{"id":1047,"date":"2018-01-29T01:00:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T05:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=1047"},"modified":"2020-01-19T15:09:24","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T19:09:24","slug":"music-of-hope-in-action-a-meditation-for-martin-luther-king-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2018\/01\/29\/music-of-hope-in-action-a-meditation-for-martin-luther-king-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Music of Hope in Action (a meditation for Martin Luther King Day)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the text of a talk I gave on January 21st, 2018 at All Souls Interfaith Gathering’s Music and Spirit service.\u00a0 The service also included performances of the music discussed in the talk.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

In an issue published in late November 2016, the New Yorker magazine featured a series of essays by a range of writers and thinkers on the recent presidential elections and the feeling of hopelessness that they brought to many Americans. The contribution by the writer Junot Diaz was an essay titled \u2018Under President Trump, Radical Hope Is Our Best Weapon.\u2019\u00a0<\/a>In the essay, Diaz wrote that hope is \u2018not so much something you have, but something you practice.\u2019 Diaz acknowledged that one his sources for this idea is work of the philosopher Jonathan Lear and his book Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation<\/em><\/a>. In the book, Lear refers to the experiences of the Native American Crow nation after they were confined to a reservation, and writes that they had to \u2018imagine for themselves a very different future than the one that was their current reality.\u2019 Lear defines radical hope as being \u2018directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is.\u2019 This kind of hope, Lear says, is fueled by \u2018imaginative excellence\u2019.<\/p>\n

Lear spends much of Radical Hope<\/em> reflecting on the life and sayings of Plenty Coups, the last great chief of the Native American Crow nation, who lived from 1848 to 1932. Lear\u2019s reflections draw on an account of the chief by a Montana \u2018trapper, hunter and cowboy\u2019 named Frank Linderman, who spent time with the chief in the late 19th century. In Linderman\u2019s account, Plenty Coups gives the following description of the time when the Crow were confined to a reservation: \u201c \u2018when the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this, nothing happened. There was little singing anywhere. Besides,\u2019 he added sorrowfully, \u2018you know that part of my life as well as I do.\u2018 \u201c<\/p>\n

Lear notes that at first, this quote seems to imply that the reservation was a place where the Crow people lost all sense of selfhood and even all sense of time moving forward. He also notes that the Crow were no strangers to the threat of cultural devastation, as they were confined by the U.S. government to an increasingly small geographic area after having lived under the constant threat of being conquered by their traditional enemies, the Sioux nation. Lear notes with particular interest that the chief describes early reservation years as the period when \u2018nothing happened\u2019, and yet, during this time, \u2018there was a kind of enthusiasm in [the chief\u2019s] activity that belies this interpretation.\u2019 During the time that the Crow were first confined to the reservation, Plenty Coups \u2018avidly took up farming life\u2019, defended the rights of the Crow during several trips to Washington, donated his own home to a state park as a monument and \u2018encouraged young Crow to be open to the white man\u2019s education and even their religion.\u2019<\/p>\n

For the chief to have led such an active life during a period when his people were under the threat of cultural devastation is a phenomenon Lear describes as \u2018radical hope\u2019. Plenty Coups\u2019 activity during his people\u2019s time of confinement re-imagined his own culture\u2019s definition of courage. Lear\u2019s research indicated that the Crow\u2019s definition of courage had previously centered on various battle rituals they used to defend their land, such as the the \u2018coup stick\u2019 which a Crow warrior used to define his territory before engaging with a warrior from another tribe. In Lear\u2019s analysis, Plenty Coups widened his culture\u2019s definition of courage to include acts in the arenas of politics, modern agriculture and cross-cultural dialogue. This new definition abandoned the struggle to return to an idealized past, and instead chose to work toward a future that could not yet be fully comprehended. It is significant that many of the acts with which Lear says the chief redefined courage showed an acute concern for the well-being of future generations.<\/p>\n

Lear explains that Plenty Coups\u2019 radical hope originated in a dream he had at the age of nine. As a young boy, the future chief dreamed that he was accompanied by a buffalo who changed into a man, and with whom he watched \u2018bulls and cows and calves without number\u2019 scatter across the plains.\u2019 His companion in the dream then pointed out \u2018the lodge of the Chickadee\u2019 and advised him on how to be a \u2018Chickadee-person\u2019. (Lear also adds that the Chickadee has great significance for the Crow people, as many of them claim to have heard messages from the bird.) The chief\u2019s dream companion explained that a \u2018Chickadee person\u2019 \u2018never intrudes, never speaks in strange company, and yet never misses a chance to learn from others. He gains successes and avoids failure by learning how others succeeded or failed.\u2019 Lear writes that while some dreams can be a denial of reality, the chief\u2019s boyhood dream was the kind which responds to reality by expressing communal anxiety and communal wishes. \u2018The radical hope that Plenty Coups\u2018 dream generated.\u2019 Lear writes, \u2018was itself a manifestation of imaginative excellence. It enabled the tribe to face its future courageously – at a time when the traditional understanding of courage was becoming unlivable.\u2018<\/p>\n

