LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Clovice A. Lewis Jr., the well-known local composer, music teacher and cellist is creating a new large work.

“Harlem Voices” is a musical under development that is set in the 1920s that explores present-day issues of racism, LGBTQ issues, inept leadership, African-American military service in WWI, and racial profiling (among many other issues).

It is about a brilliant young black vocalist who was traumatized by the Rosewood, Fla., massacre of her family members by the KKK during the first week of January in 1923. She is conflicted by falling in love with a white patron of the racially segregated club where she works in Harlem called the Black Jay Club.

Lewis said of “Harlem Voices”, “I will be perfectly honest... it was inspired by the new president of the United States. I am alarmed by the recent rise of the KKK, White Supremacists, and Nazis who feel emboldened by this new administration. I wanted to express how I feel in a way that is educational, unapologetic, and uplifting. ‘Harlem Voices’ presents views of racism from different perspectives. So I set the story of Harlem Voices in the 1920s era because there are so many interesting correlations between that time and now. It is a story about the lives and loves of people who work in a strictly segregated speakeasy called the Black Jay Club during prohibition.”

Lewis is presently seeking funding to complete the musical, which is approximately one quarter of the way finished. He is writing the “book” (play), libretto, and music... the entire creative product.

Go to www.harlemvoicesmusical.weebly.com for more information about the piece.

Interested contributors can donate to the creation of “Harlem Voices” via Hatchfund, a nonprofit crowdfunding platform designed to promote artists, not products. Learn more and donate at: https://www.hatchfund.org/project/harlem_voices.

You can also go to www.jazzicalmusic.com to see a complete catalog with mp3 recordings, scores and parts of the more than 150 pieces Lewis has composed.

The campaign is live now, and runs through Thursday, Dec. 28.

And unlike most crowdfunding campaigns, donations to “Harlem Voices” are actually donations, meaning they are 100-percent tax-deductible.