Yo-Yo Ma releasing a single with a drag queen and an indigenous artist about the melting of an Alaska glacier was definitely not something I had on my 2023 bingo card. But along with indigenous and trans musician Quinn Christopherson, the cellist collaborated with drag queen and environmentalist Pattie Gonia in the recent single “Won’t Give Up”. The trio’s song is one of hope and aims to counter the climate despair many feel while also being broad enough to speak enough on many different social issues.
“Won’t Give Up” By Pattie Gonia, Quinn Christopherson, and Yo-Yo Ma can be streamed anywhere you listen to music. The music video, featured below, was filmed in Alaska’s Kenai Fjords National Park, where Exit Glacier and many others are melting and all but gone now, and features outfits from Lisa Jiang, a sustainable designer who took a zero waste approach to her role in the project. The harmonies between Pattie Gonia and Christopherson draw you into the song while Ma’s harmonics are ethereal, beautiful, and a bit haunting. As Nate Sloan, a USC musicologist, said about Ma’s performance in the song: “[the cello’s] tension to me captures something about the subject of this song, which is preserving this beautiful planet we live on while acknowledging how delicate and fragile it is and how quickly it’s being threatened.”
And that’s exactly what Ma seems to have wanted audiences to take away from the song, particularly the cello pieces. He told Atmos in an interview that he wanted to capture the voice of the glaciers “… and the great depth of it, something ancient and present, urgent”. Queer site Them reports that song actually started with Ma, who initially reached out to Pattie Gonia to collaborate on his ongoing project, “Our Common Nature”. Ma’s website describes the project as “… a cultural journey, a celebration of the ways nature can reinvigorate the human experiment, reuniting us in pursuit of a common future.”
The song may bring together an unlikely trio but “Won’t Give Up” is an utterly beautiful song that grabs your soul and does not let go. Do yourself a favor and listen now.
Featured photo by William Woodward; Copyright: © 2023 William Woodward William Woodward Photography LLC
