Hear the Dust Blow (2021) for solo harp recalls the devastating dust storms that destroyed dozens of towns in Oklahoma and Northern Texas, as depicted in John Steinbeck’s seminal 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Millions of people abandoned their homesteads and headed to California in what became the largest migration in American history. I have recast the old American folk song, “Down in the Valley,” and created music which alternates between a melancholy Dust Bowl lament and a celebration of a better life to come in the “promised land" of California.

 

© Michael Daugherty