Search - Various Artists :: Movin on Up

Power of music helped build a bridge between the races...

Stephen Cabral | New England | 01/31/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a powerful 13 song collection of songs that were important to the civil rights movement. It opens up with "Mississippi Goddamn" by Nina Simone which she wrote in reaction to a church bombing in Alabama which killed four little girls. It hits hard with the angry lyric..."Alabama's got me so upset, Tennessee made me lose my rest, but everybody knows Mississippi---Goddamn".



Probably my favorite song here is Otis Redding's version of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come". A young Stevie Wonder does a soulful version of Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind". There are a couple of great Curtis Mayfield tunes appropriately including "Move On Up", Aretha singing "Think", Sly with "Stand", a very strong cover of Nina Simone's "To Be Young, Gifted & Black" by Donnie Hathaway and the classic "Respect Yourself" by The Staple Singers.



I believe that the power of music helped build a bridge between blacks and whites in the same way that sports did. All of a sudden, white America started finding African-Americans like Muhammad Ali, Willie Mays and Bill Russell in their living rooms alongside Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder and James Brown. And James himself probably prevented race riots in Boston by allowing his Boston Garden performance to be broadcasted live on local TV on the night of MLK's assassination, which kept a lot of people home and off the street. Ironically, he even had white people singing "Say It Loud (I'm Black & I'm Proud)" which is also included in this collection along with "I Don't Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing".



Sadly, this great music is pretty much dead today.

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