Sunday Gospel Set . 47 | Blood on the Fields, by Wynton Marsalis - a sampler.

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Join us every Sunday to give praise with the Sunday Gospel Set on Radio Roofscape. This week we're sampling Wynton Marsalis's sprawling and flawed 1994 Blood on the Fields, following the trials of a slace couple and their escape to freedom. Here's the set list, a series of short excerpts from most of the sections of this 3-1/2 hour work.

Calling the Indians Out
Move Over
You Don't Hear No Drums
The Market Place
Soul for Sale
Plantation Coffee March
Work Song (Blood on the Fields)

Lady's Lament
Flying High
Oh We Have a Friend in Jesus
God Don't Like Ugly
Juba and a O'Brown Squaw
Follow the Drinking Gourd
My Soul Fell Down
Forty Lashes
What a Fool I've Been
Back to Basics

I Hold Out My Hand
Look and See
The Sun Is Gonna Shine
Will the Sun Come Out?
The Sun Is Gonna Shine
Chant to Call the Indians Out
Calling the Indians Out
Follow the Drinking Gourd
Freedom Is In the Trying
Due North

Image ... Boston Vigilance Committee poster.

Sunday Gospel Set . 42 | John Wilson

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Join us every Sunday to give praise with the Sunday Gospel Set on Radio Roofscape. We usually feature a music video from the set here, but today it's our pleasure to feature a show by an African American artist - John Wilson: Prints & Drawings, an exhibition of works on paper 1943 - 2004. The show runs until the end of April at Martha Richardson Fine Art, 38 Newbury Street, Boston. GO!

And here's the set list for March 28, 2010 ...

Yolanda Adams - Open My Heart
Kurt Carr & The Kurt Carr Singers - For Every Mountain
Shirley Caesar - The Praying Slave Lady
Fred Hammond & Radical for Christ - I Wanna Know Your Ways
The Clark Sisters - It's Gonna Be Alright
Disciples of Christ (D.O.C.) - Deeper
Cece Winans - On That Day (featuring Lauryn Hill)
Kirk Franklin - September

Image ... Native Son. John Wilson, 1945. Courtesy of Martha Richardson Fine Art, 38 Newbury Street, Boston.

Allan Rohan Crite | Streetscape . 1

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Allan Rohan Crite's townhouse at 410 Columbus Avenue in Boston has been boarded up and appeared abandoned ever since I can remember. But a few weeks ago scaffolding, a demolition chute, dumpster and building permits suddenly appeared. The artists's former digs, studio and gallery are being renovated to the standards of the million dollar South End. Now, before the paint dries, might be a good time to take a fresh look at this painter who so lovingly portrayed the black community.


I've only done one piece of work in my whole life and I am still at it.

I wanted to paint people of color as normal humans.

I tell the story of man through the black figure.




Image ... Marble Players. Allan Rohan Crite, 1938.

Dr. King in Boston . 5 | Paths to the Past

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Personally, meanwhile, King was waging a concerted campaign to marry. Having decided upon a career in the ministry as a Baptist pastor, at least temporarily, he need to get married. In the black church of the time, and even today, an unmarried pastor was unacceptable. Marriage was a must. The pastor's wife was considered a pillar of the church and a gurantee of the pastor's stability and good character. Ministry without marriage, and marriage without children, was unheard of.

Imperious Daddy King, intent on ML joining him after graduation and eventually succeeding him at Ebenezer, had been forcefully pressing the marriage issue for some time. His plan had been to match Martin with a suitable member of elite Negro society in Atlanta, but the many attempts had all gone awry.

King, although often in conflict with his father, felt a deep connection with his family. He frequently called home, collect, to chat for two or three hours, mostly with his mother, describing every detail of his days - his dates. The pressure was on to find a wife, both from within and without.

Coretta Scott King - in a 2003 telephone interview with a Boston Globe reporter - described meeting an eager Martin - over the phone - after her number was slipped to him by a mutual friend.

The truth is, Martin and I met on the telephone.

He said, 'I like the way you talk, and I'd like to meet you.' We agreed to meet for lunch the next day at Sharaf's on Massachusetts Avenue, and he said, 'I usually make it in 10 minutes, but tomorrow, I'll make it in 7.'

On our first date he deliberately asked a question that had to do with capitalism versus communism. ... I remember I made an intelligent comment, and he said, 'Oh, I see you know something other than music.' I thought, of course I did. I was a graduate of Antioch College. I had thoughts of my own.

He said, You know, you have everything I ever wanted in a wife: intelligence, beauty, character, and personality. When can I see you again? I said I really didn't know because I had a tight schedule.

