"UNDERTONES" A New Music USA Commission is musical work by composer Ashby Anderson acknowledging Richmond's African Burial Grounds.The hour long work premiered April 3, 2015 marking the 150 year end to the civil war and slavery.

This symbolic work uses music to relieve the negative energy that still permeates the environment in Richmond Virginia regarding slavery and the civil war. This work seeks to foster knowledge and inspire discussion so that insight may be fully gained by those seeking to understand the historic truths evident in the soil of Richmond Virginia. The composition is divided in to four sections entitled. LEWA: A Call For The Ancestors, Seventh Journey, I AM THAT I AM and NO PARKING. The work in concept is developed though Anderson's interpretation of African derived systems of communication through Architecture, mathematics, symbols and aesthetics.

Contained in this album as a bonus track is a rearrangement of "The Devil's Half Acre" - a tone poem about the atrocities that occurred at the Lumpkins Slave Jail- just mere feet from the African Burial Grounds. The 10 minute performance of the Devil's Half Acre Bonus Track presented here was captured live during the rehearsal at Anderson's warehouse studio which he named the Muse Creative Workspace. This version was a prequel to Anderson's hour long composition entitled " Undertones: Aural Memorial for the African Burial Grounds which premiered in 2015

The first version of The Devil's Half Acre Bonus Track was published in 2006 as a movement of the Historic Richmond Jazz Suite which was composed, orchestrated and conducted by pianist Ashby Anderson and commissioned by Meet The Composer and the Jazz Composers Alliance Inc. The second version was commissioned for Civil War and Emancipation Day on April 6, 2013. This version has a narrative by Sekou Shabaka that poetically outlines these atrocities at different points in the composition. In this version Anderson has recomposed his work for a live performance without piano or drum set but with a sonic palette of african percussion, three trombones two trumpets, tenor saxophone, upright bass ,griot and conductor. The work was performed live by the 12 member Afrikan Arkestra on what remains of this historical site in RVA.