Black Music Sunday: Celebrating Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with music

Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 245 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.

Across the nation on Monday, Americans will celebrate the federal and state holiday held in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—and people will gather to put his principles into practice. As The King Center announced:

Our strategic theme for 2025 is ‘Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence365′. This theme defines the 2025 King Holiday Observance events and programming while serving as a compass for all the work we will do this upcoming calendar year and beyond. The pioneering work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrated that Kingian Nonviolence (Nonviolence365™) is the sustainable solution to injustice and violence in our world, ultimately leading to the creation of the Beloved Community, where injustice ceases, and love prevails.

In that spirit, let us lift our voices in song and praise, and enjoy a musical soundtrack honoring King, the struggles we face, and the spirit of resistance he embodied.

One of my favorite vocal groups who embody activism is Sweet Honey In The Rock. At Carnegie Hall on in November 1987, the group performed their interpretation of “Letter To Doctor Martin Luther King,” which was written by poet Sonia Sanchez.  Sanchez originally published it in her collection “Homegirls & Hand Grenades” in 1984.

A Letter to Dr. Martin Luther King

As I point my face toward a new decade, Martin, I want you to know that the country still crowds the spirit. I want you to know that we still hear your footsteps setting out on a road cemented with black bones. I want you to know that the stuttering of guns could not stop your light from crashing against cathedrals chanting piety while hustling the world.

Great God, what a country, Martin!

[...]

Sitting on our past, we watch the new decade dawning. These are strange days, Martin, when the color of freedom becomes disco fever; when soap operas populate our Zulu braids; as the world turns to the conservative right and general hospitals are closing in Black neighborhoods and the young and the restless are drugged by early morning reefer butts. And houses tremble.

These are dangerous days, Martin, when cowboy-riding presidents corral Blacks (and others) in a common crown of thorns; when nuclear-toting generals recite an alphabet of blood; when multinational corporations assassinate ancient cultures while inaugurating new civilizations. Come out come out, wherever you are. Black country. Waiting to be born . .

[...]

Martin. I have learned too that fear is not a Black man or woman. Fear cannot disturb the length of those who struggle against material gains for self-aggrandizement. Fear cannot disturb the good of people who have moved to a meeting place where the pulse pounds out freedom and justice for the universe.

Here’s that 1987 performance:

Born out of Bernice Johnson-Reagon’s tenure in the SNCC Freedom Singers, Sweet Honey In The Rock has no shortage of songs to inspire us to keep fighting back—no matter what. And we need that fight back music more than ever in this perilous time of Donald Trump and his racist minions.

We cannot and will not let anyone turn us around.

Meet the Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of more than 60 women, and non-binary singers, who join together to breathe joy and song into the resistance, and to uplift and center women’s voices.”

I’m sure you can agree with the women of the RCC when they sing that “Everybody Deserves to Be Free.” Deva Mahal, (who happens to be the daughter of blues icon Taj Mahal) takes the lead.

It can be difficult to find joy these days. I hope this song, from another difficult time, helps.

From the Resistance Revival Chorus’ YouTube video notes:

This song is near and dear to our hearts and our mission. It comes to us through the Black church from gospel music legend Shirley Caesar and we are proud to offer our version at a time when joy and healing are so needed.Self-filmed during quarantine at the height of the pandemic, this video — directed by Geneva Peschka and edited by Maximilla Lukacs with animation by Jenny Scales — illustrates how our intrinsic individual and collective joy can never be locked up, shut down or taken away, even during our darkest struggles.

Many of our greatest jazz instrumentalists and composers were inspired by King and the Civil Rights Movement.

Duke Ellington’s “King Fit The Battle of Alabam” is an example. As Paul Devlin wrote for Slate in 2013:

Duke Ellington’s Tribute to Martin Luther King, 50 Years Later

In 1963, Duke Ellington directed and narrated My People, a song-and-dance revue he wrote about African-American history, which was presented in Chicago as part of the Century of Negro Progress Exposition. The album finally became available once again this past September, 20 years after its last re-release. (The new version also has 15 more tracks than previous releases.)

