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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: Humanity and the Importance of Jazz

Posted January 18th, 2011 by Gregory Thomas in Jazz Culture
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Other than the incontrovertible fact that in the 20th century Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the most significant voices for moral courage in action whose leadership guided a movement for civil rights and human justice, what I love about Dr. King is the manner in which he combined his native cultural traditions with deep study of theology and philosophy and transmuted them into a powerful praxis.

So it should be no surprise, then, that he was able to eloquently describe the meaning of the blues and jazz in relation to both the particular agon, struggle, for civil rights in the U.S. as well as the universal struggle of "modern man." 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Opening speech at the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival

Humanity and the Importance of Jazz

"God has brought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create - and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations. Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

This is triumphant music.

Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of "racial identity" as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down. And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.

In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these."

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not trying to rain on anyone's parade

Posted January 18th, 2011 by kirby mott

 

according to this wikipedia entry here...

 

Boston University, where King got his Ph.D. in systematic theology, conducted an investigation that found he plagiarized major portions of his doctoral thesis from various other authors who wrote about the topic.[3][4]

 

 

 

 

According to civil rights historian

 

 

 

Ralph E. Luker, who worked on the King Papers Project directing the research on King's early life, King's paper The Chief Characteristics and Doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism[5] was taken almost entirely from secondary sources.[6] He writes:

Moreover, the farther King went in his academic career, the more deeply ingrained the patterns of borrowing language without clear attribution became. Thus, the plagiarism in his dissertation seemed to be, by then, the product of his long-established practice.[6]

Boston University decided not to revoke his doctorate, saying that although King acted improperly, his dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship." However, a letter is now attached to King's dissertation in the university library, noting that numerous passages were included without the appropriate quotations and citations of sources.[7][1]

 

 

 

 

Ralph Luker has questioned whether King's professors at the Crozer Theological Seminary held him to lower standards because he was an African-American, citing as evidence the fact that King received lower marks (a C+ average) at the historically black Morehouse College than at Crozer, where he was a minority being graded mostly by white teachers and received an A- average.[6][8] Boston University has denied that King received any special treatment.[1]

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Amen.

Posted January 18th, 2011 by Shikha Sabharwal

Some mornings, I wake up, and think to myself, "Thank God for music."  Seriously, I don't know what I'd do without it.

If you'd like, check out this passage from "Sonny's Blues" (James Baldwin) - if you haven't yet, or forgot about it and would like to again.integrallife.com/member/shikha-sabharwal/blog/passage-baldwins-sonnys-blues

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universal via personal

Posted January 18th, 2011 by Kerry Dugan

 

I have nothing to add to the succinct clarity of the post and the speech, but will share stories…

In the spirit of “returning to [my] roots to affirm that which [is] stirring in [my] soul…”, I’m, again, compelled to let the lens of social fabric shape my relating to questions.

I find the message imparted here by Dr. King to be reflected in the personal associations of my own life.

Such as: for several years I had a business partner, Jim Coleman, who had been a bodyguard for MLK. He’d say things like, “If everyone in the world could of shaken Dr. King’s hand, this world would be a very different place”. He’d recall a time when his grandfather ran a ‘still’ providing liquor to Mama’s, in New Orleans, where he got see Luis Armstrong. Jim was 12 the first time he walked into the club, when Mama lifted him up, sitting him on the bar, saying, “Don’t nobody touch my white nigger”.

The trajectory of jazz culture and civil rights was inadvertently lived by Jim, whose best friend since they were both toddlers, was Charlie, a towering black man who, honoring their inseparability, insisted that if he were hired as bodyguard, they’d have to hire Jim too.

…..

The roots we return to are not only those aspects of intimate inheritance flowing from unique pasts, but reach toward us in the blessed experiment of moral orientation and the way we ourselves fill the space between chance and change.

Come Spring the jazz musician I’ve spent the most time with (taking his workshops), Karl Berger, will hold a symposium (http://arborville.com?page_id=81 )and finish a residency at The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. In ‘71, along with Ornette Coleman, Karl founded the Creative Music Studio. The focus of CMS is research into what is universal in music.

Not only is there no end to the value and relevance of music, but we may well be at the beginnings of discovering its true or potential centrality to our general evolution.

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the power of music

Posted January 19th, 2011 by stefano

At ISE2 I found myself, for the first time, standing up with a crowd of people together chanting blessings to the world. It had an impact on me I've never felt before;  Integral became alive for me, a soft fullness in my chest. What you're writing takes me back to that moment.

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Powerful Memories

Posted January 19th, 2011 by Mary Linda Landauer

Hi Greg, I just returned from New Orleans, the city of my birth. Everytime I step back into this city and walk the streets and hear the jazz being played, a memory of being in the cotton fields with some of the most beautiful voices come into my heart.

