See, even Dr. King is confused by this tribute list. There are a number of iconic tunes that gave a soundtrack to the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's, and if you're interested, lists of those songs with commentary discussing their importance can be found. Great names like James Brown, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan will show up on nearly every list, and rightfully so. The melodies and lyrics that gave the civil rights movement a unified musical voice were sung by these artists and lent the cause a necessary momentum. However, when I thought about writing an article in honor of the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., I decided that I would bring to light a few unnoticed (or at least rarely mentioned) songs that speak about the lack of racial equality and the undeniable need for it. Besides, these songs are dope.
I'm starting off with a tune written by Fats Waller, originally titled "(What Did I Do to be So) Black and Blue." I chose the Louis Armstrong version of the song (the title shortened to simply "Black and Blue") because it is the very first version with which I was acquainted and Satchmo's rendition of the tune holds a strange power. The lyrics are strangely blunt, the singer somehow both abused and amused. The line "I'm white inside/that don't help my case," stands out especially. The trumpet melody is mournful but the vocals retain a spark of good humor, an acknowledgement that being born into a racist world is simply a matter of bad luck and bad timing. Armstrong seems to know that it's the goddamn bigots that have things backwards, not he.
A careening drumbeat filled with the resonance of a loosely tuned snare and a shuffling single-note guitar line leads "Yeah, It's That Easy" by G. Love and Special Sauce. Boiling the problem down to the simplest solution: forget our differences and just fucking get along. Yeah, it really could be that easy. I dig the doe-eyed simplicity that comes across in the half-whispered lyrics. The images of boys of different backgrounds growing up playing ball on the same team but finding their relationships complicated as adults rings true to me. The kitschy blend of blues, spoken word and gospel-style chant lend the song an innocent groove.
Like James Brown and Fela Kuti before them, Antibalas carry their message in on a wave of funky horns, conga beats and raucous electric piano. "Who Is This America Dem Speak Of Today?" is a bizarre reflection of our melting-pot heritage and the dividing tensions that come along with it. Random exclamations that poke fun at American bureaucracy and hypocrisy are coupled with pointed queries about just who America really is. "Is it the black man?/Stolen from Africa?/Whipped into slavery/Fight and fight for freedom/Just to ride in the back of the bus?" The satire is sharp and the rhythms are funkier than unwashed socks.
From the classic "Black on Both Sides", Mos Def brings an unmistakable flow to the algebra of social iniquity with "Mathematics." While a bit more abstract than most of the protest songs usually associated with the civil rights movement, Mos Def spends his verses making clear the fact that the march towards equality is still many miles off the mark. Who else do you know that can rhyme statistics? Nobody, that's who.
My Mom got me hooked on Sade as a kid, and I'm not ashamed of it. "Immigrant" is a killer Sade tune, if only because it bucks the rigid boundaries of her normal lyrical content (aka: love and attraction). Here is an immigrant at the mercy of other's suspicions simply because of the color of his skin. A man who "didn't know what it was to be black/'til they gave him his change and didn't want to touch his hand." Unlike protest songs that live on ideals and righteous indignation, the simplicity of this image is overwhelmingly powerful because it is so easy to visualize and understand. Plus, Sade is sexy.
