Monday Musicale with the Maestro – September 21, 2020 – The Spiritual Odyssey of an African-American Icon Anthony Davis’ X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X

The Spiritual Odyssey of an African-American Icon

Anthony Davis’ X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X

In 1986, while I was Associate Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, I had the opportunity to meet one of America’s most prominent composers, John Adams. He was in town to hear the orchestra play his masterpiece Harmonielehre, which is German for “Study in Harmony”.

At our post-concert dinner, I asked him what new piece he was working on. “I’m composing an opera about Richard Nixon,” he replied. Incredulous, I responded, “You’re putting me on! This is going to be a satire, right?” He answered me quietly, “Oh no, we are very serious about this.”

I’m glad John didn’t let my incredulity sway him from doing the piece, for his opera Nixon in China (1987) is now among the 20th-century operas most often performed. It was also one of the earliest and most successful in a trend that still continues to this day: dramatizing the lives of contemporary Americans in opera.

Arrival Scene from Nixon in China (click link to view video)

Despite my initial shock at John’s subject matter, the focus on such figures is understandable. After all, Americans can more readily identify with the life of Richard Nixon than with mythological figures, gods, or European royalty. Much has been made of this cultural trend, and some of these newly “operatic” Americans include Jacqueline Kennedy, Anna Nicole Smith, Walt Disney, Jerry Springer, and O.J. and Nicole Simpson. (This last opera is in my opinion an especially tasteless work.)

But the trend actually began in 1986 with an opera about Malcolm X (the African-American civil rights pioneer) written by two African-Americans. X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X was composed by Anthony Davis (born in 1951 and pictured here), with a libretto by his cousin Thulani Davis (b. 1949).

After the highly successful premiere of this opera in 1986, Davis went on to create several more about American lives, including Tania (about Patty Hearst) and The Central Park Five, for which he won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

In I990 I was very flattered when Anthony chose me to conduct the first recording of X. We recorded it in 1991 in New York City, with a great cast and the phenomenal Orchestra of Saint Luke’s. Upon its release, the album received rave reviews, and in 1992 it was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Malcolm Little was born into a life of urban poverty in 1925. Like so many others trapped in this unhealthy environment, he slid into a life of petty crime and found himself in jail at the age of 20. However, during his two years in prison, he underwent a remarkable transformation. This conversion began when he joined the religious sect the Nation of Islam. His siblings were members of this religious group, and they had found the tenets to be meaningful and helpful. The sect advocated for Black self-reliance and a return of African-Americans to Africa, the place of their origin, in order to live peacefully in a world where they would no longer have to endure the agony of white supremacy and discrimination.

These principles deeply impressed Malcolm–especially the maxims about self-reliance and honoring one’s mother country. As a result, he adopted a new fastidiousness and a sense of discipline and pride in identity from this association. This new life was confirmed with a new name: Malcolm X. He explained that the X stood for his ancestral name, which as the descendant of slaves (like myself) he would never know. After leaving jail and becoming associated with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, he became a community activist and was internationally known as an eloquent civil rights advocate.

Because his public comments were uncompromisingly blunt, he was considered to be a controversial figure. But there was a method to his manner. His impassioned remarks were designed to wake up whites and Blacks to the racial American nightmare that still persisted—100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation—as a perversion of the American Dream. He loudly proclaimed that the time for patience and temperance was well and truly over.

I first heard of Malcolm X from my parents when I was 9 years old. They were extremely unhappy about his aggressive, in-your-face approach, which they felt was doing more to hurt the civil rights movement than to help it. They preferred the far less militant rhetoric of Martin Luther King. And indeed there were many white and Black Americans who saw Malcolm only as a troublemaker unwilling to be “practical” in his demands for equal justice.

It wasn’t until years later that I was able to come to my own conclusions about his legacy when I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X (written with the assistance of Alex Haley, author of Roots). Malcolm’s journey is far too important and complicated for me to distill here. But to those of you who value history and seek to understand the present via the past, I would recommend the autobiography, Spike Lee’s brilliant biopic with Denzel Washington as Malcolm X, and the modern definitive biography: Malcolm X—a Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (Viking Press).

The title of this book is a clue to the Malcolm X “problem,” as well as to his final redemption. To the last he reflected and reinvented himself—transforming even the anger and the rhetoric that had so alarmed my parents. To fixate on one portion of his journey and miss that final part is to misunderstand the man. Malcolm’s epic odyssey begins with his teen years as a lost soul and a criminal. In his middle years he was a brilliant and articulate speaker whose remarks, unhappily, were not always free of bigotry.

But in April 1964, on a pilgrimage to Mecca, he underwent a religious conversion. He said of his experience, “I saw Muslims of all colors from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans, all interacting with each other as EQUALS.” Thus, it was revealed to him that, as I believe, racism isn’t just a Black or a white problem; it is a human problem. Malcolm’s epiphany brought him a measure of spiritual peace. And when he returned to America, he was a new man who espoused a brighter message of hope and brotherhood. He left what had become a contentious relationship with the Nation of Islam to embrace Orthodox Islam, and he again took a new name: El -Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

But this redemptive final transformation was to be short-lived. In 1965, as he began a speech in a public ballroom, he was assassinated by several members of the Nation of Islam, who were enraged that he had rejected their group. He was only 39 years old. Three years later, Martin Luther King would be assassinated at the same age.

On December 12, 1964, the year before his death, Malcolm delivered a speech to the domestic Peace Corps. And his words (see excerpt below) are even more relevant today, during an era of partisanship made even more inflamed by sophisticated and effective propaganda.

In our first video, speaker Dasan Ahanu reads this remarkable speech during our concert at the Hayti Heritage Center. Dasan Ahanu was born in Raleigh, has published three books of poetry, and is currently affiliated with both Harvard University and the Hayti Heritage Center.

Our second video presents the DSO and bass-baritone Jason McKinney in “The Prison Scene,” one of the highlights of Anthony Davis’ Opera X. The full opera was recorded on Gramavision and has been out of print for several years. But I’m pleased to share with you today our performance of this powerful moment from the opera.

In this scene, as Malcolm is handcuffed and is being interrogated, he reveals the origin and depth of his rage at an unjust society. And he ponders his inability to transcend his personal dark night of the soul.

Here are excerpts from Thulani Davis’ unflinching and confrontational text:

Davis’ music here is a musical melting pot of jazz, blues, melodic beauty, bracing atonality, and sophisticated rhythmic patterns from Asian and African music.

Portraying Malcolm X in our DSO performance is bass-baritone Jason McKinney. He is a singer, actor, composer, and teacher who has performed all over America, including the White House. I’ve conducted Jason many times with several North Carolina groups including the DSO, the North Carolina Opera, and the North Carolina Symphony.

What I honor about Malcolm X is his intellect, heart, courage, integrity, and his ability to embrace a transformed perspective which suffused his last years (and last messages) with feelings of brotherhood and hope. I have to believe that no one is beyond redemption, including myself. And that what we do for ourselves and for others as we learn to heed “the better angels of our nature” is how God will judge our human journey.

On a visit to New York I was able to meet the widow of Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz. She was gracious and dignified, and I wish I had written down her comments or tape-recorded them. However, I do remember her saying that a few days before his death, a reporter asked her husband, “And just what is the cost of freedom?”

His answer: “The cost of freedom is death.”

William Henry Curry
Music Director
Durham Symphony Orchestra

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