(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Black Music Sunday: Songs of freedom from the musicians at the 1963 March on Washington [1] [] Date: 2023-08-27 The historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963. A 60th anniversary continuation of the march took place Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial. I wasn’t at the original March, but my dad was, and I will never forget him coming home and retelling the overwhelming thrill of being at the historic event to my mom, grandmother, my brother, and me. While many people remember the march for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful speech, which came to be known as “I Have a Dream,” the day’s events also included stellar performances by singers and musicians. The march also inspired other musicians to pay homage to the civil rights movement and the continuing struggle for equality. Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music. With 170 stories (and counting) covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack, I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new. People from across the nation gathered in Washington on Saturday in what was firmly billed as a “continuation” of King’s work—not a commemoration. The Philadelphia Sunday SUN: “The March on Washington will not just be a commemoration but a continuation of what Dr. King and our predecessors started,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network (NAN). “We must remember why we are still marching: the civil rights of Black, Brown, Asian, Jewish, LGBTQ Americans and women are under relentless attack. There is a concerted effort to undermine our democracy. There are many working week by week to peel away these rights, take away our history, or stop us from celebrating holidays like Juneteenth. I am honored to stand with the King family as we bring together these groups for a historic, cross-cultural and cross-generational demonstration to show that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. Together, we will show the nation the strength in our unity and our resolve to realize Dr. King’s dream of a fair nation for all of us.” In 2013, Randy Lewis, writing for The Los Angeles Times, looked back at the music of the march on its 50th anniversary. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 50 years ago was not only a galvanizing moment for African Americans and civil rights. It was also a watershed moment in popular music. Before that hot summer day, pop music was mostly about a catchy tune and a memorable lyric. Since then, it became commonplace for songs with a social message to race up the sales charts. The Beatles and James Brown did it in the ‘60s, and urban rappers, country singers and alternative-rock bands continue speaking out today. That was something new on Aug. 28, 1963. Actor and singer Harry Belafonte lined up black musicians Mahalia Jackson, Odetta and Marian Anderson for the concert on the National Mall at the end of the march, but he also included white folk artists Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary. Malcolm X and some others had argued against including white performers. Belafonte ignored them, saying it was not in keeping with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of inclusion. “Nothing that made up the American mosaic was not represented,” said Belafonte, now 86. “Looking out at that sea of humanity ... we were looking at what Dr. King was describing as the dream.” RELATED STORY: Black folk musicians created the soundtrack for a movement—and helped Bob Dylan find his sound The first piece of music to open the march was the national anthem. Marian Anderson was scheduled to sing it but she was delayed, so operatic soprano Camilla Williams replaced her. I have been unable to find any photos of Williams at the march. I did find a photo of her on Xwitter via Indiana University, where she taught. x August 28, 1963: Soprano Camilla Williams sings the Star-Spangled Banner prior to Martin Luther King Jr.'s famed "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington. In 1977, Williams joined the @IUJSoM faculty. https://t.co/nFSyEdOzAn pic.twitter.com/AFrONasHV0 — Indiana University Archives (@IUBArchives) August 28, 2018 Kathleen Mills interviewed Williams in 1998 for the Bloomington, Indiana, Herald-Times. Camilla Williams, who retired last May as a professor of voice in the Indiana University School of Music, used her soprano voice that day to sing the national anthem and a black spiritual. And she did it all on less than a moment's notice. Opera singer Marian Anderson, the first black to sing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, was to be the featured singer for the rally. Washington, D.C., was a madhouse that day, Williams recalled. More than 200,000 people came to support President Kennedy's civil rights bill before Congress and to hear King give his now famous "I Have a