SOUNDTRACK: ROKIA TRAORÉ-GlobalFEST Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #136 (January 14, 2021).
GlobalFEST is an annual event, held in New York City, in which bands from all over the world have an opportunity to showcase their music to an American audience. I’ve never been, and it sounds a little exhausting, but it also sounds really fun.
The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world.
Given the pandemic’s challenges and the hardening of international borders, NPR Music and globalFEST is moving from the nightclub to your screen of choice and sharing this festival with the world. Each night, we’ll present four artists in intimate settings (often behind desks donning globes), and it’s all hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo, who performed at the inaugural edition of globalFEST in 2004.
The final artist of the fourth and final night is Malian singer Rokia Traoré.
Rokia Traoré performed at globalFEST in 2005, the music festival’s second year, and it’s a thrill to present her meditative performance as part of Tiny Desk meets globalFEST. Her work is rooted in the Malian musical tradition, but defies the confines of a single culture. Born in Mali to a diplomat father, Traoré had a nomadic upbringing that exposed her to a wide variety of international musical influences. She joins us from Blues Faso, a theater inside her Foundation Passerelle in Mali, which she created to support emerging, interdisciplinary artists, from music and the performing arts to visual arts and photography.
She plays three songs that more or less segue into each other. I don’t know a lot about music from Mali, but the little I know I can recognize from the Ngoni played by Mamah Diabaté and the guitar played by Samba Diabaté, with lots of speedy runs. In “Souba Lé” melody is played on the balafon by Massa Joël Diarra (although I wish they’d have shown us it up close). Both this song and “Tiramakan” feature subtle bass from Aristide Nebout. The final song “Fakoly” is a little louder and drummer Roméo Djibré is a bit more prominent.
But all of these songs are all about Rokia Traoré’s vocals which soar and ring out.
[READ: February 25, 2021] March Book 3
Each book has gotten longer. Book one was 121 pages, Book 2 was 187 and Book 3 is 246.
This book begins right after the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. You meet the victims before they were killed. It continues through until the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Holy cow was there a lot of violence in these two years and the amazing art by Nate Powell never shies away from showing it.
Eagle Scouts at Klan rallies who then go on to kill Black teenager’s, hicks in pickups celebrating the deaths of the girls in the church with anti-integration chants and, as we see more and more in this book, police killing innocent people and not getting in any trouble because of it.
This book has opened my eyes to what Black people have known all along about police forces. That they are completely corrupt and need to be restructured from the ground up. When you see that it was their job to be racist in 1963, is it any surprise that they are still racist in 2021?
Reading a book like this I can’t help but think that the best thing we could have done for our country would have been to let the south secede. Bring all people of color north and let the racists fester in their own lack of diversity. Because their racism poisons the whole country. And yet that is exactly the opposite belief that this book is based upon.
I’m embarrassed at how naïve I am.
Then we get to the heart of this book–the right to vote. Right now in 2021, Republicans are introduces new laws to disenfranchise voters. They are using the same tactics that were in use fifty years ago. This entire book is about trying to undo unjust practices that Republicans are trying to reintroduce today.
Seeing how hard it was for Back people to register to vote in 1963 is astonishing. The side by side comparison of a white man and Black woman registering is really eye opening. When the white man (who is pleasantly given an application) makes a mistake, the clerk points it out and tells him to fix it. Meanwhile the Black woman is made to wait for thirty minutes just to get the application, then is made to pass a literacy test and then failed when she took too long. And if they did get registered to vote, their names were printed in the local paper so that their employers and the KKK would know who they were.
Black men and women waited on line to register to vote. This led to beatings and arrests. And more beatings and more arrests. Sheriff Clark told those waiting on line that if they left the line they were not allowed to get back on line. And anyone who tried to bring them food or water was beaten and arrested. Hundred of people waited on line for eight hours during which time only ten people were registered to vote.
Then we are reminded how tumultuous a time this was. John F Kennedy was shot. Lyndon Johnson took over. I didn’t realize that LBJ was responsible for so much historic legislation.
And then we see how rampant white supremacy was (and still is) in this country. Federal Judge Harold Cox from Mississippi called “Negro applicants” a bunch of niggers and a bunch of chimpanzees.” Later, in December when several white men (including the sheriff) were arrested on charges of murdering Black people, it was this judge who presided over the case. Unsurprisingly the men were found innocent.
The middle of the book is a little hard to get super involved in although it is important. It details political machinations as the SNCC tries to get the Democratic party to take Black voters seriously. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was created. Their intent was to follow all the procedures to be acknowledged at the national Democratic conventions. While the convention was going on, the Klan burned 64 crosses in different counties across Mississippi.
Local whites did not hide their disgust for Black people and thiose who suported them. Like in this quote:
“We killed two month old Indian babies to take this country and now they want us to give it away to as bunch of niggers?”
The SNCC provided training to Black and white people about what they were going to face–violence, and no federal protection. But the nation started to take notice once some white people were killed. The police clearly knew about the murders of these people who were simply volunteering to help Black people vote. The police covered it up, looked the other way and even laughed about it.
Then, amazingly, on July 2, 1964 The Civil Rights Act was signed into law.
It banned discrimination in places of public accommodation.
It forbade discrimination in hiring practices by businesses with more than 100 employees.
It ended segregation in public schools, libraries and parks.
But it did not ban literacy tests and other voting restrictions.
