Anti-Racism and Music

On a theme of tipping points, I have been writing about the breathtaking advancements in the field of music therapy. It has been countless clinical sessions, workshops, presentations, keynotes, films, articles and exuberant advocacy to get here. I have seen the long arc of moving from very unknown to now. And I would describe now as ‘arriving.’ We now have a place at the table.

It seems that society is reaching a tipping point - Portland Oregon before most everybody else in tipping that arc toward justice, just as Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed in 1964.

Music is a tremendous vehicle to help steep us in stories, stories that are worth hearing again and again and again. Until that repetition begins to shift the arc from apathy to empathy, from unaware to distinctly aware, from hatred toward love, or at least heartfelt tolerance.

In music research, the phenomena of ‘earworms’ (from the German Ohrwurm) describes music that plays in a loop. And it is often music that you don’t like, case in point “the youngest one in curls” from the Brady Bunch.

I am proposing that we use earworms and music for good, to make people better understand another’s life experience, to hear it over and over and to let it seep in.

I am launching a series I am going to call Anti-Racism, Earworms and the Power that Music has to Make the World a Better Place. We need music now more than ever. We need music to help us understand another’s story, to help us hang on to those stories, to give us the courage to persist in the fight for Black Lives Matter. And while the arc is bending in the right direction, let’s add Muslim, Trans, indigenous people and all others who have recently also been treated cruelly and unjustly.

Today, the casket of U.S. Representative John Lewis rode over the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Built at the beginning of World War II, the bridge is named after Edmund Winston Pettus, a former Confederate brigadier general, U.S. senator, and leader of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. It was there in 1965 that Lewis led the march that became known as Bloody Sunday. He himself had a fractured skull at the hands of the brutal police response.

The night before the march, at City of St. Jude, a Catholic social services complex in Montgomery, 25,000 marchers came to rest for the night on the soaked fields. Harry Belafonte gathered a ‘Stars for Freedom’ concert. It must have given the anxious, uncomfortable people solace and courage. Harry gathered together an exceedingly broad group of performers and stars to include: Leonard Bernstein, Sammy Davis Jr., Johnny Mathis, Odetta, the Chad Mitchell trio, Peter, Paula and Mary, Tony Bennett, Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone and James Baldwin. As Harry Belafonte wrote in his autobiography “the feeling that night was truly powerful. We would not be defeated (p. 303).”

Listen to Nina Simone sing ‘Mississippi Goddam” on that night so long ago. Listen to the words, listen to the affect. Listen to the incessant forward moving, yearning, driving beat. Listen deeply. Internalize her message given in music that helped push the Voting Rights Act through in August of that year. Use the music to see another’s point of view if it is not your own, to deepen your perspective that all humans are created equal. Evolve your mind and soul to see the inherent worth and dignity of every individual. Strive to bend that arc further and further toward the light. This time, the era of George Floyd, is red hot for change, for transition, for reflection. Let music have a seat at the table. Nina’s voice rings loud and clear in 2020.