Denise Sullivan

Author, Arts & Cultural Reporter and Worker

January 20, 2025 • 5:03 pm 1

Hold on to your dreams

January 15 would have been the 96th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a long road to the third Monday of the month when all 50 states observe the federal holiday named in his honor. Largely owed for making the dream of MLK Day a reality is Stevie Wonder: Back in 1980, he wrote the pointed song, “Happy Birthday,” then launched a 41-city U.S. tour (and invited Gil Scott-Heron along) to promote the idea which was first mooted by Rep. John Conyers in 1968. The musical efforts were ultimately the key in collecting the millions of citizen signatures that had a direct impact on Congress passing the law signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, declaring a day for MLK.

Observed for the first time in 1986, some states were late to participate, however, by the turn of the 21st Century, all were united in some form of remembrance of the civil rights giant. “Happy Birthday,” which served as Wonder’s King holiday campaign theme (and is now the “official” King holiday tune) is the last track on Hotter Than July. The album also features “Master Blaster,” Wonder’s tribute to Bob Marley (Marley had been scheduled for the tour until he fell too ill which was how Scott-Heron came to participate). In his memoir The Last Holiday, Scott-Heron details his own journey with music and activism, as he retraces the long and winding road Wonder took to bring home the last US federal holiday, with the help of a song.

The Hotter Than July tour brought Scott-Heron and Wonder to Oakland, where they played in the name of King, along with Rodney Franklin and Carlos Santana. In a weird turn of events, the concert on December 8, 1980, coincided with the night John Lennon was killed. The musicians and crew learned of the tragedy from a backstage television, and the job fell to Wonder, with Scott-Heron and the other musicians at his side, to deliver the shocking news to an arena of music fans.

“For the next five minutes he spoke spontaneously about his friendship with John Lennon: how they’d met, when and where, what they had enjoyed together, and what kind of man he’d felt Lennon was,” wrote Scott-Heron.  “That last one was key, because it drew a line between what had happened in New York that day and what had happened on that motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, a dozen years before.  And it drew a circle around the kind of men who stood up for both peace and change.”   Scott-Heron devotes the final pages of The Last Holiday to a remembrance of how the murder of Lennon fueled the final drive to push for a federal observance of the official MLK Day.

The politics of right and wrong make everything complicated

To a generation who’s never had a leader assassinated

But suddenly it feels like ’68 and as far back as it seems

One man says “Imagine” and the other says “I have a dream” -Gil Scott-Heron

Scott-Heron was a lifelong campaigner and champion for human rights himself, beginning on his 1970 live album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. There is no doubt he would have much to say of the unfortunate confluence of this year’s King holiday with the inauguration and the project known as 2025. The parenthetical title refrain from his song, “Alien (Hold On To Your Dreams)” (see clip below following his topical poem, “Whitey on the Moon/(Mars)”) has been spinning around in my head, alongside the words of Dr. King collected from one of his sermons from the early ’60s. Whatever confronts us today, whatever dangers real or perceived that touch our friends, families and fellow humans in these perilous times, in these words and songs may you find comfort and be inspired to act in love.

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. – MLK, Jr.

Hold on to the dream.

Filed under: anti-racist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Bob Marley, Concerts, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Gil Scott-Heron, Immigration Reform, income disparity, Poetry, , , , , , , , ,

January 14, 2024 • 7:19 pm 3

For MLK Day: Len Chandler’s Shadow Dream – in memory of a singer, a movement & its leader

Len Chandler was a protest singer, movement worker and unsung hero from the Civil Rights Era, a frontline campaigner in the fight for voting rights, racial and economic justice and against wars of aggression. He performed with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez at the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom in 1963 where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic “I Have A Dream” speech. In 2021, I was commissioned to write a piece on Chandler and his relationship to Bob Dylan in front of the opening of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK. The essay is emerging here for the first time before its publication as a commemorative limited edition booklet on the life of Chandler (with expanded content). A portion of the book’s earnings will be contributed to voting rights organizations. Order here: Len Chandler: Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows/In memory of a movement hero

“You have to take the lead from somewhere and there were only a few performers around who wrote songs, and of them, my favorite was Len Chandler,” wrote Bob Dylan in his book, Chronicles.

Among the singing foot soldiers in the civil rights movement, the students and teachers from coast to coast who sat in, stood up and rode on freedom’s highway, and of all the folksinging pamphleteers and poets who swarmed Greenwich Village in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, only Len Chandler emerged from that fabled period an under-looked groundbreaker and a foundational freedom singer, a kind of cosmic twin to Bob Dylan.

“We talked all the time,” said Chandler. “I can’t remember what we talked about but half the time, it would be philosophical, our different approaches to things. We could talk for two days on whether it’s a straight line or circle,” he said, recalling that vortex, that wrinkle in time in Greenwich Village where the cultural happenings of the ‘60s were beginning to reveal themselves. “I’d argue today that it’s a circle. The circle is built into everything. It’s built into our DNA, it’s built into the way the cosmos is formed. Everything is circular.”

The Village swirled with poets, playwrights, and artists of all stripes, mixed with locals and others from afar, far-out people who sought a fluid place to become who they thought they were meant to be – the kind of place and kind of time where young Len Chandler (from Ohio) and young Bob Dylan (from Minnesota) could meet, become friends and learn how to frame, shape and deliver a song.

“He sang quasi-folk stuff with a commercial bent and was energetic, had that thing that people call charisma,” Dylan wrote. “Len performed like he was mowing down things. His personality overrode his repertoire. Len also wrote topical songs, front-page things.”

Ordering info Len Chandler: Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows

Filed under: anti-racist, anti-war, Bob Dylan, Civil Rights, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Poetry, , , ,

Archives

Recent Posts

Browse by subject or theme

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.