Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the USA. It’s a chance to reflect on Dr. King’s legacy of activism and how it connects to music. And that reflection shouldn’t be dimmed by today’s inauguration, even as the incoming administration promises to erase some of the country’s memory.
“I have a dream” may be better known. But in 1964 in West Germany, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s essay on jazz was included in the program for first-ever Berlin Jazz Festival. Jazz was not a common theme for Dr. King – indeed, the references I found described it as the only known time he spoke on the topic. Yet alongside artists like Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, and Roland Kirk, the festival was able to feature Dr. King’s thesis about the fundamental power of music itself.
Martin Luther King Jr. Explains the Importance of Jazz: Hear the Speech He Gave at the First Berlin Jazz Festival (1964) [open culture]

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create—and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.
Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.
This is triumphant music.
Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.
It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.
Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. 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.
And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.
In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.
“When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. on jazz, Berlin 1964.
More background on that event (unfortunately with some broken links):
Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights [JSTOR daily]
It’s a difficult speech, in a way, because for from a platitude, this is the description of music being triumphant in the midst of suffering. And both in the 1960s and 2020s, it’s tough to see the long arc of history. It’s musical triumph, but not justice. The movement he describes, though, is still for liberation.
Jazz wasn’t the only soundtrack to the civil rights movement. Dr. King also talked more broadly about “freedom songs”:
Songs and the Civil Rights Movement [The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute]
Far Out writes about musical connections across generations, before and after King’s assasination:
The pivotal musical performances at the Martin Luther King Jr marches and their legacy
There are also key moments, like Mahalia Jackson singing in 1963 in Washington, D.C. – the same venue for “I Have a Dream.”
See also Alfonso Pollard for labor-led journal International Musician:
The Extraordinary Musical Influences of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Writing for WFMT in Chicago, Adela Skowronski collects what might be Dr. King’s preferred playlist:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Favorite Songs
That includes a song that had returned to my mind in recent days – “This Train,” in its hardest hitting rendition, a joyous, powerfully accusatory performance by Sister Rosetta Tharpe who might as well be performing a ticket control on the actual Judgment Day itself:
And music is part of the reason today is a holiday – thanks to folks like Stevie Wonder. From WRTI Philadelphia and Bobbi Booker:
An assassin’s bullet silenced Dr. King on April 4, 1968. In the wake of his death, Stevie Wonder, then a teenager, also grieved. He channeled his emotion into activism and led a 15-year movement that helped make MLK Day a national holiday. His 1981 hit single, “Happy Birthday,” helped establish Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday in 1983.
Freedom music: how jazz and gospel provided a soundtrack for Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream
Marcus Baram tells that whole story:

That summer, Wonder called Coretta Scott King, telling her, “I had a dream about this song. And I imagined in this dream I was doing this song. We were marching—with petition signs to make for Dr. King’s birthday to become a national holiday.”
How Stevie Wonder Helped Create Martin Luther King Day
Today was a low day for liberation. It was a low day for queer communities. It was a low day for the fight for immigrants and asylum seekers. It was a day that offered no order and meaning. But that means today is a day for remembering, and for seeing forward. And it’s a day for music for freedom.
It’s sure as hell a day for this song, Wonder’s anthem to Dr. King. Appropriately, here’s a video from the anti-apartheid Nelson Mandela Day:
In addition to the musical connections, there are ample resources providing insights into Martin Luther King, Jr., the radical – not the sanitized, convenient, fictional version often invoked by people leading regressive politics.
We ought to remember this: Martin Luther King, Jr. was a radical [WBUR]
The content of King’s character? It was ferocious. [Washington Post]
“The Radical King” edited by Cornel West – Summary and Analysis [SFMLK Day]
Opinion | Martin Luther King Jr. Was a Radical [Politico]
Martin Luther King Was a Radical, Not a Moderate [commondreams]
Given all that, I take some comfort knowing that there are projects like Dweller – Black-run music projects that folks like me absolutely should center. Next month, they’ll again gather in NYC:
And they offer critical essays like this by Jaymie Silk:
Suspect Desires for Diversity in Electronic Music: Progress or a Tool to Hide White Ethnocentrism?
And looks at the scene like this:
In the Eyes of Each Other: Tintype Portraits of Black Artists in Techno
Check their full library for more reading:
https://dwellerforever.blog/library
Previously:
Featured image: Rev. Martin Luther King, head-and-shoulders portrait, seated, facing front, hands extended upward, during a press conference / World Telegram & Sun photo by Dick DeMarsico. Public domain.