Anderson@Large

Black Music is Black History

During Black Music Month, Herb Spivak, co-owner of two of Philadelphia’s legendary jazz clubs, the Showboat and Bijou Café, and I lamented how the annual celebration is increasingly focusing on today’s popular music while ignoring the roots. Like all Black music genres, hip-hop flows from a tree with very deep roots.

I’m a doer so I suggested that we write an opinion piece. We did. Our op-ed was published online and in the print edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Here’s an excerpt:

There was a place outside in Washington Square known as Congo Square, where free and enslaved Black people would gather to sing and dance to the music of West African cultures. Bandleader, composer, and Philly native Francis Johnson performed across the United States and was the first Black musician to tour Europe with a band in the 1800s. Soon after, he was followed by singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, who also lived in Philadelphia.

The flood of Black music out of Philadelphia continued into the 1900s, as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker improvised bebop at the Down Beat on South 11th Street, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff founded Philadelphia International Records, and the Roots played hip-hop on South Street.

[…]

Black music history matters. As Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” Black music has always been more than entertainment. From the “sorrow songs” of the enslaved to the protest songs of the Black Lives Matter movement, Black music is a first draft of history.

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Black Music Month 2023

In 1979, President Carter proclaimed June as “Black Music Month.” Every president since Bill Clinton has continued the tradition, including President Joe Biden. In his 2023 proclamation Biden said:

During Black Music Month, we pay homage to legends of American music, who have composed the soundtrack of American life. Their creativity has given rise to distinctly American art forms that influence contemporary music worldwide and sing to the soul of the American experience.

I want to kick off African American Music Month by sharing NEA National Heritage Fellow’s tribute to one such legend, soul singer and songwriter William Bell. The National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mtume Honored with Ceremonial Street Renaming

James Forman, known professionally as James Mtume or Mtume, was born and raised in South Philly. His biological father was legendary saxophonist Jimmy Heath of the Heath Brothers. Mtume was a jazz and R&B musician, songwriter, producer, activist and radio personality. He came to prominence as a jazz musician working with Miles Davis between 1971 and 1975.

In the 1980s, Mtume formed his own band, which combined jazz, funk and R&B. The group’s biggest hit was the 1983 single “Juicy Fruit” which reached No. 1 on the R&B charts and became a crossover hit on the pop charts.

“Juicy Fruit” is one of the most sampled songs, including by the Notorious B.I.G.

Mtume also had a top-five R&B hit with the single “You, Me, and He”. He created hits for Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway (“The Closer I Get To You” and “Back Together Again”), and co-wrote and co-produced Stephanie Mills’ Grammy-winning “Never Knew Love Like This Before.”

Mtume joined the ancestors on January 9, 2022. He is gone but not forgotten. On May 12, 2023, the 1500 block of Wharton Street will be ceremoniously renamed James Mtume Way. Special guests include singer and actress Melba Moore and survivors of the Heath Brothers band. Faulu Mtume said:

It’s beyond words just how great this is, the City of Brotherly Love honoring my father, a Philly native. Wharton Street is where his journey into music, social activism and politics began. The roots for all three are there.

Black History Month 2023

First started as “Negro History Week” by Carter G. Woodson in February 1926, African American History Month is a celebration of all things Black. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History chose Black Resistance for this year’s theme:

African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings since our arrival upon these shores. These efforts have been to advocate for a dignified self-determined life in a just democratic society in the United States and beyond the United States political jurisdiction. The 1950s and 1970s in the United States were defined by actions such as sit-ins, boycotts, walk outs, strikes by Black people and white allies in the fight for justice against discrimination in all sectors of society from employment to education to housing. Black people have had to consistently push the United States to live up to its ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all. Systematic oppression has sought to negate much of the dreams of our griots, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and our freedom fighters, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Septima Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer fought to realize.

Billie Holiday denounced the terrorism of lynching in “Strange Fruit,” the first protest song. Bassist Charles Mingus observed that Lady Day resisted racial oppression before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

From Louis Armstrong to Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, jazz is the music of Black Resistance.

Poet Langston Hughes said jazz transformed Black Resistance into an art form:

But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

Jazz is the sound of struggle.

Celebrating Roberta Flack

A child prodigy, Roberta Flack began studying classical piano at age nine. Flack got her big break while performing at Mr. Henry's Upstairs, a jazz club on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

American Masters: Roberta Flack tells Flack’s story in her own words. The documentary features interviews with, among others, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Clint Eastwood, Angela Davis, Valerie Simpson, Les McCann and Peabo Bryson.

American Masters: Roberta Flack premieres on Tuesday, January 24, 2023 at 9pm ET. The documentary will be available on PBS, PBS.org and PBS Video App. Check your local listing here.

Eyes on Pulitzer Prize for Duke Ellington

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The time is always right to do what is right.” It’s past time for the Pulitzer Prize Board to do right by Duke Ellington and grant him the award he was denied in 1965. The New York Times reported on May 5, 1965.

Jazz historian and author Ted Gioia has launched an online petition for Duke Ellington to be granted the Pulitzer Prize in Music:

In 1965, the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Music recommended that jazz composer Duke Ellington receive the award in honor of his lifetime legacy of excellence. The Pulitzer Board denied the request, and decided to give no award in music that year rather than honor an African-American jazz composer. In the aftermath, two of the three jury members resigned in protest.

The time has come to rectify this unfortunate decision, and name Duke Ellington as the winner of the 1965 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The recent precedent of Jim Thorpe's reinstatement as sole winner of the 1912 Olympic gold medals, taken from him 110 years ago, makes clear that even after many decades these wrongs can still be righted. Ellington was a deserving candidate back in 1965, and the significance of his legacy has become all the clearer with the passage of time. Giving him the 1965 prize is the right thing for Duke Ellington, the right thing for the Pulitzer, and the right thing for American music.

It’s never too late to right an egregious wrong. If you love Duke Ellington madly, keep your eyes on the Pulitzer Prize and sign the petition.

Soul Heaven

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” When I leave this world, I want to go to “Soul Heaven” where every month is Black Music Appreciation Month.