Black musical traditions, like jazz, are central to Juneteenth celebrations, says civil rights attorney and jazz pianist Bryan Stevenson.
Therefore, he and Wynton MarsalisPulitzer Prize-winning jazz artist, have presented Freedom, Justice and Hopean album of live performances of historic jazz records created to protest racial injustice.
In addition to a new arrangement of “Alabama”, by the saxophonist John Coltranewhich pays tribute to the four black girls murdered when the Ku Klux Klan bombed Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, the project features original compositions from the up-and-coming bassist Endea Owens and of the trumpeter Josh Evans.
The album, released by Blue Engine Records, features the participation of the Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra, of which Marsalis is artistic director and manager. It is now available on digital platforms.
Its launch occurs before this summer marks 10 years since the death of Michael Browna black teenager fatally shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri, which sparked a wave of protests by the Black Lives Matter movement (Black lives matter). When “Freedom, Justice and Hope” was recorded three years ago, in 2021, the nation was reeling from another flashpoint: the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis.
“Taking some of the great jazz works of the 20th century and integrating them into the story of the long struggle for social justice in this country is a dream come true,” says Stevenson, founder of Equal Justice Initiativea nonprofit organization dedicated to criminal justice reform and racial justice based in Montgomery, Alabama.
The history of jazz and music in the black American protests is deeper than many realize, said Marsalis, the legendary trumpeter who plays stirring melodies throughout the album. Stevenson accompanies the piano and weaves together spoken reflections on disenfranchisement, racial injustice, and the activism that emerged in response.
“Jazz, in and of itself, was a counterpoint to minstrelsy,” Marsalis said, referring to a form of entertainment popularized in the 20th century that featured white actors with blackened faces performing racist depictions of African Americans.
“Jazz still has the same impact,” he says. “People show up, know how to play and take what they do seriously. They will discuss issues and be honest about it, and they don’t feel the need to put themselves down.”
Derived from ragtime and blues, cultivated in turn-of-the-century New Orleans and prominent during the Harlem Renaissance, the genre is a crossroads where music joins the march for justice. Some historians even consider that the jazz singer’s interpretation Billie Holiday made in 1939 from “Strange Fruit”, a poem by Abel Meeropol against lynchings, was one of the catalysts of the Civil Rights Movement.
“I think jazz as an art form should be understood as a protest against the idea that black people are somehow incapable,” Stevenson says. “The extraordinary thing that jazz musicians did was that they took Western music, did things to these art forms that others have been playing for centuries, and added things that dazzled and inspired.”
“They did it with a kind of dignity and intention to refute this false narrative of racial hierarchy,” he said.
In that spirit, Owens’s joyous “Ida’s Crusade” chronicles journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s lifelong struggle against lynchings and unjust imprisonment. Evans’ “Elaine” is inspired by the 1919 Arkansas massacre that claimed the lives of several hundred black Americans.
With Marsalis and Stevenson, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performs new arrangements of “Honeysuckle Rose,” originally composed by Fats Waller in 1929; “We Shall Overcome,” chorus of the Civil Rights Movement of 1947; and “Freedom Suite”, originally composed by Sonny Rollins in 1958.
Aside from Stevenson’s monologues, the songs on “Freedom, Justice and Hope” are entirely instrumental, with no vocals.
Jazz’s reliance on instrumental tracks has led some to stereotype it as outdated, irrelevant, and less connected to social justice than vocal rap and hip-hop: think of “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy“F(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk) Tha Police” by NWA and “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar. But musicians, academics and activists alike urge listeners to recognize and defend the political messages conveyed through the emotional depth of music.
“Sometimes there are no words to express the joy and sadness we feel,” he says. Reiland Rabakafounding director of the Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
“And sometimes those trumpets, those saxophones, those guitars, those pianos… they can say it better than our words,” adds Rabaka, who has written extensively about hip-hop and Black Power, women’s liberation and songs for civil rights.
According to Rabaka, the improvisational elements of jazz date back to the voyage from Africa to America, where slaves, chained to the bottoms of ships, made up songs. Improvisation was also found in Juba and juke dances, common in various parts of the southern United States, including New Orleans’ Congo Square, where slave auctions were held.
Improvisation can be compared to the ingenuity of black Americans who, with the little they had, made a life for themselves after achieving freedom from the agricultural environments to which they were confined.
For Marsalis and Stevenson, the June 19 release of an album recorded three years ago is symbolic. June 19, or Juneteenth, is the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people of Galveston, Texas, were informed of their freedom, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation granted it to them.
“The enslaved learned to love in the midst of pain, and that is an extraordinary thing to achieve,” Stevenson said. “That’s the part of Juneteenth that I hope we can start celebrating. Not only emancipation, but this entire legacy. … I think music plays a central role in it.”
Echoing his collaborator, Marsalis said he hoped to inspire people to look toward the challenges of the future, rather than continuing to fight old battles.
“I like Juneteenth, symbolically, because many times people, anywhere in the world, don’t know that they are free,” he said. “From a national standpoint, the nation needs to see Juneteenth in the context of the national struggles we still have.
“We are still fighting that conflict, now on another battlefield. Nobody has told people, ‘Hey, this is over a long time ago.’ Let’s be present,” Marsalis said.
Source: AP. Photos: Andres Kudacki
