On Jazz and Justice
"Music is the tonal reflection of Beauty" - Duke Ellington
New Here? The Beginning of My Integrated Life
[Latest in an ongoing series celebrating Jazz Appreciation Month]
I was born into the bop. Bebop, that is. 1949 1434 Walker St. Lee Township, Des Moines. I never knew a world without music. Mom a graduate music major of Los Angeles City College, My father Ellsworth T. Brown, a Philadelphia-born radio officer in the WW II Merchant Marine, was a proto-jazz pianist, alto saxophone player, lyricist, songwriter and bandleader.
It was within that essentially joyful circumstance that I also learned about the stacked deck of barriers and frustration that my parents had to endure behind the Red Line in Des Moines. The joy in the hearts of my mother and father however, went a very long way toward masking out the deep systemic impediments designed to obstruct their progress.
As a journalist and a jazz musician, both disciplines demand that you tell your stories with greater nuance if you’re going to fully express your reality. Sometimes it’s profound, sometimes it’s profane, sometimes it’s gentle and sometimes it’s uncomfortable. So Be It.
As odd as this may sound, Jazz isn’t there merely for YOUR entertainment but it was most definitely designed to tell a story. This God-given music is sonic survival. At it’s core it embodies a quest for resolution. Resolution that only comes from free minds that transcend the reality of subjugated bodies.
The heart of Jazz comes from a full-throated cry of salvation just as surely as its origin in the fevered low moan of subjugation. Its miraculous resilience is rooted in the irrepressible spirit of a people who not only survived but thrived, handing you back love and inspiration where they were handed disrespect and subjugation.