HARLEM STAGE, OHBM CONCERT, BED-STUY 2020

Reed. “They were involved in the movement while others were not. It shows they had a voice that was often neglected by the mainstream.”

Lives Matter. It became a global movement. They marched relentlessly, in protest under a yellow sun into the dark of a gray night.

The composer and drummer Max Roach was one of the most politically active jazz musicians. Along with Charles Mingus, he led a rebel festival during the Newport Jazz Festival to protest the treatment of jazz musicians. The two also co-founded one of the first artist-owned record labels, Debut Records, in 1952.

Roach consistently explored new forms of musical expression from his early days, from perfecting bebop with Kenny Clarke to his percussion ensemble M’Boom and his solo concerts demonstrating that one drum set could keep an audience mesmerized on the edge of sound. He performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and with dance companies such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dianne McIntyre Sounds in Motion, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. He took to hip-hop, performing with Fab Five Freddy and the New York Break Dancers. For Roach, jazz had no boundaries, no limitations.

As a political activist and music warrior, his “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite” (Candid Records, 1961) was one of the essential jazz albums during the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. The album includes five tracks that reflect on the Proclamation and the growing African independence movements of the 1950s. Roach and vocalist Abbey Lincoln perform on all tracks, and there is a guest performance by saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. In 2022, the album was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Roach collaborated with lyricist and vocalist Oscar Brown, Jr. for a planned performance in 1963 for the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Now, over a half century later, the album retains its defiant stance as Part IV of the Harlem Stage series Black Arts Movement: “Examined.” On February 24, Harlem Stage (150 Convent Avenue) will present tap dancer Michela Marino Lerman’s Love Movement, performing and re-imagining Roach’s revolutionary “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” (7:30 p.m.–9 p.m.).

Lerman, winner of the 2019 Hoofer Award, was mentored by some of the masters of tap dance, including Gregory Hines, Buster Brown, Peg Leg Bates, and Marion Coles. Love Movement, Marino Lerman’s ensemble, will include tappers Orlando Hernández and Roxanne King, bassist/music director Russell Hall, vocalist Charenee Wade, saxophonist Ebban Dorsey, drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, and pianist Miki Yamanaka.

Preceding the performance poet, novelist and playwright Ishmael Reed will join Harlem Stage Associate Artistic Director and Curator in Residence Carl Hancock Rux to discuss Roach’s “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.” Reed was a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop in the early 1960s. “Max’s album was a good example of artists responding to politics,” said

For tickets, visit the website: harlemstage. org. An additional performance has been added on February 25 at 7 p.m.

One Hundred Black Men, Inc. (OHBM) of New York will celebrate their 60th anniversary on February 22 at Jazz at Lincoln Center. This year, for the first time, OHBM will present the Diamond Legacy Benefit Concert, an all-star soul line-up with musical director and orchestral arranger Ray Chew and Friends, featuring R&B legends Jeffery Osborn, Howard Hewitt, and Ruben Studdard, at 7:30 p.m., in the Rose Room after their gala and awards presentation. For tickets, visit the website: ohbm.org.

The sun shines at midnight! Stars jumping the high seas until dawn. No sleep for the weary, just blues pushing through. The land where the American flag was stained with blood even before its 13 colonies.

From the moment our ancestors stepped from the Door of No Return, they felt impact of the right to take the ancestors, looting them from their native land, to terrorize and brutalize them in this new land, where they were the victims of an unjust government, where Black lives weren’t respected, where beautiful Black bodies could be mutilated with bullets or rope as the social structure allowed killers freedom. This has been the legal agenda for centuries: white men in blue uniforms, white men in casual clothes, white men just knowing they could and would. Time passed and years drifted by, but Black Lives Matter hadn’t gained any international talk, only whispers that shouted in the wind and holla’d in early morning and damn near all night.

In 1955, Mamie Till Bradley shouted, “Look what they did to my son, his casket has to be open, I need to let everyone see what they done to my son.” Everyone saw young Emmett Till; everyone was emotionally shattered, enraged, crazy enough to do something outrageous, but instead, the rage caught fire deep inside the pit of their souls like a raging barn fire with no access to water and no way to put it out. Beautiful, handsome Black bodies keep getting mutilated; no jail, just paid leave; no time, just so what.