I was born about ten years before Martin Luther King's great voice began to sound its powerful awakening to the racial climate. One day, I was about five years old, and living at my grandparents home; Rose a beautiful black women who kept me often as a little girl, took me into the fields with her where many were picking cotton for my grandparents. She let me share her sack to help pick the cotton. They were some of the happiest people, contrasting the painful enviornment within my grandparents home. Being a senitive child this confused me. Inside my grandparents home where there was so much hate and pain, and where they blamed so much on the black community. Yet, here I was in a field of some of the most loving and beautiful people, and who helped me feel so much safer and loved. This particular day they began singing; the songs were mostly jazzy and upbeat. I remember watching them through the rows dancing and laughing and they would take me by the hand and dance with me.

This music filled their hearts and kept them from living the hate so heated at that time. It also helped me, at that tender age, to start having deeper understandings....what someone says is little compared to what someone does. Actions speak much louder than words.....And when these actions are inspired through music, the soul hears those sounds and helps us to not bring the hatred and anger into the world, created through ignorance or others. Music indeed vibrates a sound that the soul reconizes and helps to heal wounds, otherwise, that might continue to wreck havoc on the world.

Thanks Greg,

With love,

Mary Linda

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Great post and a suggested reference if you want follow up

Posted January 21st, 2011 by Sergej Van Midd...

Hi Gregory,

Thank you for posting this. An inspiring speech about a subject close to my heart and soul.

The idea of jazz being at the core of the identity of black people, and being exported as it reflects universal struggles and values was nicely captured by Paul Austerlitz in his book

Austerlitz, P. (2005). Jazz consciousness: Music, race, and humanity. Middletown, CN: Wesleyan University Press. 

 

I suggest it to anyone who would want to follow up on this post with more reading. (That's if you, like me, don't play an instrument ;-)

Cheers, Sergej

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Martin Luther king

Posted January 29th, 2011 by gareth davies

 

Gregory,
Sorry it took so long to respond. I was moved by the word of Martin Luther King a few times.
recently read,
 To put it in Badiou’s terms, King followed the “axiom of equality” well beyond the single topic of racial segregation; he was campaigning on anti poverty and anti war issues at the time of his death.  He had spoken out against the Vietnam War and when he was killed in Memphis in April 1968 he was there in support of striking sanitation workers. As Melissa Harris-Lacewell put it,
“Following King meant following the unpopular road, not the popular one.”
Saw the movie When We Were Kings" last night and it was good to see Ali and Malcolm X in some old footage.
Now of course King is remembered for his speech I have a dream which is very different than today’s fantasies…even in Canada the right wing is divided and the inequality between the rich and the poor is growing…king knew that economic slavery is slavery…while the left has fought for many personal permission the elite/rich have expanded their wealth beyond my limited imagination…a billion is a lot of zeroes. 
What i like about jazz is it doesn't seem to have an agenda and i like how King describes it as the sound of the city.            
trust your well
gareth

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I really enjoyed this post

Posted February 16th, 2011 by Jenelle Wright

To borrow a quote from an author unknown, "Music is what feelings sound like"...

When i think of Jazz, I refer back to when the Africans were brought into a world strange to them, to work for people who look just like them, to assimilate into a culture that was unlike their own. But, with this adaptation to the Western world came a language that was felt and understood by every slave; a language that got them through their arduous days and nights; a language with so much feeling words alone would not be able to grasps its meaning to its entirety. Music was their language, their form of communication that often times would be a code for secret meetings and the like. These spirituals ("...African imagination pitched to an American key", stated by Mr. Marsalis), even when sang today drives one to tap their feet, sway their heads and clapped their hands to the rhythm. It is so intimate and emotional you cant help but experience the composers feelings. Not only are you understanding what they are going through, but you are living it! Their cries, their hollering, the moans and groans of the people are felt. Words are not always needed to convey meaning. Jazz is just like this with its vocal improvisation (scatting). And when an instrument is being played, the musician and their instrument are one. Such passion is displayed and the listener becomes uncontrollably excited and a trance like state might ensue. It may be akin to catching the Holy Ghost in church. Jazz is expression of the soul, its who we are, its our identity. 

I wholeheartedly agree with you when you stated that "it has calmed us with harmonies when spirits were down". While reading that sentence i thought of a Bob Marley lyric that said "one good thing about music, when it hits you you feel no pain"; this is true with jazz and limited amount of other musical genres. Thats why it saddens me to listen to some of the Rhythm & Blues and rap music of today. It just does not capture the essence of what REAL music is.

Music is essential for completeness. Music is Integral to life.