Black Music Sunday is a weekly sequence highlighting all issues Black music, with over 245 tales overlaying performers, genres, historical past, and extra, every that includes its personal vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll discover some acquainted tunes and maybe an introduction to one thing new.
Throughout the nation on Monday, Individuals will have a good time the federal and state vacation held in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—and folks will collect to place his rules into observe. As The King Heart introduced:
Our strategic theme for 2025 is ‘Mission Doable: Defending Freedom, Justice, and Democracy within the Spirit of Nonviolence365′. This theme defines the 2025 King Vacation Observance occasions and programming whereas serving as a compass for all of the work we are going to do that upcoming calendar yr and past. The pioneering work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrated that Kingian Nonviolence (Nonviolence365™) is the sustainable answer to injustice and violence in our world, finally resulting in the creation of the Beloved Group, the place injustice ceases, and love prevails.
In that spirit, allow us to elevate our voices in music and reward, and luxuriate in a musical soundtrack honoring King, the struggles we face, and the spirit of resistance he embodied.
One in every of my favourite vocal teams who embody activism is Candy Honey In The Rock. At Carnegie Corridor on in November 1987, the group carried out their interpretation of “Letter To Doctor Martin Luther King,” which was written by poet Sonia Sanchez. Sanchez initially printed it in her assortment “Homegirls & Hand Grenades” in 1984.
A Letter to Dr. Martin Luther King
As I level my face towards a brand new decade, Martin, I would like you to know that the nation nonetheless crowds the spirit. I would like you to know that we nonetheless hear your footsteps setting out on a highway cemented with black bones. I would like you to know that the stuttering of weapons couldn’t cease your mild from crashing towards cathedrals chanting piety whereas hustling the world.
Nice God, what a rustic, Martin!
[…]
Sitting on our previous, we watch the brand new decade dawning. These are unusual days, Martin, when the colour of freedom turns into disco fever; when cleaning soap operas populate our Zulu braids; because the world turns to the conservative proper and basic hospitals are closing in Black neighborhoods and the younger and the stressed are drugged by early morning reefer butts. And homes tremble.
These are harmful days, Martin, when cowboy-riding presidents corral Blacks (and others) in a standard crown of thorns; when nuclear-toting generals recite an alphabet of blood; when multinational firms assassinate historical cultures whereas inaugurating new civilizations. Come out come out, wherever you’re. Black nation. Ready to be born . .
[…]
Martin. I’ve discovered too that worry isn’t a Black man or lady. Worry can not disturb the size of those that battle towards materials beneficial properties for self-aggrandizement. Worry can not disturb the nice of people that have moved to a gathering place the place the heart beat kilos out freedom and justice for the universe.
Right here’s that 1987 efficiency:
Born out of Bernice Johnson-Reagon’s tenure within the SNCC Freedom Singers, Candy Honey In The Rock has no scarcity of songs to encourage us to maintain combating again—it doesn’t matter what. And we want that struggle again music greater than ever on this perilous time of Donald Trump and his racist minions.
We can not and won’t let anybody flip us round.
Meet the Resistance Revival Refrain, a collective of greater than 60 girls, and non-binary singers, who be a part of collectively to breathe pleasure and music into the resistance, and to uplift and heart girls’s voices.”
I’m positive you’ll be able to agree with the ladies of the RCC after they sing that “Everybody Deserves to Be Free.” Deva Mahal, (who occurs to be the daughter of blues icon Taj Mahal) takes the lead.
It may be tough to seek out pleasure nowadays. I hope this music, from one other tough time, helps.
From the Resistance Revival Refrain’ YouTube video notes:
This music is close to and pricey to our hearts and our mission. It involves us via the Black church from gospel music legend Shirley Caesar and we’re proud to supply our model at a time when pleasure and therapeutic are so wanted.Self-filmed throughout quarantine on the top of the pandemic, this video — directed by Geneva Peschka and edited by Maximilla Lukacs with animation by Jenny Scales — illustrates how our intrinsic particular person and collective pleasure can by no means be locked up, shut down or taken away, even throughout our darkest struggles.
A lot of our biggest jazz instrumentalists and composers had been impressed by King and the Civil Rights Motion.
Duke Ellington’s “King Fit The Battle of Alabam” is an instance. As Paul Devlin wrote for Slate in 2013:
Duke Ellington’s Tribute to Martin Luther King, 50 Years Later
In 1963, Duke Ellington directed and narrated My Individuals, a song-and-dance revue he wrote about African-American historical past, which was offered in Chicago as a part of the Century of Negro Progress Exposition. The album lastly grew to become accessible as soon as once more this previous September, 20 years after its final re-release. (The brand new model additionally has 15 extra tracks than earlier releases.)
