Today is the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. Schools are closed, as are government offices. It is, and should be, a day to reflect on his remarkable life. I am thankful that my parents taught me not to see color...nor race....nor to judge people on this basis. I vividly remember coming home from school in 1971 and saying the "N" word in front of my mother....I had met a young man at school who was black. She looked at me and shook her head. "We don't use that word. That's a bad word." I asked "why?" Other kids at school called him that. She said again..."It's a bad word. Don't ever say that word again." Well, I said it again to see what happened. I was immediately grounded and sent to my room.
That is a small sample of the grace and love that my parents tried to instill in me. The color of a person's skin does not matter....period. They both came from and grew up in the segregated world of America with parents who did not believe in equality of the races. But somehow they emerged from that upbringing with a different view, and by the time I came along they were ready to teach me not to be a racist. I am thankful for many things in my life...and that moment I just told you about is one of the most important to me. This was three years after MLK Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. My parents shared the words of MLK with me...his message of equality and fairness. His dream. Those words still echo in my mind.
My son Jack went to Memphis with his girlfriend Kylie last summer....her grandmother lives there. When they came back, he could not stop talking about their visit to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel. He brought back a poster that he had framed and I could tell that what he experienced there had a profound affect on him. I must go there too.
I tried to teach my children the same thing my parents taught me about race. They don't see color when it comes to people. They just see people.
John Coltrane is one of my favorite jazz musicians of all time. He was deeply moved by Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, and later that year wrote a song called Alabama to eulogize the 4 children killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham by the KKK. This is a musical interpretation of Dr. King's eulogy...a very powerful and evocative response to hatred.
In 1966, Coltrane recorded a song called Reverend King that appeared on his 1968 album Cosmic Music. Here is a great interpretation of it with a photo montage of Dr. King.
Last week, I went to my church's "Traditional" worship service. The majority of our worshipers go to the "Contemporary" worship service which is held at a new facility. As the name implies, the Traditional service is more....well, traditional. Organ-piano and choir are the musical base for this service. Bells and orchestral accompaniment are also regularly used. The service is held in a sanctuary that looks and feels like most others I have worshiped in, including the church I was baptized in as a baby. Pews, candles, and stained glass too. Our "Contemporary" service is held in a brand new building in a large hall that has chairs on the floor facing a stage where the service takes place. The music consists primarily of bass, drums, keyboards, guitars, and vocals. Theatrical lighting and smoke machines are also part of the production.
Two distinctly different services, both serving the same God. One similarity between both types of service is the use of of projection screens for lyrics to the songs being sung. The congregations stand and look up to see the lyrics instead of having to use hymnals. Remember those?
I watched a brief interview with Paul McCartney this week. He talked about the fact that he does not know how to read music...none of the Beatles did. He's 76 years old, has made some of the best music in all of history, and to this day he can't read a note of music. I would have thought that somewhere along the line he would have taken some time to learn this skill that I learned as a young child. It is not that hard...I don't think so anyway. But I was lucky to have formal music theory and literature training along with violin and piano lessons starting at a young age. For many, maybe most, this is not the case. But going to church used to be a way anyone could at least see what music notation looks like...in the hymnal. Right above the words, the dots and lines are the road map for the song. If nothing else, it is beautiful to look at, this language of beautiful sounds.
Last week at church, in the Traditional sanctuary, the computer crashed and the projection system was not be able to put the words up on the screen. What would we do???? Our Worship Director (Jerry) came over to talk to me before the service and gave me the bad news...we would have to use the hymnals...those dusty books on the back of the pews. Old school. I reminded him that hymnals have worked for hundreds of years. We would be fine. And in fact, it was a breath of fresh air. Seeing the music again...not just words on a screen....was such a treat.
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There's a wonderful musical phrase in Robert Schumann's Piano Quartet in E-Flat Major (1842) that sounds like it came from the future. I asked my friend Dr. Reynold Simpson, Associate Professor of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, to explain what I was hearing. He replied: "It's the re-transition of the movement, the moment in the development that the composer has pushed the harmony as far as it will go and now it must find it's way back to the tonic via the dominant. It is the moment of some of the most inventive harmonies in tonal music and you've found one that is really fantastic."
The section I am talking about starts right at the 5:00 mark. The entire composition is wonderful.
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The great jazz musician Charlie Parker was born and raised right here in Kansas City (born in KC, KS in 1920 and raised in KC, MO). He is also buried here, in Lincoln Cemetery which is not easy to find. Good luck trying to find it using your GPS because I tried GPS twice this week and failed both times. I used what little memory I have of visiting his grave in 1996 to eventually find it again. Given his stature, it is sad that his resting place is so hard to find. But I found it and paid my respects again to this giant of the music world. If you want to go yourself, give me a shout and I will tell you how to get there.
