Notes on Freedom Rides ‘In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don't know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country’ – Dick Gregory ‘America… just a nation of 200-million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable’ – Hunter S Thompson ‘I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally’. – WC Fields ‘I carry a knife now because I read in a white magazine that all in America black people carry knives. So I rushed out and bought me one’ – Redd Foxx ‘Y'know, music is a beautiful thing. When I'm reincarnated, I'm gonna come back as a musical note! That way can't nobody capture me. They can use the hell out of me but ain't nothin' too much they can do to me. They can mess me up. They can play the wrong note. They can play a C, but they can't really destroy a C. All it is, is a tone. So I'm gonna come back as a note!’ – Rahsaan Roland Kirk Yes Rahsaan – whether you believe that there is a god who created us or that we are just here to eventually become worm food, music is the most wonderful and powerful thing ever created. It ended the war in Vietnam and strengthened the Civil Rights movement. It also fueled the Third Reich but that is another tale…
A poem from Charles Mingus which opens our concert: ‘This mule ain’t from Moscow. This mule ain’t from the South. But this mule's had some learnin' , Mostly mouth-to-mouth. This mule could be called stubborn, and lazy, but in a clever sorta’ way This mule could be workin’, waitin’ and learnin’ and plannin’ For a sacred kind of day – A day when burnin’ sticks and crosses is not mere child’s play, But a madman in his most incandescent bloom Whose lover’s soul is imperfection, in its most lustrous groom. So stand, fast young Romeo Soothe in contemplation Thy burning whole and aching thigh Your stubbornness is ever-living And cruel anxiety is about to die. Freedom for your daddy Freedom for your momma Freedom for your brothers and sisters But no freedom for me. Freedom for your daddy’s daddy Freedom for your momma’s momma Freedom for your brothers and sisters But no freedom for me. Freedom for your daddy’s daddy Freedom for your momma’s momma Freedom for your brothers and sisters But no freedom for me.
This is the third time that the Freedom Rides concert will be presented – the music represents the great side of the human spirit – and a slice of American art at its best from a very turbulent time when America was not at its best… and what the power of music did, and can do. – Hal Willner
Hal Willner, photograph by Lou Reed
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