Music celebrates the life and legacy of Martin Luther King
Moments before he was assassinated April 4, 1968, on the balcony of a Memphis hotel, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was thinking about “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.”
The civil-rights leader so loved the gospel song, accounts say, that he was arranging to have it played at an upcoming church service. Instead Mahalia Jackson sang it days later at his funeral.
As Central Florida and the rest of the nation remember King this month, music is at the forefront of celebrating his life and legacy.
“It’s a language of the soul and spirit,” said Rudolph C. Cleare, head of the “Negro Spiritual” Scholarship Foundation in Orlando. “Music has a magnified power to penetrate the human consciousness.”
Among local arts-driven King events are Orlando’s “City of Hope”
— which under Cleare’s direction combines poetry, dramatic oration and music — and Winter Park’s Unity Heritage Festival, which features gospel, blues and jazz.
Both events were established in the early 2000s, both strive to remember the past while building a stronger future for the nation and both are free.
The location of tonight’s City of Hope — at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Institutional Church in downtown Orlando — is no accident.
“It’s one of the oldest sanctuaries of black churches in Orlando, and we use it as a kind of living room for the city to gather,” Cleare said. “It’s the kind of sanctuary Martin Luther King would have spoken in as he traveled around the country.”
It’s appropriate to celebrate King with music because he was a great believer of the power of song.
Besides “Precious Lord,” King also was fond of “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” with its hopeful lyrics of “Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain, But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.” He reportedly would quote the song when feeling discouraged.
King called upon musicians to help spread his message, Cleare said.
“He usually requested there be some kind of music at his appearances — he had Aretha [Franklin], he had Mahalia Jackson, he had Harry Belafonte — anyone he could get,” Cleare said. “They drew the audience together, and the songs they sang became ‘freedom songs.’ We’re kind of reviving that tradition.”
At the two-day Unity Heritage Festival, church choirs and praise dancers will perform Sunday in Shady Park at Hannibal Square, the heart of Winter Park’s historically black west side. Monday — the nation’s official King holiday — will feature Southern rockers GW Souther and CeCe Teneal, a soul, funk and blues singer.
“The music and festivities create a real camaraderie,” said Robert Knight, who founded the festival in 2003. “Martin Luther King’s message of camaraderie is on full display.”
The event also honors a person or organization that has contributed to the community, and marks King’s commitment to social issues by providing information and raising funds for health, homeless, hunger and education programs.
“I have a great passion for this project because I was raised on the west side of Winter Park myself,” Knight said. “It’s a community with a rich heritage.”
Performers at “City of Hope,” sponsored by the Orlando Mayor’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, include award-winning high-school musicians, the University Unitarian Universalist Society Youth Speech Chorus and the Bethune-Cookman Concert Chorale from the historically black university in Daytona Beach.
Although King is most associated with gospel music, he also enjoyed jazz and blues.
“Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music,” said King, as he opened the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival. “It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.”
Besides its inspirational factor, music also helps people find common ground — key to King’s dream of equality for all.
“Music speaks clearly across all lines of the community — all races, all religions and the non-religious as well,” Cleare said. “We hope that this will enrich our community and bring a beauty that encourages us to live the dream daily.”