... he ways always trying to convince me I was it ... but I kept struggling with my own ambitions for a long time. I knew getting married would lead me away from performing and the direction I'd hoped to go.

We got married in 1953, and the rest is history. When I finally opened myself up to the relationship, I knew this was my direction.

... Continued from January 14, 2010. Note: the title has changed to Dr. King in Boston from Dr. King's Time in Boston. Happy MLK day!

Dr. King's Time in Boston . 4 | Paths to the Past

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Personalism posits that the person is central, both the starting and end point, for understanding the world, indeed the universe. It believes that all moral truth begins with the absolute value of the person, the sacredness of the individual's being, consciousness and personality. Personalism is a philosophy which, applied to theology as it is in the Boston school, strongly affirms the existence and importance of the soul in each human and sentient being and reaffirms the existence and essense of God in a rather complex, nuanced and unique relationship with each person. It also is quite critical of impersonalistic theories and thought - social Darwinism, Communism, etc. Martin explained Personalism this way.

I studied philosophy and theology at Boston University under Edgar S. Brightman and L. Harold DeWolf. ... It was mainly under these teachers that I studied Personalistic philosophy - the theory that the clue to the meaning of ultimate reality is found in personality. This personal idealism remains today my basic philosophical position. Personalism's insistence that only personality - finite and infinite - is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality.

A key to understanding King is that he was a philosopher, by far the most important of the 20th century, a philosopher who shook society to its core and changed the world. Dr. King's was professionaly trained, over many years, in philosophy. As a child he was immersed in the Baptist fundamentalism of his father's church. But he developed deep doubts and began studying philosophy as an undergraduate at Morehouse College, then continued at Crozer, University of Pennsylvania, Boston University and Harvard. His life and actions were animated by a deep love, understanding and use of philosophy. King's six books mention many philosophers and philosophical concepts. In fact his first book, Stride Toward Freedom (1958) sites 18 different philosophers just in telling the story of the 381 day Montgomery bus boycott sparked by Rosa Parks.

... Continued from January 12, 2010.

Dr. King's Time in Boston . 2 | Paths to the Past

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In early Seeptember 1951 ML, as his father called him, packed his bachelor belongings into a shiny new green Chevrolet and headed north for the thousand mile drive to Boston. The Chevy, equipped with the recently introduced Powerglide automatic transmission that he'd admired in a friend's car, was a gift from Daddy King as his father, Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., was often called by his family and flock. It was his reward for graduating at the top of his class after two years at Crozier Theological Seminary outside of Philadelphia.

Upon his arrival King, from the apartheid Jim Crow South, soon encountered the harsh reality of the segregated North.

I remember very well trying to find a place to live upon arrival in the fall of 1951 [in Boston]. I went into place after place where there were signs that rooms were for rent. They were until they found out I was a Negro and suddenly they had just been rented.

After some searching he and Phillip Lenud, a friend from Morehouse College where King did his undergraduate work, found an apartment at 397 Massachusetts Avenue across from the Savoy Ballroom. The Savoy has long ceased stomping (replaced by an apartment complex at 400 Mass. Ave.), but King's digs still stand, a few doors down from the Orange Line T station and marked with a small bronze plaque.

... Continued from January 8, 2010.

Dr. King's Time in Boston | Paths to the Past

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Dr. Martin Luther King's time in Boston had a profound influence on him. Malcom X's life and work was forged in Boston.

Here, Martin did his doctoral studies in Christian theology at Boston University. Malcolm learned to read and created his own education while imprisoned for burglary in Charlestown and other state penitentiaries.

Both sons of Baptists ministers preached and ministered here, Martin in Baptist churches, Malcolm at Nation of Islam temples.

Both left to blaze on the worldwide stage, but both returned back to Boston again and again and always acknowledged the inluence the city had upon them.

Martin arrived in Boston in the fall of 1951 to enroll at B.U. for graduate studies just as Malcolm was finishing his intense prison self-education, receiving parole in 1952.

Martin, born on January 15, 1929, would be 81 this year. Malcolm, born May 19, 1929, would be 85. Both could be alive today and serving as important American elder statesmen of the stature of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, who's 92 this year. But both lives were brutally cut short by assasins bullets, Martin in 1965 at age 39 and Malcolm in 1965 at 40.

We'll talk about Dr. King's time in Boston in the January 15th issue of Roofscape, the date of his birthday. In the May 15th issue we'll look at Malcolm's, around the time of his.


Image ... Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Courtesy of MLK Online.