Alma Cook concedes that she’s something of a novelty. “There just aren’t that many Red musicians,” she grins.
Micah Hendler doesn’t see Red. As her Blue co-lead on Braver Angels’ music team, he’s thrilled that she’s adding her voice in many more ways than the obvious one. “Working with Alma has been extraordinary, in the ways she shape-shifts between the urban and the rural and between the very conservative and the very liberal,” he says.
Political leanings aside, both come to their work with Braver Angels from quite different angles, and each brings a big burst of talent and energy. Micah was just about born into music. “Singing in harmony has been a very big part of my life,” he says.
He has laid down some exceptionally powerful tracks, literally and metaphorically, as the founder and artistic director of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, an Israeli-Palestinian music and dialogue project. By co-creating music and sharing stories, the chorus empowers young singers from East and West Jerusalem to speak and sing their truths as they become leaders in their communities. That’s just part of Micah’s work to enable groups to realign and reengage around a shared vision and to build cultures of resilience, adaptability, inclusive leadership, and supportive accountability.
Alma comes from the perspective of a singer-songwriter and spoken-word artist with several albums and singles to her name. She has a split-screen background: growing up in cities but quite at home in the oilfields of North Dakota, a self-confessed “passionate young liberal” turned libertarian and free marketeer, and a singer who has opened at clubs and festivals across the United States for multiple well-known acts, including gospel musician Jonathan McReynolds and Christian rapper George Moss.
Both Alma and Micah could not be more aligned with the Braver Angels mission. Both see music as a joyous thing in itself but also as a means to an end – as a vehicle for dialog and reconciliation. Indeed, Micah’s professional profile lists him as a “musical changemaker.” “The two strands of my life weave around music as a way of building community and dialog as a way of creating community transformation,” he says.
The two music team leaders express their debt to Sage Snider – the Braver Angels muse who set up last year’s successful songwriting contest at a time when music was badly needed to help soothe the nation’s soul. A few years ago, Micah had posted an inquiry about music in rural America, and Sage, an old-time and bluegrass musician, had responded. “We were both ethnomusicology nerds,” he says. Not long after, he met Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame. Independently, Sage and Peter told Micah about Braver Angels and said he should attend the founding convention. He did. He led some singing there – and was sold on the organization.
Alma came later, after hearing John Wood Jr. speak. “I’d grown up very liberal, but when my brother was doing his degree in economics, I started getting an appreciation for free-market economics,” she says. More importantly, over the course of 2020 she had become increasingly frustrated with the hot-headed behavior on both sides. “My friends were really broken-hearted – nobody felt they had answers,” she recalls. Listening to Glenn Loury’s podcast that summer, she heard John Wood Jr. as a guest speaker. “He spoke very eloquently; he especially caught my attention as a fellow Christian. I literally messaged him on Twitter that night,” she says.
John soon helped her connect with the music team. Her first contribution absolutely rocked. Alma brought her business chops to the meeting (she runs a safety compliance company for the oil industry, based in North Dakota), delivering a PowerPoint presentation showing what the group could do to develop and implement a multi-year strategy. The slides addressed music’s multiple roles in supporting Braver Angels’ mission, details for a short-term plan, key questions to spur further programs, and more. Impressed by the rigor of Alma’s thinking and the professionalism of her presentation, the team went all in, adopting her proposals and starting to put them into play.
The team – roughly 10 Braver Angels – is now organized so that each person has a key responsibility. For instance, John Carroll is working to build a virtual community of Braver Angels’ songwriters and co-leads the SongSquare program where members work to write and share music that can open up new space for dialog. Others are charged with looking at “event enrichment” – that is, how music can create new levels of engagement at other BA events.
For her part, Alma is working to leverage pop culture, including hip-hop, and leaning into finding and partnering with established arts influencers “because of the cultural weight they hold,” she explains.
Micah describes the team’s support of the Braver Politics initiative and talks about opportunities to use music to enable politicians to connect across the aisle. “A lot of folks at policy levels are also musicians. There’s a lot of potential for unlikely connections that could lead to creative compromise on some intractable issues.” He muses about starting a regular open mic night on Capitol Hill. “We need to find out if something like that is even possible. We’ve got to use different ways to find the connective tissue.”
The music team is also applying for grants to support its work and is hopeful it will soon land funding from prominent arts foundations and other non-profits.
But like so many of their Braver Angels colleagues, Micah and Alma have far more on their plates than they have time for. Although they already have Peter Yarrow and Becca Stevens representing the music group, they would love to add at least one more celebrity ambassador (suggestions welcomed). They want to find their stride with the Artist of the Month initiative (nominations welcomed!) [watch our full-length interview with Alvin Garrett, November’s Artist of the Month.] And they know they face a perennial challenge in trying to recruit more Red musicians. There’s also the need to reach out to related communities, such as those centered on Christian rock, gospel, blues, and country. In short, there is plenty still to do.
Which is where other members can step up. That’s you! If you’re a musician – or just a music lover or even an occasional concert-goer – contact the team at music@braverangels.org.
Lend your voice and your energies and your contacts to Braver Angels’ music initiatives. Sing your truth!
