Martin Luther King Jr.’s Leadership and the African American Musicology: A Perspective
Author : Swasti Sharma
Abstract :
African American music became an artistic expression of the experiences of slavery before the Civil War. The idiosyncratic music not only unveiled physical and mental harshness to which colored men and women in the deep South (especially) were subjected but also became a tool to counter and subvert oppression. Blues, as genre, emanated from a wide spectrum of folk songs that delineated and underscored numerous hardships faced by plantation workers who were dehumanised recurringly by the ‘white man’s burden’1. The harmonic series of symphonies belonging to the African origin were fused with European music styles to lay down the foundation of Jazz and Blues that characterised the period of Civil Rights Movement in the American history. Both became popular forms of race music which revived the interest in African roots. Both genres expressed disenchantment that even after hundred years of Emancipation proclamation2 that had guaranteed citizenship rights to all in letter, the rights were not granted in the actual spirit. New Orleans Jazz restored the hymns which were rooted in African tradition during the African American Civil Rights Movement. It bears testimony to the contribution made by Black Americans to the heterogeneous American society. Throughout the movement, artists such as Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and Curtis Mayfield endeavoured to uplift the spirit of fellow men and women of color by spreading the message of solidarity and brotherhood through their unconventional and path breaking music.
This essay attempts to examine the contribution of Jazz and Blues to the African American Civil Rights Movement of 1960s, the movement's influence on their evolution and the way in which these forms of black music in their evolved forms such as soul and free jazz and were committed to the realization of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.
Keywords :
Race music, hymns, emancipation, heterogeneous, black music
