Keep On Pushing-- The 48th Anniversary Of The March On Washington

I knew my old pal Denise Sullivan has been working on a book about Black music as a part of political expression in America and I knew she's been working on it for at least 4 or 5 years. So when I got an invitation for a book signing in Santa Monica yesterday, I was really happy for her and decided to take the hour drive out there. On the way I was listening to public radio and they were interviewing Vincent Harding, historian, long time civil rights activist and Martin Luther King comrade-in-arms. What a coincidence, I thought! He even talked, eloquently, about the role of creativity, especially music-- and particularly Kumbaya-- in the push for equality. I got there early and told Denise, who explained why it wasn't a coincidence at all. Yetsreday was the 48th anniversary of the March of Washington. She planned her book release for that day. Later she read from it, Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music From Blues to Hip Hop:

More than half a century passed since the bus rides, the sit ins, and the marches for voting rights, desegregation, jobs, and peace. Perhaps the civil rights movement, Black Power, women’s liberation, and gay rights sound like causes from another dimension. They are not. People all over the world await deliverance from violations of their civil liberties and human rights, including right here in the land of liberty. War, poverty, and racism are still with us, and it’s expected they will be as long as the interests of a few trump the survival needs of the many. Today we must add environmental blight to the list of concerns confounding today’s truth speakers, justice seekers, and freedom singers. And yet, there exists no one effective, organized mass movement of people, marching and singing their way to solutions toward freedom and equality.

“There’s no clear thought being exercised right now in the American public,” says John Trudell, musician, poet, Voice of Alcatraz, and former leader of the American Indian Movement. “They’re allowing the insanity of the leaders to make decisions that really are not in the best interest of the public, they’re not in the best interest of the children of the public, they’re not in the best interest of the grandchildren of the public, they’re not in the best interest of the Earth, they’ve not in the best interest of anyone.”

The number of writers delivering unfiltered news in the form of a song are few compared to the explosion of bands and singers in the world today-- more than at any other time in history. For the musicians for whom art and progress are inseparable, there is always work to be done. Buffy Sainte-Marie, Yoko Ono, and Richie Havens are still singing for peace. Tom Morello and Wayne Kramer stand on the frontlines of a progressive alliance based on shared musical and political concerns. Chuck D and Archie Shepp forged a similar cross-generational alliance when they collaborated on a track for Shepp’s album. In 2007, Ornette Coleman won the Pulitzer Prize in music for his album Sound Grammar, a culmination of his work combining free expression of the mind, body, and spirit through music. “People don’t realize it, but there is a real folklore music in jazz. It’s neither black nor white, it’s the mixture of the races and folklore has come from it,” he writes in his Harmolodic Manifesto.

“Now that I am older I realize I can’t change the world, but I still believe that if anyone can, it is the artist,” said Nina Simone before her death in 2003. “It is always through art that society changes-- not politics or even education. Art, and music especially, speaks to people more than government and education. Why do you think great nations have patronage for their artists?”

In the course of writing this story, I had hoped I would find the exact time, place, and forces within the whirlpool of American history that drown out the voices of protest as time marched on. Instead I found songs, and more songs, waiting for another turn to be sung.

I'm so proud of Denise for writing such a wonderful book, for keeping hope alive... At that point Peter Case, Denise's husband, and Phranc, a longtime friend and folksinger, got up and sang some songs. They sounded so good! One was an adaptation of the great 1931 Florence Reece labor classic, "Which Side Are You On?" Peter had updated some of the lyrics for the occasion. I jotted down a couple of verses:

Ye centrist politicians
Whose reason shines a light
What will you do the center moved
Now you're voting on the right

...Obama in the White House
And Congress drinkin' tea
But I wonder who in Washington
Is representing you and me