Dream" speech. "There was a line of cars," Williams recalled. "You never saw so many people in your life. "Anderson got stuck in traffic. Williams, then a leading opera singer, was in the audience at the Lincoln Memorial at the request of Roy Wilkins, a member of the leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP. When word came that Anderson would not make it to the rally in time to sing the national anthem, the announcers sent the plea, "Will Camilla Williams please come to the platform?" over the loudspeakers. Williams was stunned. "I had to climb all those steps at the Lincoln Memorial and I was all out of breath and had to sing. It was some occasion." Hard to imagine being called up like that at the last moment. However like the pro she was, she nailed it. x YouTube Video When we talk about world-famous contralto Marian Anderson, it’s important to remember her very particular history with the Lincoln Memorial. x After Marian Anderson was barred from performing at Constitution Hall by some racist leaders of Daughters of the American Revolution, Eleanor Roosevelt made sure that she sang at Lincoln Memorial instead, this week 1939: pic.twitter.com/PIhHWeyj1V — Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) April 11, 2023 PBS’ “American Masters” tells the story: x YouTube Video From the video notes: Marian Anderson stepped up to a microphone placed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and stared out at a crowd of more than 75,000 people. She had been barred from performing at Constitutional Hall, but thanks to clever advocacy by Walter White of the NAACP and the aid of high-powered allies like Eleanor Roosevelt, the concert was now set to make history. She performed seven songs for the assembled crowd and the audience listening live over the radio. It was a mix of American Spirituals and classical repertoire: “America,” “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Ave Maria,” “Gospel Train,” “My Soul Is Anchored in the Lord,” “O mio Fernando” and “Trampin’.” [...] On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stepped up to a microphone in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Inscribed on the walls of the monument behind her were the words “all men are created equal.” Barred from performing in Constitution Hall because of her race, Anderson would sing for the American people in the open air. Hailed as a voice that “comes around once in a hundred years” by maestros in Europe and widely celebrated by both white and black audiences at home, her fame hadn’t been enough to spare her from the indignities and outright violence of racism and segregation. Voice of Freedom interweaves Anderson’s rich life story with this landmark moment in history, exploring fundamental questions about talent, race, fame, democracy, and the American soul. At the march, Anderson sang the spiritual “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.” x We remember the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. We share memories of our great Marian Anderson as she sang once again on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the invitation of Dr. King for the 1963 March on Washington and his I have a dream speech. #MLKDay pic.twitter.com/Gfsf1RGXwp — National Marian Anderson Museum (@NationalMAHSMus) January 16, 2023 Gospel great Mahalia Jackson sang two hymns at the event. x YouTube Video Isaac Rosen wrote her biography for Musician Guide. The woman who would become known as the "Gospel Queen" was born in 1911 to a poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Jacksons' Water Street home, a shotgun shack between the railroad tracks and the levee of the Mississippi River, was served by a pump that delivered water so dirty that cornmeal had to be used as a filtering agent. Jackson's father, like many blacks in the segregated south, held several jobs; he was a longshoreman, a barber, and a preacher at a small church. Her mother, a devout Baptist who died when Mahalia was five, took care of the six Jackson children and the house, using washed-up driftwood and planks of old barges to fuel the stove. [...] At 16, with only an eighth grade education but a strong ambition to become a nurse, she went to Chicago to live with her Aunt Hannah. In the northern city, to which thousands of southern blacks had migrated after the Civil War to escape segregation, Jackson earned her keep by washing white people's clothes for a dollar a day. After searching for the right church to join, a place whose music spoke to her, she ended up at the Greater Salem Baptist Church, to which her aunt belonged. At her audition for the choir, her thunderous voice rose above all the others. She was invited to be a soloist and started singing additionally with a quintet that performed at funerals and church services throughout the city. In 1934 she received $25 for her first recording, "God's Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares." [...] On