by Ernie McCray
Two people kept Martin Luther King’s
spirit of love
breathing
for me
on MLK Day,
Steve Phillips,”
writer and founder of Democracy in Color,
and Grammy Award winning jazz trumpeter
and film score composer,
Terence Blanchard.
Mr. Phillips,
earlier in the day,
spoke at San Diego’s
All People’s Celebration,
echoing the call he’s made to progressives
in his books,
“Brown is the New White”
and “How We Win the Civil War,”
to embrace the love in us
that’s necessary
to build the power
needed to secure a multiracial democracy
and end White supremacy
and poverty
and, later in the evening,
I listened to Mr. Blanchard,
as he was being interviewed
by my friend, Cecil Lytle,
concert pianist of renown,
for UCSD-TV,
a discussion that,
when analyzed,
fit the main theme
of Martin’s dream,
people getting along
bettering themselves
as loving human beings,
highlighting how he,
at age 18
was accepted in the band
of legendary vibraphonist,
Lionel Hampton,
and then went on to play
in the bands of other
musical greats
like drummer Art Blakey,
all the while growing
as a musician and a man,
learning how to relate
with both Black and White
music makers
and coming to understand
that we’re all on the planet together
and should learn to get along
like a well-constructed
jazz song
and the next night
he and his band,
the E Collective,
performed with the
Turtle Island Quartet,
featuring a mixture of ethnicities
in a tribute to a man,
Wayne Shorter,
who, like him, blowing a trumpet,
is a genius on the saxophone,
a man, who by age, alone,
had come along
before his own
talents were discovered and honed,
keeping alive what
a man whose nickname
is “Mr. Gone,”
has soulfully
given to society
for oh-so long
in a spirit of love.
And acting out of love
is basically what
Martin asked of us
if we, as our country’s citizenry
are to survive
the racial disharmony
in our collective lives.
And those mentioned here
have kept that
spirit alive.
MLK, the greatest American Civil Rights leader in the 20th century. VIVA!