"The Watermelon Flag Flies Forever"
We are proud to announce the release of our second single off “The Seed and Spear”.

Beautiful peoples, there can be no redemption for our complicity as Americans - directly or indirectly - in the ongoing genocide being committed against our Palestinian family. Our tax dollars are being used to destroy life, and deny the lived realities of the communities that have been harmed - an all too familiar story.

Amidst our sorrow we can commit to transformation. We have the power to transform our understanding of our own history, which teaches us exactly why we are witnessing such horrors. Our elected leaders - and far too many of us - have either ignored, or been denied, the truths that have been yelled from rooftops, rallies, and records for our entire lives, plainly explaining the interconnectedness in the fights for liberation at home and abroad.

As musicians and educators, we have a critical role to play in what narratives take root in our collective future. Together with artists across the world, we understand that politics moves last, and is made up of humans - humans that had teachers.

“The Watermelon Flag Flies Forever” is a sonic story, drifting through the winds, accompanying us on the road to a future without apartheid!

Our small offering joins the millions of other voices calling for an end to the genocide, a dismantling of our role in it, and a commitment to support our community leaders who can and will guide us to the restoration and justice that has been denied for far too long.

None of us are free until we are all free!
Free Palestine! Free Palestine! Free Palestine!

#freepalestine #stopthegenocide #thewatermelonflagfliesforever #newmusicrelease #thetoagquartet #theseedandspeer

The third single off of our new album "The Seed and Spear," which drops this spring!

Beautiful Peoples,
We have so much to learn from our family that is living unsheltered. We have a moral and ethical responsibility to center their experience in the building of a new future, listen deeply to the stories they tell, and stop normalizing their suffering. They are us, and we are them, despite how many ways we seek to diminish this fundamental truth.

We remember the first time we stepped over a body. We were new to the city, getting used to moving around, the ebb and flow of it all. Walking out of a train station with thousands of rushing humans, we turned a corner almost tripping over a slumped set of legs, on a face down body. We froze… caught by this dystopian moment in the middle of a metropolis, frantically staring at the faces of the other rushing humans around us, waiting for the locked-eye moment of “This is an emergency we need to respond to, is this person ok? Are they alive?” Panic. Stillness. The tug of humanity. The endless stream of humans kept coming. No one looked at us, much less the legs, or the human connected to them. It was just noise, chatter, background textures as familiar and accepted as any sight or smell in an American city. Who can one call in such moments to provide immediate, meaningful and responsive help that doesn’t risk putting people in danger? We didn’t have an answer at the time (MH First didn’t exist yet), so we knelt to check their breathing - which was thankfully steady, though wheezy. Just as the wave of relief washed across our body that they were alive, they woke up, angry at being awakened. “Leave me in peace!” they screamed at us.

“Peace…” The word spun in our mind. The cognitive dissonance of this human using that word to describe their desire, and the reality they had come to define it as, was too much to process. The rushing humans kept coming, careening past us, now annoyed that we were blocking their way. This moving mass of indifference perfectly articulated the quiet part out loud, and our unsheltered neighbor knew it better than we did: their suffering was acceptable, so acceptable it could be ignored. An all too familiar story.

If you live in a community like ours, every day we live, work, and play on stolen land, with thousands of people sleeping on the streets - struggling for access to the critical community services they have been denied. What's more, we criminalize those doing what they must to survive, forcing them from one place to the next, bulldozing encampments, endlessly satisfying the “Not in my backyard-ers,”, and above all else making sure that our collective understanding of the problems at hand stay individualized, and down stream.

Why is it so hard for us to look upstream, to see the intentional choices that have led us for decades to this designed outcome? Perhaps it is because we have chosen to not see the “us” in the folks living unsheltered, and we have manifested an impenetrable reflexive defense of “at least that’s not me”.
But it is.
It is us.

As Oakland teaches, “We Take Care of Us!”

Safe and vibrant communities exist when every person’s needs are being met. Housing is one such need, not a luxury or privilege. It is a human right, and it must come FIRST in the long chain of administering care to our family that is living unsheltered or housing insecure - alongside crisis response that doesn’t involve the police, longer term assistance services for our most vulnerable, and transitional employment programs that provide meaningful and culturally responsive training. No being deserves anything less than shelter fit for their physical, emotional, social, and spiritual health.

To our unsheltered family, we will not let your stories go unsung, nor your brilliance and creative resistance go uncelebrated! “Avon” is one such story, about one of the first people who welcomed us into a new town, making us - and so many others - feel seen, heard, and valued for chasing our dreams. Against the backdrop of a bedroom with windshield wipers, he showed us kindness and wisdom, patience beyond measure, and the same interrogative questioning of life we expect from professors.

We want this song to uplift both the grit and grace of this story, and challenge us all to answer the question: what does a reimagined future where no human is usheltered look like to you?

--
The TOaG Quartet is an organization of musicians, producers, & educators, creating original music & collaborative experiences, to elevate & inspire community.

Charting a course of all original music that spans dirge like ballads to hard hitting grooves, cinematic soundscapes to sizzling up tempo swingers - all stitched together with samples and storytelling - TOaG’s sound is rooted in tradition, and harkens to the future. Sparking the mind with truth, and moving the spirit with groove, our organization is the product of our collective - which is one part working band and one part teaching ensemble.

As of March 13th 2024, The TOaG Quartet is on the road celebrating the upcoming release of our newest live record “The Seed and Spear!” For the following 9 weeks and 8000 miles, we will be community building across the USA and Canada through a combination of public performances, private performances, recording sessions, and educational clinics.

WHO WE ARE:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC6gibDOxIQ

Media and Socials:
Web: www.officialeeproductions.com/the-toag-quartet FB: www.facebook.com/theTOaGquartet
IG: www.instagram.com/thetoagquartet/
LinkTree: linktr.ee/thetoagquartet
TAGS: #thetoagquartet #theseedandspear #letsinventthefuturetogether #toagontheroad