Then there’s an astonishing page from the 1964 Republican convention which is incredible for the way it mirrors recent Republican conventions
Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican from New York said:
It is essential that this convention repudiate here and now any doctrinaire militant minority–whether communist, Ku Klux Klan, or Bircher–which would subvert this party to purposes alien to the very basic tenets which gave this party birth
One year ago today on July 14, 1963 I issued a statement wherein I warned that The Republican party is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well-financed, and highly disciplined minority. At the time I pointed out that the purposes of this minority were “Wholly alien to the sound and honest conservatism that has firmly based the Republican party in the best of a century’s traditions … wholly alien to the sound and honest Republican liberalism that has kept the party abreast of human needs in a changing world and wholly alien to the broad middle course that accommodates the mainstream of Republicans principles.” Our sole concern must be the future well-being of America and of freedom and respect for human dignity, the preservation and enhancement of these principles upon which this nation has achieved its greatness.
He was booed off the stage as they selected Barry Goldwater as their representative, He stated that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
LBJ planned his path to reelection around Goldwater’s campaign. But at the Democratic convention a woman name Fannie Lou Hamer spoke (on national TV). Some selected quotes:
And in June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop, was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is in Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people—to use the restaurant—two of the people wanted to use the washroom. The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out, I got off of the bus to see what had happened, and one of the ladies said, “It was a State Highway Patrolman and a chief of police ordered us out.”
I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too. As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the four people in a highway patrolman’s car. I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the four workers was in and said, “Get that one there,” and when I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.
I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Euvester Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear the sound of kicks and horrible screams, and I could hear somebody say, “Can you say, yes sir, nigger? Can you say yes, sir?”
And they would say other horrible names. She would say, “Yes, I can say yes, sir.”
“So say it.”
She says, “I don’t know you well enough.”
They beat her, I don’t know how long, and after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.
And it wasn’t too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from, and I told him Ruleville, he said, “We are going to check this.” And they left my cell and it wasn’t too long before they came back. He said, “You are from Ruleville all right,” and he used a curse word, and he said, “We are going to make you wish you was dead.”
I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack. The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman for me, to lay down on a bunk bed on my face, and I laid on my face. The first Negro began to beat, and I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted, and I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side because I suffered from polio when I was six years old. After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.
The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat to set on my feet to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me my head and told me to hush. One white man—my dress had worked up high, he walked over and pulled my dress down—and he pulled my dress back, back up.
I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.
All of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?
As President Johnson heard this, he ordered a hasty press conference to cut her off. His bogus conference preempted the national convention. But the news led with her speech that night.
Meanwhile, John Lewis flew to Africa and was astonished to see Black people in high position of authority there. He saw his first Black pilot, Black policemen and was told that his polices were not radical enough. People in Senegal had heard of Malcolm X and felt that he was onto something.
MLK got the Nobel Peace Prize and that still did nothing to change attitudes in America.
They retuned to Selma to continue to try to register Black people to vote. Once again Sheriif Clark was there to beat and arrest them. But soon teachers began showing up to the protests. And then other professionals. It was growing bigger and bigger.
Then Malcolm X was assassinated.
Martin Luther King Jr planned a march from Selma to Montgomery. The SNCC decided not to participate. But John Lewis knew it was the right thing to do. So he went along.
That first march they were met by police and soldiers who mercilessly beat everyone they could on that bridge. It is ugly and astonishing and was known as Bloody Sunday. John Lewis was almost killed.
When they planned for another march hundreds of thousands of people came to march with them. George Wallace met with President Johnson to have him stop the Selma march. But this backfired and Johnson spoke to the country. Excerpted here:
I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed.
There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight.
For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great Government…
In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. …
The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.
For with a country as with a person, “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?”
There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans–not as Democrats or Republicans-we are met here as Americans to solve that problem. …
But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.
Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome.
On March 21 the march set out from Selma. They walked 7 miles the first day; 16 the next; 11 the following day (in the pouring rain); 18 the day after and on March 25 the were in Montgomery. Rosa Parks spoke, Martin Luther King Jr spoke. Harry Belafonte sang.
And then next day more Black people were killed by whites.
Four months later on August 6th the Voting Rights act was passed. Once again LBJ spoke and this speech applies even more today as Republicans try to disenfranchise voters
This law covers many pages. But the heart of the act is plain. Wherever, by clear and objective standards, states and counties are using regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote, then they will be struck down. If it is clear that State officials still intend to discriminate, then Federal examiners will be sent in to register all eligible voters.
if any county anywhere in this Nation does not want Federal intervention it need only open its polling places to all of its people.
I have, in addition, requested the Department of Justice to work all through this weekend so that on Monday morning next, they can designate many counties where past experience clearly shows that Federal action is necessary and required.
And I pledge you that we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.
you will find, as others have found before you, that the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.
Today what is perhaps the last of the legal barriers is tumbling. There will be many actions and many difficulties before the rights woven into law are also woven into the fabric of our Nation. But the struggle for equality must now move toward a different battlefield.
It’s astonishing to see how hard people worked for these changes only to see them eroded by some of the same people who took them away n the first place. But Lewis was full of hope and maybe we should be as well.
This is not in the book but Lewis was elected to the House of Representatives in 1986 and was reelected 16 times winning with over 70 % of the vote every time but one. Maybe there is reason to be hopeful.
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