Patricia Costa Kim – And The People Cry Justice!

This blog post will meander a bit. It starts with the memory of an album of a local Brooklyn artist that my father had when I was young. The singer was Patricia Costa (shortened from Costagliola) and the album I remember was called “Give Your Love Away.” I actually remember distinctly only one of the songs on the album, which I particularly liked. The song’s title was “And The People Cry Justice” and if I remember correctly, the lyrics of the chorus were:

And the people cry “Justice,

Let there be justice for all!”

Every nation shall be blessed

For in God alone is righteousness

Bring forth the fruit of his promises

With justice

justice for all!

I’ve thought of the song from time to time, and thought that it might be one that could be introduced in my church, perhaps. But the album was never a hit, and having been released as an LP, even if I still had it, I no longer have a means of playing vinyl records.

As the song came to mind recently, I looked around online, and found that Pat Costa came into the public eye relatively recently, as a rather cheesy song from a band Sonseed in which she played keyboard and sang in, “Jesus is a Friend of Mine,” featured on the TV show Glee. (As a science fiction fan, it is obligatory that I also mention that a parody video resulted, “Vader is a Friend of Mine”).

Further searching led to me discover that Patricia Costa Kim, as she was known later, went into music education, studying and perhaps also teaching at the University of Washington. And coming full circle, those who have access to JSTOR will find that she wrote a number of articles, including one on “Transmission of Music in the Hebrew Tradition: Learning from the Songs of the Synagogue” published in The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education.

I then discovered that, sadly, she passed away very recently, apparently after a long battle with brain cancer.

If anyone has the album I mentioned early in this post, and would be willing to convert it into a format I could listen to, I would be most grateful. I would love to hear it again, and would love to share the song “And The People Cry Justice!” with my church.