Mr Fish cartoon for Martin Luther King Day

image courtesy of Mr Fish and Truth Dig

Mr Fish's latest cartoon for Martin Luther King Day in the US

Obama sure ain't no Martin Luther King

image courtesy of Black Agenda Report

I have written before of my mistrust of the Obama phenomena and his philosophy and policies. So I was taken by this quote by Glen Ford, the Executive Editor of BlackAgendaReport.com

"Since the onset of the Obama phenomenon, Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth and death days have been “polluted” by false and ahistorical comparisons between Obama and MLK. The two men represent opposite political poles: one, a radical opponent of imperial war and concentrated economic power, the other, an ally of Wall Street and commander-in-chief of “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today".

Black Agenda Report is an excellent source of information and analysis. It offers intelligent and penetrating insights into contemporary social, political and economic issues from the perspective of Black America.

In memory of Dr King

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Martin Luther King

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in the US. Held on the third Monday in January to mark the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr, the day is intended as a reminder of all that Dr King fought for and died for.

Chris Hedges's writes that King's message has been sanitized and appropriated to serve the interests of the powerful:

"Martin Luther King Day has become a yearly ritual to turn a black radical into a red-white-and-blue icon. It has become a day to celebrate ourselves for “overcoming” racism and “fulfilling” King’s dream. It is a day filled with old sound bites about little black children and little white children that, given the state of America, would enrage King. Most of our great social reformers, once they are dead, are kidnapped by the power elite and turned into harmless props of American glory. King, after all, was not only a socialist but fiercely opposed to American militarism and acutely aware, especially at the end of his life, that racial justice without economic justice was a farce"

As Hedges points out the old racist rhetoric may have disappeared but the situation that King fought against remains:

"We pretend there is equality and equal opportunity while ignoring the institutional and economic racism that infects our inner cities and fills our prisons, where a staggering one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated."

In the Nation Mark Engler has written of the Poor People's Campaign which King was planing when he was assassinated. King aimed to mobilise poor people throughout America to demand action from Congress, and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience to force the US government to end economic and social deprivation. Engler ponders how Dr King might respond to the current crises of recession, unemployment and gross inequality confronting the US:

"Without people taking action in the spirit of Martin Luther King's vision, a few Americans may continue to gather inordinate wealth, but many others, thrust against their will into idleness, insecurity or foreclosure by today's crisis, will have little recourse but to wait for relief from a capricious and uncertain economy".

The image is from the No Caption Needed website and appeared in the St Lois Dispatch.

Currently listening to John Coltrane's 1963 civil rights masterpiece "Alabama

Photo of the 16th Baptist Church courtesy of the Birmingham Library from the website like rain whispers mist


If you stay home, keep the same purpose,
to meet the innermost prescence
as it lives in people
Rumi

End of a long day. Fed eight people tonight at short notice, including my step son and his girlfriend and my step daughter and her friend and partner who are visiting Perth from Paris. A most enjoyable evening.

It's late, the house is quiet now and I am listening to John Coltrane's haunting meditative piece Alabama, which he wrote in response to the murder of 4 young girls by white supremacists in Birmingham Alabama in 1963. I know of no other musical piece like Coltrane's Alabama. It is mesmerizing music of immense beauty and power. Youtube clips of the piece can be found here.

Here is some background to the piece from the Jazz website All About Jazz

In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, a gaggle of malcontents planted 12 sticks of dynamite in a window well outside the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The dynamite exploded eight hours later killing Denise McNair, 11, and Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, all 14, in the process galvanizing the Civil Rights Movement. Three months later, on November 18, 1963, John Coltrane stepped up to the microphone in fabled Englewood, NJ studio of one Rudy Van Gelder and over a McCoy Tyner Tremolo, blew his searing and definitive statement on the subject of the bombing-- "Alabama."

Here is some more background to the piece:

“Coltrane wrote the song ‘Alabama’ in response to the bombing. He patterned his saxophone playing on Martin Luther King’s funeral speech. Midway through the song, mirroring the point where King transforms his mourning into a statement of renewed determination for the struggle against racism, Elvin Jones’s drumming rises from a whisper to a pounding rage. He wanted this crescendo to signify the rising of the civil rights movement.”

Martin Luther King's deeply moving eulogy for the murdered girls, on which Coltrane's piece is mirrored, can be read here.

John Coltrane died in 1967 at age 40 from liver cancer. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

the idea and sound of Enka

Tonite I had dinner with my 13 year old son and step daughter just back from 20 months teaching English in Japan. We talked about Japan. Liv told me about Enka a particular genre of Japanese song and played me some of the Enka music she had gathered. Apparently Enka is enjoying a bit of revival amongst younger Japanese people. Really enjoyed some of the modern Enka music she played that was made by a black Japanese american singer Jero who became the first black enka singer with a debut single "UmiYuki" that debuted at #4, wearing hip hop street fashion.

Modern enka is a ballad popular music developed in the post war era. What I found intriguing was that the music called enka was originally speeches set to music which were sung and spread by political activists during the Meiji Period (1868–1912) as a means to avoid crackdowns by the government on speeches of political dissent.

It got me thinking about political speeches set to music here in Australia or the Western world. Interestingly I was only listening today to an inspiring political song made by American folk/country singer Patty Griffin Up to the Mountain a song inspired by words and phrases from the final speech made by Martin Luther King the day before he was assasinated. (the speech is known as the Up to the Mountain speech)

Here is an extract from a piece in Folk Music about the speech which inspired Patti Griffin's song:

The speech which inspired this tribute to peace and perserverence is a haunting one, not only because it was King's final speech, but also for the amount of dedication to the cause that it portrayed. He recognized that there was a possibility he would be assassinated, but kept to his main message: "The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars." Later in the speech, he said "We are going on. We need all of you...either we go up together or we go down together." It is this statement from which Griffin pulled the inspiration for her pivotal lyrics:

Sometimes I feel I've never been nothing but tired
And I'll be walking until the day I expire
Sometimes I lay down, no more can I do
But then I go on again, because you asked me to.

Here's the fill lyrics from Patti Griffins song which is from her wondeful 2007 CD Children Running Through

Up to the Mountain (Patti Griffin)

I went up to the mountain
Because you asked me to
Up over the clouds
To where the sky was blue
I could see all around me
Everywhere
I could see all around me
Everywhere

Sometimes I feel like
I've never been nothing but tired
And I'll be walking
Till the day I expire
Sometimes I lay down
No more can I do
But then I go on again
Because you ask me to

Some days I look down
Afraid I will fall
And though the sun shines
I see nothing at all
Then I hear your sweet voice, oh
Oh, come and then go, come and then go
Telling me softly
You love me so

The peaceful valley
Just over the mountain
The peaceful valley
Few come to know
I may never get there
Ever in this lifetime
But sooner or later
It's there I will go
Sooner or later
It's there I will go