Samora Pinderhughes Releases New single “Hold Fast”
Award winning pianist, composer, vocalist, and multidisciplinary artist Samora Pinderhughes today confirms a new mixtape, Black Spring, set for release July 18 in collaboration with The Healing Project. In advance, he has shared a new single, “Hold Fast” featuring The Healing Project Choir.
Black Spring, formed around new songs inspired by Pinderhughes’ sold-out performance in February at Harlem’s legendary The Apollo, celebrates the 100th birthyear of seminal author and activist James Baldwin. The 10 tracks blend emotive and poetic piano ballads with modern electronics and R&B production, fusing a cohesive, genre spanning sound that brings a refreshing take to the neo-soul canon. The tracklist features members of Pinderhughes’ tight knit New York community including Elliott Skinner, Jamila Woods, Dani Murcia, Jehbreal Jackson, Marcus Gilmore and more.
Rooted in the tradition of Black radical music and collective organizing, the songs challenge racial capitalism, police violence, mass incarceration, and systems of domination both in the U.S. and globally, providing a clear message of resistance.
On the mixtape, Pinderhughes shares, “In a time when so many are overwhelmed, numbed, or uncertain in how to respond to the rise of authoritarianism and state violence, Black Spring offers a necessary jolt—an invitation to feel, to remember, and to move. It meets people where they are—be it in grief, in rage, or in quiet despair—and channels those emotions into momentum.”
The mixtape comes amidst a slew of new awards and community work for Pinderhughes; most recently, he has been named the Adobe Creative Resident at MOMA, a Pioneer Works Visual Art & Music Resident, and has given a TED Talk/Performance that will be released publicly shortly—he’s also currently getting his Ph.D. at Harvard University, where he teaches an undergraduate class titled “Music in Social Practice: Sounding the Chorus of Community.’
On February 22nd at The Apollo, in celebration of Baldwin’s legacy, Pinderhughes performed The James Baldwin Essays: As Much Truth As One Can Bear, an immersive multimedia experience that wove together songcraft, poetry, film, and inspiration from Baldwin’s own plays & essays like The Amen Corner and The Cross of Redemption. Originally commissioned by Harlem Stage in 2015, Pinderhughes refreshed the original score with new songs and new voices.
Rounding the mixtape out with recently released single “Am I Human,” with features poetry from artist Keith LaMar who is currently on death row, Pinderhughes pulls from overlooked previous EPs and singles to rework a cohesive body of work that confronts structural violence and reckons with America’s history. The tracklist blends live and studio performances, imagining a new future for the nation that replaces systems of harm with systems of care—find the full tracklist below. Check out other coverage here.
| Samora Pinderhughes. Photo credit: Ragan Henderson |