October 4, 1950, Jackson played to a packed house of blacks and whites at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She recounted in her autobiography how she reacted to the jubilant audience. "I got carried away, too, and found myself singing on my knees for them. I had to straighten up and say, 'Now we'd best remember we're in Carnegie Hall and if we cut up too much, they might put us out.'" In her book, she also described a conversation with a reporter who asked her why she thought white people had taken to her traditionally black church songs. She answered, "Well, honey, maybe they tried drink and they tried psychoanalysis and now they're going to try to rejoice with me a bit." Jackson ultimately became equally popular overseas and performed for royalty and adoring fans throughout France, England, Denmark, and Germany. One of the most rewarding concerts for her took place in Israel, where she sang before an audience of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. In March 2021, Rachel Chang wrote about Jackson’s impact on the march for Biography; her performance went beyond her singing, and would change history. The gospel singer’s spontaneous action led the orator to go off script during his 1963 March on Washington address. When it came time for King to choose a singer to perform at the Washington, D.C. March on Washington for Jobs and Reform, King quickly turned to Jackson. He requested that she sing the Black spiritual song “I Been Buked and I Been Scorned,” which she passionately performed to the more than 200,000 people with lyrics like, “I'm gonna tell my Lord / When I get home / Just how long you've been treating me wrong,” setting the tone. [...] A pause in the speech gave Jackson the moment to shout out On the day of the now-famous speech, soon after Jackson’s rousing performance, [King friend and draft speechwriter Clarence B.] Jones still didn’t know what King was about to say when he stepped up to the podium. He started off with the bad check analogy that Jones had written. “This was strange, given the way he usually worked over the material Stanley and I provided. When he finished the promissory note analogy, he paused,” Jones continued. “And in that breach, something unexpected, historic and largely unheralded happened.” That was when Jackson spontaneously shouted, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin, tell ‘em about the dream!” At that moment, everything changed. “I see that what he does when he hears her shout that to him,” Jones, who says he was standing 50 feet behind King, told The Washington Post. “He then takes the papers on the lectern and he moves the papers to the left. And then he grabs the lectern on the podium, so I turn to some unknown person next to me and I said, ‘These people don’t know it, but they’re about ready to go to church.’” It’s rare to hear this choir or their groundbreaking choir director, Dr. Eva Jessye, mentioned in discussions of the music performed that day x Dr. Eva Jessye, born 1895 in Coffeyville, KS, was an American conductor, and the first black woman to receive int'l distinction as a professional choral conductor. In 1963, her choir was the official chorus of MLK's civil rights march on Washington, DC. https://t.co/25RVZpf0SN pic.twitter.com/NqRIoS1Ma0 — Heartland Song Network (@hlsongnetwork) April 8, 2021 Song of America introduces Jessye: Often referred to as “the grand dame of Black music,” Dr. Eva Jessye was a composer, singer, choral conductor, teacher, actress, author, and poet with a rich career. In her numerous positions as choral director—such as with the Eva Jessye Choir and the Gershwins’ opera Porgy and Bess—Jessye demanded fair performer compensation, fought for theater desegregation, and supported the careers of countless Black musicians. Her major contributions to Black American music were lauded by Coretta Scott King, and the Eva Jessye Choir performed as the official chorus of the 1963 March on Washington. Dr. Eva Jessye was born on January 20, 1895 in Coffeyville, Kansas to formerly enslaved parents Albert Jessye and Julia Buckner. Four years after her birth, Jessye’s parents separated, and from then on she lived primarily under the care of her maternal grandmother Mollie Buckner and several of her aunts. Life with her maternal family was joyous and musical, and Jessye was first exposed to music through her Great Aunt Harriet singing Spirituals. Aunt Harriet’s songs, as well as tunes performed at Jessye’s church, gave Jessye an early interest in music. Her mother recognized the young Jessye’s talent and bought her a piano, and Jessye first learned to play by ear. In a draft of her writing piece “My Career,” Jessye reflects on her early aptitude for composition: “When only six or seven I played a game to astonish friends.. ‘If you can play for me,’ I would boast, ‘I can make up and sing a song about anything you name..’