Today is Martin Luther King's birthday. It is a holiday in the US but has a universal meaning. Because I am powerfully moved by music I could only commemorate it with music. There are three songs in the two videos that follow. The first is the great Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit. The "strange fruit" were the bodies of black men who had been lynched and were swinging from southern (and some northern) trees. It was not so long ago. I was alive then. A reminder. Then the page turns. A song of energy and hope and purpose. It keeps me going through the times I feel so very tired and wonder how I can go on.
Finally Diana Ross. I still marvel how a song I heard and sang so many times in church basements, in the streets, in union halls -- can still inspire when played by a symphony orchestra dressed in tuxes. But this is the Budapest Philharmonic, musicians whose parents or themselves forty years earlier may have been in the streets of their own city, fighting Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails. They lost then, but they eventually overcame. And so shall we all.
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. . . and the wonderful 'A Dream' by Common -- but you have to be willing to like hip-hop.
. . ooops . . . the URL didn't appear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBa55sDTIiA
Class Act, Revere! Thank you. Will send these to my kids, who only read about this seminal watershed in our history. We were fortunate to have witnessed/partaken in/cheered its belated and overdue "Beginning" in the '60's. Well done. Paul.
A song of energy and hope and purpose
Really? Because I have caught comments to the effect that Billie (while she agreed entirely with the sentiment and purpose of "Strange Fruit") came to dislike performing it, and was actually physically ill backstage on more than one occasion afterward.
The reason was that northern white audiences, instead of quietly parsing it, and displaying appropriate sympathies, often displayed a strange, feral, quasi-sexual *excitement* over a song about lynching, sick as it is to relate, and contextually odd as the reaction was for them to have evinced.
From where I stand, we have gone in America in fifty years from an environment in which young black men were routinely killed by whites for trivial and unjust reasons, to an environment in which young black men are routinely killed by other young black men for trivial and unjust reasons.
What a marvel! Remember, as Ronald Reagan used to say in those old GE advertisements, progress is our most important product.
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If I remember correctly, the picture with the black girls going to school and the white woman yelling behind her, the white woman later realized her folly (probably brought on by the exposure) and apologized to the woman or one of the surviving members.
Did she realize her folly? Or did she conform to the expectations of society?
Do you even see a difference between the two?
On this meaningful holiday, I would like to send my greetings to the friends in the United States. It was one of the greatest milestones in the last century. I witnessed that the great country has been built by the great people- the nation live with the ideal, that human are created equal.
As an Asian myself, I see my Burmese friend Lai who fled from 1989 Burma Student Democracy Movement and has lived with struggle for hope in Thailand, he asked me if his country could have support from international community. I look around, Singapore? China?
We human beings start a bit away from political tyranny (OK the progress is still slow), but to fight with economical tyranny is much difficult. (The US slavery was mainly economical reason). Now China is a big economical incentive to create many economical tyrannies.
I sincerely wish that the foreign policy of the United States firmly on universal value of human rights and consistently implemented in alignment with the spirit of domestic standard, such as this.
Then, the whole world which includes my friend-Lai who is in despair will look at the United States as a symbol of hope. And a nation with integrity indeed exists.
I loved this post.
Marquer - I think that Revere meant that the song that follows "Strange Fruit" in the video, "If I Had a Hammer", is a song of hope and purpose.
Caledonian - isn't it a better world if society treats bigotry with disapprobation than if it treats it as status quo, and that bigots' behavior changes in the face of social censure? It seems pretty all-or-nothing to imply that progress hasn't been made unless the woman somehow proves the stain of bigotry has been washed from her soul and mind.
No. You're not looking at the big picture. If people change their behavior because of society's dictates, they will change again if society changes. And that's just the visible stuff - making bigotry go underground and fester is a recipe for disaster.
Character is what you are when no one else is looking.
But society is nothing but the cumulative effect of people. How could society change for the worse if its component individuals changed for the better? Even if bigotry is a matter of personality defect rather than of knowledge deficit, character isn't immutable, and it isn't formed in a vacuum - something has to influence changes of belief, thought, and self-perception. Other than disease, I can't think of a single completely internal force driving change of mind. Introspection is dandy stuff, but it's still influenced by events, education, and interaction, all of which are social in nature.
Mimicking what the people around you want you to be is not equivalent to a "change for the better". It is merely putting on a mask.
Caledonian/ Jen_m:
The creative minority is the catalyst in a society, this 5%(assumed percentage, having referenced estimat.) as leaders to transform the society.