Lear\u2019s reflections on Plenty Coups\u2018 life and thinking bring to mind a number of pieces of music from the jazz tradition which, for me, embody the concept of radical hope. As I write this close to Martin Luther King Day, I think first of all of two pieces, \u2018Alabama\u2019 by John Coltrane<\/a> and \u2018I Have A Dream\u2019 by Herbie Hancock<\/a>. In these two pieces, the composers reacted to catastrophic events by finding the music in King\u2019s words, and in the process also moved beyond their typical range of musical influences. I also find the concept of radical hope embodied in the song \u2018I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free\u2019, a composition by jazz pianist Billy Taylor which became an anthem in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and was by some accounts a favorite song of Dr. King\u2019s.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 15th, 1963, four young girls were killed when the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. At a funeral for three of the four girls, Dr. Martin Luther King gave a eulogy which is now acknowledged to be a turning point in the civil rights movement.\u00a0 Both the text<\/a> and the audio<\/a> of King’s eulogy are available online.\u00a0 After a shamefully long interval, one suspect in the bombing was finally convicted in 1977. Two more suspects were brought to justice in 2001 and 2002 by attorney Doug Jones, who recently became Alabama\u2019s newest Senator. At the time of the bombings, saxophonist and composer John Coltrane was of course cognizant of the events as a native of a Southern state and a socially conscious individual. Where I believe Coltrane showed what Lear would call \u2018imaginative excellence\u2019 was in the way he responded to this tragic event by widening the compass of his musical thinking.<\/p>\n

In 1963, Coltrane was still riding the wave of popularity that had begun with his 1961 recording of \u2018My Favorite Things\u2019<\/a>. From the beginning of his career as a bandleader, Coltrane drew his musical repertoire from sources typical for jazz players: compositions by the major figures in the jazz and popular song worlds (such as the Richard Rodgers tune which he so powerfully reshaped.) To these tunes Coltrane gradually began to add compositions of his own, some of which were re-workings of tunes he had played in his career as a sideman, like \u2018Impressions\u2018 (based on Miles Davis\u2019 \u2018So What\u2019) and \u2018Countdown\u2019 (based on Eddie Vinson\u2019s \u2018Tune Up\u2019.) Coltrane had also begun to explore world music on recordings such as Africa\/Brass. For me, all these examples suggest that up until the early 1960s, the most evident sources of inspiration for Coltrane\u2019s work had come from inside the world of music and musicians.<\/p>\n

In the liner notes to one of his best known works, the 1964 album \u2018A Love Supreme\u2019, Coltrane described a major life change he had undergone some years earlier. \u2018During the year 1957,\u2019 he wrote, \u2018I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.\u2019<\/p>\n

Just as Lear theorizes that it was the great Crow chief\u2019s vision as a young boy which made it possible for him to respond to his tribe\u2019s catastrophic displacement with courageous acts of radical hope, it seems possible that Coltrane\u2019s spiritual awakening laid the groundwork for his piece \u2018Alabama\u2019, in which he was able to respond ingeniously to the Birmingham catastrophe by drawing on a source of inspiration quite different from those he had pursued up to that time. The recent documentary \u2018Chasing Trane\u2019 claims Coltrane told pianist McCoy Tyner that the melodic line of \u2018Alabama\u2019 is a musical interpretation of Dr. King\u2019s eulogy. Scholars of Coltrane\u2019s music are divided on whether the connection between Coltrane\u2019s notes and King\u2019s words is abstract or literal. One radio documentary, \u2018Tell Me How Long Trane\u2019s Been Gone\u2019, goes as far as to superimpose excerpts from King\u2019s speech over Coltrane\u2019s saxophone playing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The documentary (viewed together with the lyrics displayed in the YouTube video accompanying it) suggests that there is a close parallel in the opening of Coltrane\u2019s melodic line to a sentence found near the beginning of King’s eulogy: \u2018These children, unoffending, innocent and beautiful, were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.\u201d The documentary also suggests that Coltrane makes a more abstract musical translation of the following excerpts from King\u2019s text: \u201cAnd so, my friends, they did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil…The death of these children may lead our whole Southland from the low road of man\u2019s inhumanity to man to the high road of peace and brotherhood…\u201d King closes by saying: \u201cas I stand over the remains of these beautiful, darling girls I paraphrase the words of Shakespeare \u2018good night, sweet princesses, good night, those who symbolize a new day…may the flight of angels take thee to thy eternal rest.\u201d The documentary suggests another literal connection between this last phrase of King\u2019s and a repeated motive in Coltrane\u2019s piece. I also hear an echo of \u2018good night, sweet princesses, good night\u2019 in Coltrane\u2019s closing section.<\/p>\n

