But none of them have made me cry.

Keedron Bryant is twelve years old, and he so devastated me because he is singing for his life. On “I just Wanna Live”, the song that overtook me this morning, Keedron pleads with the world on behalf of himself, and his black community members, to be allowed to simply exist.

And in this song, when Keedron sings the line “Oh but when I look around” (“...and see what’s being done to my kind”), the melody and phrasing of this specific lyric catches my attention more than any other. 

I feel like I’ve heard this melody somewhere else…

--

Let’s go back.

On Christmas Day 2002 I unwrapped the album Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live in New York City; 20 songs, two discs, and one song that would fuck me right up.

At that time, I was largely unfamiliar with The Boss. Much later in life I’d come to be a pretty unapologetic Springsteen fan, as much for his guilty-pleasure hits as his dark and contemplative deep cuts; but at that time, I was merely the end-point for a last minute stocking-stuffer, likely an impulse buy from the checkout line at Barnes and Noble. 

Outstanding grab, Mom.

To this day, I cannot remember listening to the album. Rather, I cannot remember listening to 19 of the songs on that album. To me it didn’t make a difference if “Born in the USA” or “The River” or “Badlands” were on there. Honestly, I don’t know if I ever so much as touched the first disc in the pair.

But at least once a day for months, before going to bed, and sometimes in the middle of the night, I would turn on the CD player next to my bed, I would skip straight to track number three, and I would let American Skin (41 Shots) wash over me.

The first time I listened to that song, Christmas 2002, I was twelve years old.

At twelve years old, I knew, but I didn’t really know. I knew what the song was describing, but I didn’t know what the song was about. I knew that Springsteen and his band were speaking about systemic injustice. I knew they were telling the story of the murder of a young black man by police. I knew Springsteen was describing conversations that only parents of color have to have with their children.

But I didn’t know the specific story that the song tells. I did not know about the 1999 murder of Amadou Diallo by the New York City Police. I didn’t know that this song was literal, as the band echoed the refrain of “41 shots.”

At twelve years old, though intensely moved by the song, I was afforded the privilege of not having to know the origin of 41 Shots, or it’s implications. 

At twelve years old, Keedron Bryant is literally singing for his life; and when Keedron sings the line “Oh but when I look around” he sings the exact same melody Springsteen does when delivering the phrases “body in the vestibule” and “never ever run away” (in the first verse “you’re leaning over his body in the vestibule, praying for his life” … and later “and that you’ll never ever run away, promise Mama you’ll keep your hands in sight”).

Though linked by this melody, I Just Wanna Live and American Skin (41 Shots) are two songs from very different perspectives. Bruce sings as a spectator, Keedron as a participant. I cry as I sit here imagining that Keedron’s mother has had to issue the same warning to her son as Lena does in 41 Shots. I cry to think that nothing much has changed in 20 years. That I was allowed the bliss of ignorance to the killing of Amadou Diallo, while Keedron and youth of today are bombarded by imagery of the brutalization of black and brown people on news and social media.

I just want you to live, Keedron. I just want you to live without having to sing songs pleading for your life. I just want you to live a life filled with singing gospel songs, and songs about the girls and/ or boys that you might fall in love with, and songs about growing up, and songs about joy and pain and love and sadness and heartache and hope, but not songs about wondering if you too will be murdered for just for the color of his American skin.