MLK Commemoration: A Beautiful Symphony of Brotherhood

Find this wonderfully evocative and emotionally uplifting musical program with bio notes carefully chosen for MLK's life, long-time love of music and song
here It's likely this could be live-streamed or accessed on podcast from archives later...for those outside the reach of the US...

I'm prefacing my notes on this fabulous, heart-stirring program with this quote which bites particularly hard at this time with so much corporate compromise and so much US-sponsored killing...including the SEETHING anger so many Gazans now express toward Israel, US, Hamas and while Israel so arrogantly says, if we come back the Palestinians in Gaza "will only have themselves to blame..." Unbelievable blind self-righteousness!

"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."MLK (See also the article in Salon dot com today: "Are we there yet?

LISTEN TO: A Musical Journey in the Life of Martin Luther King Jr... hosted by Terrence McNight

I am posting this as I'm listening to a radio program which just came on NPR dot org, 10 am EST -- tune in if at all possible...or perhaps find later archived...

Quite inspiring beginning with the spirituals of Mahalia Jackson singing some of the classics along with the music of Dorsey's compositions--from birth...

Later he claimed that Freedom Songs were the foundation of the Freedom Movement...

Black and White together..

While I listen to this music, I'm planning to add some of my own favorite MLK quotes...

Martin loved singing & learning piano from his mother...

The month before his 11th birthday, the film "Gone with the Wind" hit Atlanta by storm--
the choir commissioned to sing for the opening? ( A theater where blacks had to sit in a different place than the blacks-- It was Alberta King, Martin's mother's choir!)

Tune In and listen with me to all the reminders we in America are so prone to forget...

Now playing, Duke Ellington's "Black, Brown and Beige" and "King hit the battle of Alabam"..1963 Jazz festival, Ellington surprised the audience by getting up and singing this song along with his jazz choir...

More soon...keep tuning in if you are unable to get this by Radio...I will try to post audios' to some of the music later...

While Martin was in theological school, he heard the words of Gandhi which would forever influence his approach and beliefs...

Now featued, Marian Anderson at Lincoln Memorial, singing Ava Maria...who also influenced Coretta Scott...

Listen to this journey and be inspired and reminded of that which we so easily forget...

Reminders of the courage and the world watching the abuse of the children protestors...

The universal heavenly music of ODETTA

of the power of the simple song "We shall overcome"...

The bombing murder of the four girls in their church....

Listen to Jazz star, Coltrane's Alabama...

Everybody has the blues...eveybody needs love...everybody longs for faith...in music, especially...there is a stepping stone toward all of these...

MLK's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize with these words "I accept this award at the moment to win the long night of racial injustice...on behalf of the civil rights movement which is moving with determination --a majestic scorn for ...danger..

Hear: "The Freedom Now Suite"

Especially listen to Sam Cook's moving..."A change is going to come" I was born by the river....just like the river, I was running ever since, it's been a long time coming but I know a change is gonna come...O yes it well"

Then, Curis Mayfield is played...

August 6, 1965 President Johnson signed in the voting act..

Still, Dr. King is hit with stones...43 die, about 400 are injured in the Detroit, Chicago riots...he gives his sermon, I feel discouraged then says, "There is a balm in Gilead"...

Listen to this gorgeous meditative hymn..."There is a balm..."

Deliverance of his last speech...."I have a Dream" I"ve been to the mountain top...my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord...

The next day he was assassinated...

According to a witness, he said shortly before his death to play at his funeral when he may someday die, "O Lord, take my hand..." and play it real pretty...

Rebroadcast Tuesday night and other times listed as above...
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I plan to come back here to add a few more of my favorite quotes which some of the programmers of NPR may have decided to cut in order not to lose support for war...