Into the 21st century, Black Lives are still annihilated in the streets of Amerika [CQ/KFM], as screams and protests filled streets running with anger, broken bottles of animosity, chants of “Get back, go back, no nobody going to turn me around.”

Black power—the struggle continues. Look what he did to her son. George Floyd, everyone can see live in the moment. Look what they did to his brother, look what was done to their father, everyone can see—it’s on TV! Black Lives Matter—damn right Black

A statement had to be made that the world could see something to feel, to hold onto. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser of Washington, D.C., had a mural painted with the words “Black Lives Matter” in 50-foot-tall letters, in yellow paint, all caps, on the pavement just outside the White House, officially renamed “Black Lives Matter Plaza NW.” Her concept caught fire, yellow paint burned the streets of Black America with heavy soul and artistic deliverance in Harlem and Bed-Stuy. You know: Do or die!

The concept took on a greater impact in Brooklyn under the auspices of Billie Holiday Theater director Dr. Indira Elwaroo and theater creative director Hollis King. For them, it wasn’t a matter of painting Black Lives Matter but more importantly, to use the paint to say the names of those Black bodies who were innocently victimized; killed without any regard, no respect. Say their names, remember their names, spell their names—all 150 names. Keep them close to your hearts, keep their families in everyday prayers. All those names, those Black bodies came alive on that Brooklyn Street (Fulton Avenue) under the hands of artists, who gave their time and empathy for lives brutally eradicated.

Those names included George Junius Stinner, Jr., who at age 14 in 1944 was executed by electric chair by the state of South Carolina. There was senior citizen Eleanor Bumpurs, who was shot by a police officer with a 12gauge shotgun; and Eric Garner, brutally killed by police while in a choke hold.

Their names were painted, their souls heard the cries, the cheers brightening family’s and friends’ lives, if only for a moment. “My only regret is I wasn’t able to have the street closed off to traffic so this Black Lives mural could stand as a living memorial, but there were too many complications,” said New York City Councilmember Robert E. Cornegy (36th District). He was instrumental in organizing the BLM mural and getting city officials involved in the project.

Artists from the community and throughout the city volunteered from all ethnic groups. “Shows what community art can do for people,” said King.

Fortunately, King and Elwaroo (who is also a writer and editor) didn’t stop with the mural. They decided to keep these names alive with a book about the mural entitled “Black Lives Matter/ Bed-Stuy 2020 Our Open Casket to the World.” This coffee-table book is required. It’s a reminder of what is reality in Amerika, it’s the resilience and creativity of black America. It’s the saxophone of John Coltrane on “Alabama” and “A Love Supreme”; it’s Pharoah Sanders playing the “Creator Has a Master Plan” and Billie Holiday giving us the blues, while Nina Simone shouts “Mississippi Goddam.”

The images photographed by King (with creative assistance from Izac Sissoko) are astounding. They capture human beings—Black folks who work every day, beautiful Black children going through a day in Brooklyn smiling, laughing, loving everything around them. Look at that ballet dancer in mid-air—what a pose, how can he do that, check the brother—so clean; you have to see this photo, Black women so beautiful in their glory, the sun melts. His photos are in the now, in the future, in spirit, in love, in real time. Life may not be easy, but it’s ours to enjoy and do all we can to do better without being hindered or harassed by the police, intimidated by fools. The book—get it !! You know the cliché: A picture is worth 1,000 words—even more when King is the photographer.

Jazz Foundation hosts free concert on Feb.18

On Saturday, Feb. 18, at Harlem Heritage Tours (104 Lenox Avenue, between 115th and 116th Streets) from 6:30–9:30 p.m., piano masters Bertha Hope and Denton Darien; saxophonist/vocalist John Satchmo Mannan; Alvin Ellington Flythe on tenor sax; Tarik Shah on bass; and many others will celebrate the music and contributions of Louis Armstrong, John the Jazz idiom.

The concert is live and free, and supported by the New York State Jazz Literacy & Arts Society; the law firm of Lipsig, Shapey Manus and Moverman; and the Jazz Foundation of America.