"Lee's Lament"

ama8a · 2.6 Lee's Lament

Lee's Lament was first composed as a score for a short film by Nathan Forbush. The film was entered in Kanab's guerrilla film-making competition, Little Hollywood Shootout and won 1st place in it's category.
I later took the score from the film short and adapted it to the Grand River Anthology project. It became Lee's Lament, a piece about the brutality of a different September 11th attack than the once we're familiar with today. This one happened over 150 years ago:
“On September 11, 1857, some 50 to 60 local militiamen in southern Utah, aided by some American indian[s], massacred about 120 emigrants who were traveling by wagon to California. The horrific crime, which spared only 17 children age six and under, occurred in a highland valley called the Mountain Meadows, roughly 35 miles southwest of Cedar City. The victims, most of them from Arkansas, were on their way to California with dreams of a bright future” (Richard E. Turley Jr., “The Mountain Meadows Massacre,” Ensign, Sept. 2007).

​Click to read more on lds.org.

* The Grand River Anthology is a 4 part musical history of the Colorado Plateau blending symphonic, electronic and bluegrass genres.  Ama8a is my Soundcloud username.