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“The Movement Revisited,” a project by bassist-composer Christian McBride, has been a work in progress for 25 years. Originally conceived in 1998, the project looks at the civil rights movement through the words of four icons in Black culture: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. ’
Then 26 years old, McBride chose the four historic giants because “they really meant something to me personally,” he said in an interview with Jazz Times. “I think after all the reading and research I’d done up to that point, those were the four people that really stood out.” McBride will perform “The Movement Revisited” in an SCP Jazz concert Feb. 2.
With the help of gospel legend J.D. Steele, McBride composed and arranged music for a big band and gospel choir to accompany the words of these four very different shape-shifters.
The Portland Arts Society in Maine gave McBride the initial commission. “They were doing some Black History Month programming, and they asked if I would compose something. The only stipulation at that time was that it had to involve a choir. I had no idea how to arrange for a choir. I’m still not that good at writing lyrics. I was quite trepidatious about accepting the gig but there was a guy named Bau Graves, who ran the Portland Arts Society, and he said, “Listen, I can put you in touch with a guy named J.D. Steele.” J.D. is as much [responsible for] this piece as I am.”
At that time, the commission was to present four concerts in New England: Portland (Maine), Lewiston (Maine), Worcester (Massachusetts) and Hartford (Connecticut). McBride recalled, “they told me to pick my own theme, do whatever you want, just make sure it fits for Black History Month.” I figured I would put music to the words of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.
For McBride, the hardest person to research was Rosa Parks, “because she’s not as well documented as the other three. She was the second woman not to get up [in the Montgomery Bus Boycott] and give up her seat on the bus. The Harvard professor Randall Kennedy wrote this amazing article on what he calls respectability politics. The idea is that there’s a certain way you should carry yourself if you want to accomplish things in life. It’s about the way things look. He made the case that the reason why Rosa Parks became the seminal figure in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and not Claudette Colvin [the first protester] was because Rosa was married, had a job, was of a certain age, while meanwhile Colvin was unmarried, had a child and was young. The idea was: Our message will get over stronger with Ms. Parks.”
Trying to find certain words or quotes from Mrs. Parks was a challenge. “I met her at the 1987 Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, DC. I was doing a gig with Delfeayo Marsalis. Rosa Parks sat right in front. I couldn’t concentrate. I was playing the wrong changes the whole set. “Rosa Parks is sitting in front!” She was every bit as wonderful and gentle as you could imagine.”
In 2005, McBride was named the creative chair for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s jazz programming. “Laura Connelly [then vice president of presentations], and I were talking about programming. I don’t know how she found out about the Movement Revisited project, but she said, “What about that piece you wrote for Black History Month about 10 years ago? The Movement or something?”
“I said, really, you know about that? I started thinking fast. I thought, well, I have the LA Phil’s resources at my fingertips. So I told her a little bit of a fib, just stretched it a little. Yeah, that’s a piece I wrote for a big band, a gospel choir and four narrators.”
Her response: “Hmm, that sounds ambitious, you wanna do it?”
McBride quickly answered yes. “Of course, I had backed myself into a corner, but it was a good thing because now I had to completely rewrite the piece for a big band.” But McBride swung into action and the new and improved version of “The Movement Revisited” had its premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall in spring 2008.
