Spontaneous songs.

In March 1965, Pete Seeger, already known as a folk music troubadour - a people's songster, took a break from the 50 mile March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in order to transcribe some of the amazing music he'd heard.  A fellow-marcher, one far more acquainted with the unifying power of improvised music, playfully chastised him, "Don't you know you can't write down the words to a freedom song."

The Edmund Pettus Bridge which crosses the Alabama River at Selma, Alabama.  The site of the March 7, 1965 "Bloody Sunday" incident. 

The Marchers had embarked on their journey on March 21st, exactly two weeks after police in Selma beat and gassed African Americans peacefully demonstrating against the murder of 26-year old activist, Jimmy Lee Jackson by an Alabama State Trooper.  "Bloody Sunday," as the incident  came to be known gained national exposure, igniting a national consciousness to the brutal realities of the segregated south.  For the many who'd been injured in the violence, it was the plight of Rev. James Reeb that propelled consciousness into action.  Reeb, who'd been beaten badly on the bridge, was refused care at Selma's Hospital and was therefore sent to one in far away Birmingham.  On March 11, 1965 he died of his injuries.

On March 21st under the protection of National Guard troops, a group of over 7,000 including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Pete Seeger, and a duo of Rabbis made their way east over the bridge and onto the long, rural road of route 80 to the State Capitol Building in Montgomery.  On that day, above the jeers of angry white onlookers and the grumble of troop transports, rang the songs of the marchers. Some we know well today.  "We Shall Overcome," the ubiquitous theme of the larger Civil Rights Movement stirred the hearts of the marchers.  "Governor Wallace" a song "written" by James Orange (the very man whose arrest the slain Jimmy Lee Jackson was protesting when he was shot) was most likely improvised either on or surrounding the March to Montgomery.

"Governor Wallace, oh yeah,

You can never jail us all,

Governor Wallace, oh yeah,

Segregation is bound to fall." (Orange, 1965)

Route 80 between Selma and Montgomery

 The songs began spontaneously, without introduction or fanfare.  A "leader," which essentially amounted to anyone hammy enough to sound their voice amid the masses, would begin with a verse.  Should it sound agreeable to those marching beside the leader, a response would be sung out.  In the case of "Governor Wallace" that's likely the origin of the "Oh yeah" phrases.  The call and response is a musical form that may be traced back to West Africa and is a touchpoint for the blues and jazz music.

The marchers updated popular songs of the day.  "Get Your Rights Jack" was a melodically reverent take on Ray Charles' 1960 recording of Percy Mayfield's of "Hit the Road Jack."  And of course most prevalent and by most accounts, most stirring (according to the landmark recording Voices of the Civil Rights Movement) were the Black Spirituals.  Preserved from the days of slavery, spirituals like "We Shall Not Be Moved," "Jacob's Ladder," "Go Tell it On the Mountain," and "Wade in the Water,"connected the Civil Rights Movement with both a three hundred year plight and their ancestral homes in Africa.

Looking upon the landscape and countryside of route 80 today, lush in the new spring, rural and tranquil, it takes time to imagine the massive, musical experience.  From a distance their voices must have seemed a deep, unified chant; their melodies would have hummed unarticulated like crickets.  Their heads would have moved slowly up and down with their gait.  Their bodies would have cast a single, thick shadow obscuring their true number.

When they reached Montgomery, there were over 20,000 marchers.  They walked to the gradual, marble stairs of the State House and continued to sing.

Alabama State Capitol, April 2013

Alabama State Capitol, March 25, 1965

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service, 

Lowndes Interpretive  Center, Lowndes, Alabama

Check out Voices of the Civil Rights Movement

 Welcome to my blog!

Here, we'll explore the American landscape from a largely musical perspective.  Keep in mind, however this will not be much of a travel-log or a dashboard-side guide to accompany your GPS.  Music after all is an art form and places have a tendency to transform under the forces of time.

Before delving any further into this blog I'd encourage you to think of the places in your world where you make music.  Could it be beside your child's crib where you sing them lullabies?  Or at in your Grandparent's living room where you tap happily on their piano?  Consider how those places will transform as the years progress.  Your memories both of the music you made and the places where you made it will merge with your imagination.  Perhaps when you hear a series of atonal piano notes, you'll conjure the warm colors, textures, and smells of your Grandparent's home.  Or when you hear the first verse of "You Are My Sunshine" you'll recall your child's shadowy, peaceful nursery filled with soft quilts and baby powder.  The nursery is painted now and the crib is in the garage.  Your child is a teenager.  The power of songs and music however can ignite our memories and imagination.  It makes places sacred.  When we do this on a collective level, we can assemble a songbook of music that remembers and re-imagines all places in all times.

This blog and furthermore my next book convey just a few tiny pieces of this notion.  It explores the transformation of slave spirituals into the blues of the Mississippi Delta, the expression of urban angst and regionalism in Hip-Hop, the songs of Native Americans as their landscapes forever changed, the incendiary musical legacy of sweet home Chicago, the sprawling soundtracks of the great western deserts....  Is the tunnel in the photograph above haunted by the ghost of John Henry, one of America's greatest heroes of folk song?  Let's try to find out.

Also in the spirit of interaction, I invite you to comment.  Music and places after all belongs to all of us.