..to me it was fun..I [h]ad not idea of talent…” Jessye’s formal musical education began at age thirteen when she began attending Western University in Quindaro, Kansas, where she majored in poetry and oratory, with additional required piano courses. Jessye was invited to join the school choir after demonstrating remarkable sight-singing abilities, and she quickly rose the ranks and became choir director R.G. Jackson’s assistant, where her responsibilities included rehearsing small ensembles. She also worked as an orchestral copyist, which led composer and conductor Will Marion Cook to discover Jessye. Impressed with Jessye’s musical talents, he called her his “little protégé” and mentored her in music theory and music management, which strongly motivated Jessye to pursue a musical career. Jessye graduated from Western University in 1914 and continued her studies at Langston University, where she received a teaching degree and subsequently taught for a few years in segregated public schools in both Baltimore, Maryland and Tullahassee, Oklahoma. She moved back to Baltimore from Oklahoma in 1925 to write for the Baltimore newspaper The Afro-American. The University of Michigan, where Jessye taught, continues her story. The daughter of former slaves, Eva Jessye would stand in Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and teach at the University of Michigan. Meet a woman who changed the face of the arts—and America. The first African American woman to direct a professional choral group, Jessye was recognized also as a singer, composer, actor, teacher, and poet. Her Bentley collection contains address books and travel logs, birthday cards and photographs, stock certificates and invoices, poetry and essays, programs—all gems of theatrical and black history. Her ephemera make it abundantly clear that a wall separated artists of color from their colleagues. [...] In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called on the Eva Jessye Choir to become the official chorus of the March on Washington. Standing near the Lincoln Memorial, hearing speeches by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, and then leading her choir were incredible experiences, but they weren’t the high point. That came when she was close by as Dr. King spoke about a dream that she would hold close forever. In January 1983, Coretta Scott King invited Jessye to a celebration commemorating Dr. King’s birthday. “I had a wonderful time in Atlanta, witnessing the Martin Luther King event,” Jessye wrote to a friend. “There were hundreds of celebrities, 48 nations represented, and thousands of black folks…I stood on the sidelines and drank it all in.” “Sidelines” may be a misnomer, since Jessye had led the combined choruses of Atlanta University Center for the event. “Your beautiful, timeless music has been an inspiration to the thousands who have heard it,” Coretta Scott King wrote when thanking her. x Eva Jessye's choir. Credits include Hallelujah, Porgy & Bess, and the March on Washington. #historicpoc pic.twitter.com/Q0YFV4UpWp — Judith Weisenfeld (@JLWeisenfeld) February 3, 2015 x "#Freedom is a thing worth singing about, Spread the message far and near" -Eva Jessye Choir #MarchonWashington pic.twitter.com/el6SiOe3ri — Pamela Harris (@thePamela_H) October 15, 2015 Here’s the Jessye Choir singing of freedom at the March on Washington: x YouTube Video Folk musicians who performed that day included Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. x YouTube Video Joan Baez was born on January 9, 1941, in Staten Island, New York, in a Quaker household, her family eventually relocating to the Southern California area. Of Mexican and Scottish descent, Baez was no stranger to racism and discrimination. But that did not stop her from pursuing her natural musical talents. She became a vocalist in the folk tradition and was a crucial part of the music genre's commercial rebirth in the 1960s, devoting herself to the guitar in the mid-1950s. [...] Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A revered anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, “We Shall Overcome” also became a top 40 hit for Baez in the U.K. in 1965. She achieved her first top 10 single in Great Britain later that year with “There But for Fortune,” also finding success with the Dylan-penned tune “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.” The 1960s were a turbulent time in American history, and Baez often used her music to express her social and political views. Baez thus became an established, revered folk artist who used her voice for widespread change. She sang "We Shall Overcome" at the March on Washington in 1963 that featured the iconic words and leadership ofA revered anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, “We Shall Overcome” also became a top 40 hit for Baez in the U.K. in 1965. She achieved her first top 10 single in Great Britain later that year with “There But for Fortune,” also