The revue’s most putting music is a surprising tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “King Fit the Battle of Alabam.” Ellington, outraged by the actions of Bull Connor and the police in Birmingham, Ala., in April 1963, re-imagined King because the protagonist of “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho,” writing a robust, forward-looking salute not solely to King however to Birmingham’s brave black residents as properly. In Ellington’s music, considered one of Connor’s canines pulls “his Uncle Bull’s coat,” and says, “That baby acts like he don’t give a damn. Are you sure we’re still in Alabam?”
Right here’s “King Fit The Battle Of Alabam,” sung by The Irving Bunton Singers.
From Reminiscing In Tempo’s YouTube video notes:
Recorded at Common Studios in Chicago. August 20, 1963.Duke composed My Individuals for Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Celebration ‘A Century of Negro Progress Exposition’ and the flowery manufacturing ran from August 16 to September 2, 1963 within the Arie Crown Theater at Chicago’s McCormick Place.In 1963, Robert Morris was a younger undergraduate music main at DePaul College’s College of Music and a member of the Irving Bunton Singers. Duke appointed him arranger for all the choral music for My Individuals.
My Individuals was being carried out in Chicago…when the historic March on Washington occurred August 28, 1963 throughout which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the legendary “I Have a Dream” speech.
Jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane was deeply moved by King and the motion for civil rights, composing the highly effective piece “Alabama” within the wake of the lethal September 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church—or extra precisely, King’s speech that adopted.
[Pianist McCoy] Tyner informed jazz historian Ashley Kahn for his 2002 e book A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album the piece’s melodic line was derived from the rhythms of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. that Coltrane learn in a newspaper.
Right here is Coltrane’s full efficiency of “Alabama” on Ralph J. Gleason’s public tv sequence, “Jazz Casual.”
For these unfamiliar with King’s eulogy for the 4 little Black women killed within the assault, right here’s the audio.
From King’s “Eulogy for the Martyred Children”:
These kids — unoffending, harmless, and exquisite — had been the victims of one of the crucial vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated towards humanity.
And but they died nobly. They’re the martyred heroines of a holy campaign for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in an actual sense they’ve one thing to say to every of us of their loss of life. They’ve one thing to say to each minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the protected safety of stained-glass home windows. They’ve one thing to say to each politician [Audience:] (Yeah) who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They’ve one thing to say to a federal authorities that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. (Converse) They’ve one thing to say to each Negro (Yeah) who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty battle for justice. They are saying to every of us, black and white alike, that we should substitute braveness for warning. They are saying to us that we should be involved not merely about who murdered them, however in regards to the system, the lifestyle, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their loss of life says to us that we should work passionately and unrelentingly for the conclusion of the American dream.
Herbie Hancock’s “I Have A Dream” is the opening piece on his album “The Prisoner.” As music critic Derek Anderson wrote of the composition in 2020:
Dr. Martin Luther King’s well-known phrase I Have a Dream, lent its title to the album opener. It’s an formidable eleven minute epic, and was adopted by the title-track. Its composer, Herbie Hancock, defined that The Prisoner is about: “how black people have been imprisoned for a long time.” Firewater was meant to symbolise the duality of the oppressor and the oppressed. Hearth was meant to symbolise the warmth in violence in addition to the abuse of energy, whereas the sensation of water remembers Dr. Martin Luther King. He Who Lives In Worry refers to Dr King as he “had to live in an atmosphere charged with intimidation.” Herbie Hancock defined how Promise Of The Solar which closes the album symbolises: “how the sun promises life and freedom to all living things, and yet blacks are not yet free.”
Have a pay attention.
In relation to R&B, hip-hop, and rap, I by no means fail to be uplifted by John Legend and Frequent’s efficiency of their Oscar-winning music “Glory,” from the film “Selma.”
They teamed up for a socially distanced efficiency on the 2020 Democratic Nationwide Conference, which was held just about attributable to COVID-19.
Frequent additionally partnered with will i.am in 2006 to file “A Dream” for the movie “Freedom Writers.”
I’ve a very lengthy checklist of further musical tributes to MLK and the motion, and no extra space to incorporate them right here in as we speak’s story, so search for tons of bonus content material within the feedback.
Moreover, discover earlier tales about MLK and the Civil Rights Motion under.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. liked Black music and musicians liked him again
Black Music Sunday: Celebrating and honoring the reminiscence of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From Nina Simone to Buffalo Springfield (and past): When music turns into an anthem for a motion
The battle continues, however how are you planning to have a good time Dr. King’s day?