The revue’s most striking song is a stunning tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “King Fit the Battle of Alabam.” Ellington, outraged by the actions of Bull Connor and the police in Birmingham, Ala., in April 1963, re-imagined King as the protagonist of “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho,” writing a powerful, forward-looking salute not only to King but to Birmingham’s courageous black residents as well. In Ellington’s song, one of Connor’s dogs pulls “his Uncle Bull’s coat,” and says, “That baby acts like he don’t give a damn. Are you sure we’re still in Alabam?”

Here’s "King Fit The Battle Of Alabam," sung by The Irving Bunton Singers.

From Reminiscing In Tempo’s YouTube video notes:

Recorded at Universal Studios in Chicago. August 20, 1963.Duke composed My People for Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Celebration 'A Century of Negro Progress Exposition' and the elaborate production ran from August 16 to September 2, 1963 in the Arie Crown Theater at Chicago's McCormick Place.In 1963, Robert Morris was a young undergraduate music major at DePaul University's School of Music and a member of the Irving Bunton Singers. Duke appointed him arranger for all of the choral music for My People.

My People was being performed in Chicago...when the historic March on Washington took place August 28, 1963 during which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the legendary "I Have a Dream" speech.

Jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane was deeply moved by King and the movement for civil rights, composing the powerful piece “Alabama” in the wake of the deadly September 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church—or more accurately, King’s speech that followed.

[Pianist McCoy] Tyner told jazz historian Ashley Kahn for his 2002 book A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album the piece’s melodic line was derived from the rhythms of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. that Coltrane read in a newspaper.

Here is Coltrane’s full performance of “Alabama” on Ralph J. Gleason’s public television series, “Jazz Casual.”

For those unfamiliar with King’s eulogy for the four little Black girls killed in the attack, here’s the audio.

From King’s “Eulogy for the Martyred Children”:

These children -- unoffending, innocent, and beautiful -- were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.

And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician [Audience:] (Yeah) who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. (Speak) They have something to say to every Negro (Yeah) who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.

Herbie Hancock’s “I Have A Dream” is the opening piece on his album “The Prisoner.” As music critic Derek Anderson wrote of the composition in 2020:

Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous phrase I Have a Dream, lent its name to the album opener. It’s an ambitious eleven minute epic, and was followed by the title-track. Its composer, Herbie Hancock, explained that The Prisoner is about: “how black people have been imprisoned for a long time.”  Firewater was meant to symbolise the duality of the oppressor and the oppressed. Fire was meant to symbolise the heat in violence as well as the abuse of power, while the feeling of water recalls Dr. Martin Luther King. He Who Lives In Fear refers to Dr King as he “had to live in an atmosphere charged with intimidation.” Herbie Hancock explained how Promise Of The Sun which closes the album symbolises: “how the sun promises life and freedom to all living things, and yet blacks are not yet free.” 

Have a listen.

When it comes to R&B, hip-hop, and rap, I never fail to be uplifted by John Legend and Common’s performance of their Oscar-winning song “Glory,” from the movie “Selma.” 

They teamed up for a socially distanced performance at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, which was held virtually due to COVID-19.

Common also partnered with will i.am in 2006 to record “A Dream” for the film “Freedom Writers.”

I have a very long list of additional musical tributes to MLK and the movement, and no more space to include them here in today’s story, so look for tons of bonus content in the comments. 

Additionally, find previous stories about MLK and the Civil Rights Movement below.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. loved Black music and musicians loved him back

Black Music Sunday: Celebrating and honoring the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

From Nina Simone to Buffalo Springfield (and beyond): When music becomes an anthem for a movement

The struggle continues, but how are you planning to celebrate Dr. King’s day?