finding success with the Dylan-penned tune “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.” In addition to supporting civil rights as an artist and worker, Baez participated in university free-speech efforts led by students and the antiwar movement, calling for an end to the conflict in Vietnam. Beginning in 1964, she would refuse to pay part of her taxes to protest U.S. military spending for a decade. Baez was also arrested twice in 1967 in Oakland, California, for blocking an armed forces induction center. This lovely edit of Baez’s performance of “We Shall Overcome,” cut with footage of the event, is courtesy of Boston University. x YouTube Video The most well-known folk group to perform that day was Peter, Paul, & Mary. The group’s website offers a concise origin story. In the decades prior to the '60s, through the work of such avatars as Woody Guthrie, the Weavers and Pete Seeger, folk music had become identified with sociopolitical commentary, but the idiom had been forced underground in the Senator Joe McCarthy witch-hunting era of the late '50s. By the time Peter, Paul and Mary arrived on the scene, for the majority of America, folk was viewed merely as a side-bar to pop music which employed acoustic instruments. At this critical historic juncture, with the nation still recovering from the McCarthy era, the Civil Rights Movement taking shape, the Cold War heating up and a nascent spirit of activism in the air, Peter Yarrow, Noel (Paul) Stookey and Mary Travers came together to juxtapose these cross currents and thus to reclaim folk's potency as a social, cultural and political force. But few at the time could have realized how fervently and pervasively the group's message of humanity, hope and activism would be embraced. This short video interweaves the trio’s personal reflections of that powerful day with their performance of “Blowing’ in the Wind” and “If I Had a Hammer.” x YouTube Video And in this video, Peter Yarrow discusses the political climate in which the march took place, and how it felt to “witness history being made.” x YouTube Video Black civil rights activists The SNCC Freedom Singers (SNCC stands for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) sang “We Shall Not Be Moved.” From Black Past: [The] Freedom Singers were a musical group primarily active between 1962 and 1966, singing “freedom songs” in order to fundraise and organize on behalf of SNCC. The Freedom Singers emerged out of the Albany Movement of 1962. After witnessing the Albany Movement’s mass movement musical culture, folksinger Pete Seeger suggested to SNCC executive secretary James Forman that a group could perform songs arising out of the civil rights movement in order to raise money for SNCC, educate young northerners on the events of the movement, and organize people to involve themselves. Eventually, the idea reached Albany Movement leader (and SNCC field secretary) Cordell Reagon in October 1962. By the end of the year, a group was organized consisting of Reagon, Bernice Johnson, Rutha Harris, and Charles Neblett, occasionally joined by Bertha Gober. They were all trained musicians as well as SNCC field secretaries. x YouTube Video RELATED STORY: The SNCC Freedom Singers: Songs of strength and courage that mobilized people to vote Odetta Holmes, known simply as Odetta, was another major folk artist to perform at the March. Joan Goldsworthy wrote her biography for Musicians Guide. The name Odetta is probably unfamiliar to most people in the generation raised on MTV, yet she is one of the pillars of twentieth-century music. A folksinger distinguished by the power and clarity of her voice as well as the richness and intensity of her delivery, Odetta has also functioned as a living archive of music. By tirelessly researching, recording, and touring, and drawing on a variety of musical genres, she has kept alive the legacy of early folk and blues singers, including Bessie Smith and Leadbelly. Odetta has had a significant influence on modern music, providing inspiration for such performers as Janis Joplin and Joan Armatrading. The singer was born Odetta Holmes on December 31, 1930, in Alabama. Her father died when she was quite young, and her mother remarried, giving the children their stepfather's surname, Felious, and moving the family to Los Angeles when Odetta was six. The youngster took piano and voice lessons and by the time she entered secondary school, she was beginning to discover her immense talent as a singer. She was the star of her high school glee club and, at the age of 14, began singing at the Turnabout Theater in Hollywood. Odetta appeared to be headed for a career as a concert singer until some friends she met while studying music at Los Angeles City College introduced her to the embryonic modern folk music scene. In 1949 she began gigging in West Coast clubs as a solo act, accompanying herself on guitar. Early in her career, she purchased a