Martin Luther King, Jr. on Jazz
Dr. Martin Luther King wrote the following
regarding jazz, his comments delivered within the printed program for the 1964
Berlin Jazz Festival:
“God had wrought
many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity
to create, and from this capacity have flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy
that have allowed man to cope with his environment in many situations.
Jazz speaks of life.
The blues tell the stories of life’s difficulties, and if you will think for a
moment, you will realize that they take the harsh realities of life and put
them into music only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This
is triumphant music.
Modern jazz has
continued in this tradition, singing the songs of more complicated urban
existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates
an order and meaning from the sounds of earth which flow through his
instrument.
It is no wonder that
so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by
jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of ‘racial
identity’ as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to
their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.
Much of the power of
our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has
strengthened us with its powerful rhythms when courage began to fail. It has
calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits began to lag. This has been true
from the early days of the simple Negro Spiritual. And now, Jazz is exported to
the world.
For in the
particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the
universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the blues. Everybody longs for
meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands
and be happy. Everybody longs for Faith. In music, especially in that broad
category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone toward all of these.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr., Berlin 1964, quoted
in Down Beat, January 2011.