How Art Can Double as Historical Corrective

Alicia Hall Moran moved across the stage at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium in late March, her mezzo-soprano carrying across the sold-out venue of almost 3,000. Supported by her husband, the MacArthur-winning jazz pianist Jason Moran, and by the Harlem Chamber Players orchestra, she unspooled an original song in dreamlike tones: “You don’t need me to tell you / All the things that one can do / In sunny California.”

Titled “,” the piece might well refer to Hall Moran’s own family history: Many of her relatives, including her great-uncle , the famed composer and arranger, moved to California in the early 1900s, escaping the racial hostilities of the South. But in Los Angeles, even as they prospered, they found something less than total freedom. So “Believe Me” ends on an ambiguous note, suggesting an odyssey still ongoing: “All the things we didn’t say / All the things we did not do / We just kept on walking.”