wood-bodied guitar nicknamed "Baby," on which she did all of her arrangements for years. While she has never considered herself a proficient guitarist, she did in time develop a unique sound that was eventually canonized in the folk music world as "the Odetta strum." Within five years, Odetta had built up a considerable reputation for herself on the West Coast. By the mid- to late 1950s, the singer was touring the United States and Canada; by 1961, she had played Carnegie Hall and appeared twice at the renowned Newport Folk Festival. Odetta was unquestionably one of the brightest stars of the folk music renaissance of the early 1960s, which also saw the first of many world tours for her. Reaching much of mainstream America through the medium of television as well, Odetta received acclaim for her appearance on a musical special with musician Harry Belafonte and stole the show from an impressive roster of singers in the 1963 program Dinner With the President. She also performed as an actress in several films and television programs, most notably The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and the movie version of American novelist William Faulkner's Sanctuary. When I headed over to YouTube to look for videos of Odetta singing at the March—she performed “I’m On My Way,” and “Oh Freedom”—there was nothing. I did find one video that layers her performance of “I’m On My Way” over crowd footage. x YouTube Video The absence of Odetta puzzled me until I found a 2013 story by Kevin Gosztola at ShadowProof. Odetta stunned those in attendance when she performed, “Oh Freedom.” She had been dubbed the “queen of American folk music” by Dr. King in 1961. With her music, she put the struggle for equality at the center of her music. In an interview for NPR, Odetta recalled how the music had probably been uplifting to those in the crowd. She said she was “floored by the sight of all those people way back to Cleopatra’s needle.” She was moved after hearing the “kind of things people had to go through, even to afford the bus to arrive to Washington, DC.” And, “The feeling of unity and communion [was] really quite something.” But she also recalled how she was hurt to see people there to film and document the demonstration turn their cameras off when she was up on stage. She remembered no longer seeing the lights from the cameras and said, “Many times we think in terms of popularity of the person and they will turn the camera on for somebody…because they have a big following or they earn a lot of money.” She wondered why cameramen didn’t just film the whole event. With that in mind, here’s Holmes singing both, as part of her Freedom Trilogy—though not at the march. x YouTube Video x Odetta with Bruce Langhorne at the March on Washington (1963) pic.twitter.com/pVba89WyAT — SamePassage (@SamePassage) June 26, 2022 At the march, Odetta was accompanied by Bruce Langhorne. His own website offers a short summary of his career. When Bruce Langhorne was a 12-year old violin prodigy living in Harlem in the fifties, he accidentally blew several of his fingers off with a cherry bomb that he held onto for too long. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, Bruce looked up at his distraught mom and said, “At least I don’t have to play violin anymore.”* Ten years later, in 1963, 300,000 people marched on Washington to demand equal rights for all. This was the scene of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. As King made his way through the crowd to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Odetta and Bruce played “Oh Freedom” stirring the passions of the crowd. You could say that they were Martin Luther King’s warm-up act. Bruce has been a master on all guitars, mandolins, pianos and percussion and for many years was Dylan’s first choice for concerts and important guitar parts on his albums, including “Bringing It All Back Home.” Bruce played all these instruments, working the strings with mostly nubs instead of his missing fingertips.* His playing earned him a devoted following and Dylan’s nickname “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The final folk song performed at the march was “Eyes on the Prize,” sung by Dylan, Baez, the Freedom Singers, and Len Chandler, who were introduced by actor and activist Ossie Davis. x YouTube Video That chorus—“hold on, keep your eyes on the prize, hold on”—still resonates today. I look forward to hearing about that historic day from readers who attended, or who remember the March in other ways, as well as from those who were too young to remember or or not even born yet. How has the march permeated your history? Join me in the comments for more march music, and for updates from Saturday’s continuation march. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/27/2188721/-Black-Music-Sunday-Songs-of-freedom-from-the-musicians-at-the-1963-March-on-Washington Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/