In his memoir \u2018Possibilities\u2019, pianist and composer Herbie Hancock writes: \u2018Like most black Americans, I was shattered by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April of 1968 and Bobby Kennedy two months later…Yet although I\u2019d been emotionally involved in the civil rights movement, until now I\u2019d never made any overt moves to get involved in it.\u2019 He then goes on to explain that \u2018most of the songs\u2019 on his album The Prisoner, recorded a year after King\u2019s death, \u2018were about Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019<\/p>\n

For me, Hancock\u2019s composition \u2018I Have A Dream\u2019, the first track on The Prisoner, is a musical parallel to Junot Diaz\u2019 idea of hope being \u2018not something you have, but something you practice.\u2018 Rather than set King\u2019s iconic phrase \u2018I have a dream today!\u2019 with just one set of notes and harmonies, Hancock uses it as the basis of what music theorists call a development section, where the initial six-note motive is not repeated exactly but transformed musically in a number of different ways. The resulting musical journey suggests to me that a truly hopeful person does not simply repeat an idea (like the baby bird in the children\u2019s book \u2018Are You My Mother?\u2019<\/a>), but carries that idea into many different contexts where it undergoes fundamental change and yet maintains its essential structure. It is also significant that Hancock eulogizes King not with a harmonious anthem, but with a piece that alternates sections of placid yet unsettled harmony with more dissonant sections, a vivid portrayal of the tumultuous period that followed King\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the \u2018Alabama\u2019 and \u2018I Have A Dream\u2019, both of which are text-driven instrumental pieces, Billy Taylor\u2019s composition \u2018I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free\u2019 was first recorded by Taylor in 1964 as a funky, uptempo instrumental piece<\/a>, but had its greatest impact four years later when it was recorded by Nina Simone<\/a>, who sang the lyrics by Taylor and Dick Dallas.\u00a0 Simone often performed the tune live, including in a spellbinding version from the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival<\/a> which showcases her underappreciated piano chops; I’m also a fan of this version by Taylor with his trio in the 1980s.<\/a>\u00a0 In an interview with journalist Marc Myers<\/a>, Taylor mentioned that his daughter \u2018came home from school one day singing a spiritual. But she didn\u2019t really know what it was and didn’t have the proper feel behind it.\u2019 Taylor told his daughter: ” \u2018Kim, this is a part of your heritage. You can\u2019t be singing a spiritual like that. You have to have more feeling.. I sat down at the piano and said, \u2018The spiritual is so much a part of our tradition that I can sit here and make one up on the spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor told Myers that the title came from the melody, because he thought lyrically when composing, but he also describes the tune as \u2018taking fifteen minutes to write and a year and a co-writer to finish.\u2019 This was because, as Taylor says, \u2018I struggled with the lyrics\u2026 My words weren’t saying what I wanted the song to say. Dick helped me finish the lyrics.\u2019
\nTaylor and Dallas\u2019 lyrics provide a concise and powerful description of a radical hope which is, as Jonathan Lear puts it, \u2018directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is.\u2019 They do not say simply \u2018I Wish I Felt Free\u2019. They do not convey the sense of certainty found in songs like \u2018Down By The Riverside\u2019 or \u2018When The Saints Go Marching In\u2019 that the stated goals, the laying down of swords and shields, the joining of the heavenly band, will definitely come to pass in some yet-to-be-revealed way. One wonders if this was the kind of simplicity that Taylor heard in his daughter\u2019s after-school spiritual and sought to remedy with his own tune. He told Myers: \u2018Spirituals suggest things about who we are and what we\u2019re about and what we long for.\u2018 I read this as Taylor stating the values he thought spirituals ought to convey. I would argue that in this quote Taylor is rejecting the idea that spirituals can do more than simply project ancient scriptural imagery into an idealized future: they can and should also speak about the identity and aspirations of living people and their struggles in the present moment, as his song certainly did in the 1960s and still does today.<\/p>\n

Taylor\u2019s tune has become a standard, interpreted recently by artists including the Tedeschi\/Trucks Band<\/a> and John Legend<\/a>.\u00a0 Dallas and Taylor\u2019s choice of the word \u2018would\u2019 \u2013 \u2018I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel\u2019 \u2013 implies, to my ear, an admission which is unusual in the world of hymn texts: that the goals being stated are far from being achieved. When the lyrics are combined with Taylor\u2019s triumphant and swinging music, however, the overall message of the song goes beyond simply acknowledging unrealized potential. It does not merely evoke future possibilities in a symbolic way, it states that there is a future goodness that transcends our current ability to understand what it is, if only we can find the means, the bridges, the portals, the teachable moments that will make that possible goodness a reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the text of a talk I gave on January 21st, 2018 at All Souls Interfaith Gathering’s Music and Spirit service.\u00a0 The service also included performances of the music discussed in the talk.\u00a0 In an issue published in late … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1476,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}