Followers are majority, everywhere. I wish that you and me can announce, it is the time, we are the people! We remain in the group of creative minority, so we are in the right side of the history. Do you agree with me a bit?
Jen_m says: Introspection is dandy stuff, but it's still influenced by events, education, and interaction, all of which are social in nature.
Caledonian says: Mimicking what the people around you want you to be is not equivalent to a "change for the better". It is merely putting on a mask.
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I thought this issue is a universal and historical phenomenon, even the Scripture offers no immediate solution, as it states the reality of human by comparing the narrow gate and wide one: I interpreted as above that " Followers are majority, it is everywhere."
The coin has two sides; Jen_m's side is optimistic side and imperative to change. The catalyst from creative minority is needed IMO, that is the reason of remembering Martin L. Kings and other great leaders.
Having said that, this month both Thailand and Taiwan have elections, they are mimicking democracy; the results are corruptive parties still prevail well. ( The KMT in Taiwan was overthrown by Communist party because of corruptions. Their performances have been the same in Taiwan for 50 plus years ago, infamous by using buying ballots before, illegally occupied public assets even until today, naked injustices. But KMT wins this time. In Thailand, only in Bangkok, better educated people can resist the buying ballots way, the poor and Northern states are one side towards money. Look the public opinion says, their previously successive governments all have been corruptive, why now has to be so critical to Thaksin.) Hopeless.
Revere has the point, Enlightenment! Why in Asia have taken so long? Merely on a mask?
For me that is the reason I value this holiday. And in Asia, we cry because of slow progress in comparison.
Okay and i have the right to say it better than most as a former military guy. It is in regards to the right to free speech and the right to express yourself in whatever manner you want. I have had troops die to the right and left of me in combat, and the ones in the shirts always get hurt first. A lot of people forget that.
But it brings me to todays very moderate and right of center rant.
Today or within the last few days, 3 8th graders were suspended for NOT standing during the Pledge of Allegiance in a Mo town.
http://www.startribune.com/nation/18800444.html
It for one thing its reprehensible of them not to, and I think Barack Obama shouldnt be President for not wearing the flag as a Presidential candidate or to not recite the pledge. You have the right not to vote for him.. But by God Almighty and the souls and lives of the men who died next to me in combat I defend these kids and Obama's right to do it. Shame on Missouri for not defending these kids and putting the school into its place. That place is to educate and not to produce automatons, but thinking, vibrant little bastard who will grow up to be more than what their fathers and mothers were. That IS America folks.
We live in a politically correct world and each time we pass another law saying that someone else has a right and we dont it pisses me off. In reality they dont, but in the same breath who in the Hell are we to think differently? I wont vote for Obama for this on my checkoff list. Hillary would wear it only because its politically correct and might gain her some votes but at least like Marty Sheen, Barack stands by what he believes in just like his wife. I think Hillary's position on being proud of my country is a crock but she is entitled to her opinion as is her husband. Both are criminals in my book. They would no more defend these kids or produce something in their new Presidency than they did in the previous eight years when they were in office. The Red Phone would ring and it would be WJC's girlfriends. Barack at least holds the office in higher esteem.
Suspending kids for 3 days for actually getting it (it being whats in the Constitution) is a travesty. I urge the school to reconsider their actions because not only is is illegal and based in common law, it creates the atmosphere that Revere extols so often on about repression in the US. Toe the line or suffer the consequences. That is the message and that Goddammit is wrong. If they had gone out and burned the school down it would be one thing, this is entirely another.
Missouri has to understand that there is another side to America and its not one that goes to church every Sunday, and one that decides on their own what to do and not to do. Peer pressure isnt what this is. It is pure totalitarianism and one lops the heads off of the non-compliant. These kids on their own have decided that speaking out against government isnt wrong because that is what keeps this ship afloat. By God Almighty, they are right. Friggin' 8th graders Revere... three out of how many get it? How many wanted to sit down in protest that didnt out of fear. I would bust that school system a new place from which to vent their excrement. I wouldnt take their money, I would take their jobs which is the very best scenario. We need more left wing buttheads like this to keep the rightists in check so that we maintain plurality.
In Oz they would call it a wobbly because we are a wobbly kind of society. We go right, we go left, we have the Reveres and we have MRK. It keeps the ship a rockin' but the ship doesnt roll over either. This is my point and I think that the post regarding Martin Luther King is a great place to put it.
Keep going Marty Sheen, you left wing sack of crap. I will push the cops off you when you go to your next protest. God love you and your pals....
MRK .
MRK it was Minnesota not Missouri, a northern progressive state not a southern backwater like Missouri.