Anderson@Large

X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X

February is the shortest month but it packs a cultural wallop. I cannot think of a better way to kick off Black History Month than with “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” Composed by Anthony Davis (music), Thulani Davis (libretto) and Christopher Davis (story), the groundbreaking opera was workshopped at Philadelphia's Trocadero Theater in 1984 and premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in 1985 (the official premiere was at the New York City Opera in 1986).

The Metropolitan Opera’s staging reimagines Malcolm “as an Everyman whose story transcends time and space.” From the New York Times’ review:

The epigraph of Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” is a quote from an interview in which, asked about the cost of freedom, Malcolm responds, “The cost of freedom is death.”

That tension — between hope and reality, between liberation and limitation — courses through a new production of “X” that opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, in the work’s company premiere. This staging dreams of a better future, with a towering Afrofuturist spaceship that, at the beginning, appears to be calling Malcolm X home. But the beam-me-up rays of light are pulled away to reveal a floating proscenium, gilded at the edges and decorated with a landscape mural. It is a replica of the podium at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965.

Presented by Great Performances at the Met, “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” premieres beginning February 4, 2024 (check local listings) on PBS and PBS App.

Black History Month: Lee Morgan and the Power of Art

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History designated “African Americans and the Arts” as the theme for Black History Month 2024. African Americans used art to both survive and escape enslavement:

The suffering of those in bondage gave birth to the spirituals, the nation’s first contribution to music. Blues musicians such as Robert Johnson, McKinley ‘Muddy Waters’ Morganfield and Riley “BB” B. King created and nurtured a style of music that became the bedrock for gospel, soul, and other still popular (and evolving) forms of music.

In his address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz festival, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the importance of jazz in paving the way for the Civil Rights Movement:

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.

[…]

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.

Lee Morgan personified the power of art. Lee grew up in Tioga, a neighborhood in North Philly, surrounded by railroad tracks, factories belching smoke and warehouses. Art empowered him to see beyond his immediate environment and imagine a future as a jazz musician. Within months of graduating from Jules E. Mastbaum Area Vocational/Technical School, Lee joined the Dizzy Gillespie Band and recorded his first album for Blue Note Records.

An organizer of the Jazz and People’s Movement, Lee secured his place in history with “The Sidewinder,” a rare crossover hit that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.

The Nicetown-Tioga Library and All That Philly Jazz are cohosting a community celebration of Lee Morgan and Tioga’s cultural heritage on Friday, February 9, 2024.

The event is free and open to the public. To reserve a spot, go here.

Happy Birthday, Dr. King

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Apollo Theater is hosting its 18th annual celebration of Dr. King’s heavenly birthday, “Uptown Hall: The Inconvenient King,” in partnership with WNYC and March on Washington Film Festival. A panel discussion focusing on Dr. King’s enduring legacy on the culture, and the context and complexity of racial discrimination, will be followed by music, spoken word and other forms of creative expression.

The celebration will be presented live at the Apollo and available via livestream on Sunday, January 14, 2024 at 2:00 pm ET.

The Cost of Inheritance

On January 16, 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 which promised the formerly enslaved 40 acres and a mule. The descendants of enslaved Africans are still waiting for their inheritance, preferably payable by check.

The call for reparations dates back to 1783 when Belinda Royall petitioned the Massachusetts General Court (the state legislature) requesting a pension based on her years of enslavement from the proceeds of her master’s estate. Fast forward to today, African Americans from California to New York are saying it’s past time for reparations.

On June 22, 2023, City Council authorized the creation of the Philadelphia Reparations Task Force to “study and develop reparations proposals for Black Philadelphian descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States.”

The Cost of Inheritance: An America ReFramed Special explores “the nation's legacy of systemic inequities to modern-day America, introducing audiences to descendants of enslaved persons and slave owners, profiling their complex intertwined histories and detailing how their quest to bridge divides galvanized them to seek reparations together.”

The Cost of Inheritance: An America ReFramed Special premieres on Monday, January 8, 2024, at 10:00 pm ET on PBS, PBS.org and the PBS app.