{"id":176448792,"date":"2015-01-17T01:34:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T07:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/?p=176448792"},"modified":"2015-01-17T01:34:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-17T07:34:00","slug":"history-video-martin-luther-king-jr-on-the-humanity-of-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/2015\/01\/17\/history-video-martin-luther-king-jr-on-the-humanity-of-jazz\/","title":{"rendered":"HISTORY + VIDEO: Martin Luther King, Jr. On The Humanity Of Jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"

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JANUARY 20, 2014<\/p>\n

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Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

On The Humanity <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

Of Jazz<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

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by:\u00a0Tom Reney<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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In the speech he gave before the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington in August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., employed the refrain, \u201cNow is the time.\u201d\u00a0 Was he inspired by Charlie Parker\u2019s, \u201cNow\u2019s the Time,\u201d the original blues that Bird recorded on his Savoy\u00a0Jazz\u00a0debut in 1945?\u00a0 As evidenced by his introductory remarks for the Berlin Jazz Festival the following year, King had a profound appreciation of jazz.<\/span><\/p>\n

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(Mahalia Jackson, wearing corsage, looks\u00a0over at MLK speaking at the March on Washington.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In September 1964, as the guest of Mayor Willy Brandt, King spent two days in (West) Berlin.\u00a0 During the whirlwind visit, he gave a sermon to a crowd of 20,000, visited the Berlin Wall, and attended a memorial concert for President Kennedy.\u00a0 It\u2019s also long been reported that he gave the keynote address to the inaugural Berlin Jazz Festival, but in recent years that\u2019s been disputed by Bruce Jackson and Professor David Demsey of William Patterson University.\u00a0 Whether spoken or merely written for the festival\u2019s program, King offers genuine insight about the role that jazz musicians played as they \u201cchampioned\u201d the search for identity among African Americans. \u201cLong before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of \u2018racial identity\u2019 as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls,\u201d King wrote.\u00a0 (Read the complete text below.)<\/span><\/p>\n