BRATTLEBORO — On Nov. 12, the Vermont Jazz Center presented an outstanding We Four concert dedicated to the music of John Coltrane. The band played wonderfully. The audience loved it.
The heinous bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls, inspired Coltrane and his classic quartet to record a heartbreakingly beautiful work, “Alabama.”
Coltrane is forever linked to the struggles of African-Americans for liberation and freedom. His music was an inspiration for the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and '70s, which connected art with the political struggles of the community. Their new music portended a new society as well.
Others connected to this movement were the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago, the Black Artists' Group of St. Louis (BAG), and the avant garde musicians of New York such as Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor.
The entire community around this band was made up of people connected to black freedom struggles.
Jimmy Cobb, the great drummer on the We Four band, played with Coltrane on numerous recordings. He also played with Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, whose recording “Sack of Woe” speaks of the hardships of picking cotton in the fields.
David Williams, the bass player with We Four, played with the important drummer Billy Higgins. Higgins recorded the album Soweto, dedicated to the people of South Africa, named for a township in South Africa and dedicated to the young people who were living there and in the struggles for freedom and life.
Javon Jackson, on tenor saxophone, the co-leader of the band along with Cobb, played with the iconic Art Blakey (later known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina) and the Jazz Messengers.
Blakey recorded The Freedom Rider, an album that honored those people, black and whites together, who rode Greyhound buses in the segregated South at great risk to themselves in order to integrate public transportation. These Freedom Rides were major events in the drive for civil rights in the early 1960s.
Blakey was one of the first jazz musicians to adopt an Islamic name, something many people did as they identified with their African heritage.
Many other examples demonstrate the connections between jazz musicians, their music, and the political and social struggles of black people both here and abroad.
Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln recorded We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite. Charles Mingus gave us “Fables of Faubus,” music intended to discredit and disparage the racist, segregationist governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, after he opposed the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which called for school integration. Mingus called Faubus “fascist supreme.”
Sonny Rollins brought us his album Freedom Suite. Nina Simone recorded the songs “Mississippi Goddam” and “I Wish I Knew What It Is to Be Free.”
“Mississippi Goddam” lamented the terrible racism of that state and its violence against Black people. Billie Holiday's “Strange Fruit” is a cry against lynching.
Archie Shepp put on wax Poem For Malcolm, an album honoring Malcolm X, a very influential African-American leader. He also recorded Attica Blues to commemorate the uprising of inmates at Attica prison in upstate New York. That uprising was brutally repressed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the New York State Police.
The Black community and people of color are experiencing a shocking and dramatic rise in violence, hate crimes, and racist rhetoric - fueled, in part, by a demagogic president-elect. This reality is where our country finds itself.
I believe that now's the time to heed the lessons of history, and for us and the Vermont Jazz Center to speak out for racial justice. As an organization that promotes Black music and is part of the jazz community at large, the Jazz Center would be making a strong and important statement of support.
What could that solidarity look like?
Could the Jazz Center display a Black Lives Matter banner in its lobby? Could the Jazz Center offer a concert with local stalwart musicians, publicized to support people of color at this historic juncture?
Perhaps the Jazz Center's actions would inspire other local organizations to act in solidarity.