Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 260 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
The United States has been involved in multiple wars and conflicts during the 20th and 21st centuries, including World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and the Iraq War, with over 600,000 lives lost.
Memorial Day, which is observed on the last Monday of May each year, is a day when we pay solemn remembrance for the fallen each year. In the world of Black music, there have been numerous songs that do the same. Here are a few notable ones.
The Isley Brothers, described here by Angela Johnson at The Root, were not known for political songs.
Even if you weren’t around when the band got their start in the late 1950s, you’ve definitely experienced the music of The Isley Brothers. With a sound that combines R&B, rock, funk and soul, their music has been been heavily sampled and covered by the likes of Ice Cube, The Beatles and Whitney Houston.
But while you surely know their music, you may not know that the Cincinnati, Ohio-born siblings who were known for producing sexy love ballads actually started singing gospel music as teens. Despite label changes, family tragedies and a lawsuit between two of the original members, founding member Ronald and younger brother Ernie Isley still entertain fans with the songs that first made them famous in the 1960s.
On their 1983 album “Between the Sheets” was an unlikely tune, “Ballad for the Fallen Soldier.”
Lyrics
I remember when I was much younger than now
I used to sit and listen to the news, I was the only child
And another day and another night
Wishin' daddy would come home, me and mom couldn't sleep at night
He had just went off to fight
For the things we thought were right
So determined to survive
I believe he's still alive
I sing the ballad for the fallen soldiers
This is a ballad for the fallen soldiers
I wrote to my congressman, he sends his regrets
That he's missing in action, but don't give up yet
So many people waitin' like me
Who's got the answer? What could it be?
His country wanted him to fight
For the things they thought were right
And he tried to give his all
In DC his name is on the wall
He had just went off to fight
For the things we thought were right
So determined to survive
I believe he's still alive
I rarely hear anyone talk about jazz violinist and composer William Walker, known as “Billy Bang” and his powerful compositions, inspired by his experiences as a Vietnam vet.
Jim Santella reviewed Billy Bang’s album “Vietnam: The Aftermath” for AllAboutJazz
The CD itself is painted olive drab. The cover features other shades of green in faded photographs. The music moves evenly with a peaceful country air. Dirges, dances, ceremonial rites, a little dramatic counterpoint, and swinging anthems take on surreal qualities through Billy Bang's compositions.
It's been a long time, but those memories linger. We were there to do a job, but no one could avoid immersion in the culture that ran so very different from our own. We felt at home, right away, with many aspects of the foreign landscape. After all, it was the same moon in the sky. The people seemed okay; but we trusted no one. Our search for commonality had to remain satisfied with the similarities of Nature, music, family values and our jobs. Mechanics, moms, butterflies and songs remain quite similar around the world, as long as you're not looking for the differences. We saw the fragile people who were as afraid of war as we were. We saw the determined people who made their daily living in spite of incredible obstacles. We saw a society that lived for today and hoped for a brighter tomorrow. And we remember everything, after all these years.
Andy Thomas wrote about Walker’s life for Bandcamp, in “From Soldier to Jazz Giant: The Life of Billy Bang”:
After spending a year in Vietnam, where he had served as a “tunnel rat” armed only with a flashlight and pistol, Sgt. E5 William Walker, known to family and friends as Billy Bang, returned to New York in March 1968. Lost, haunted by what he’d seen in the war, and strung out on drugs and alcohol, he became an arms expert for revolutionary political groups. One day, while on a mission to buy guns for a group from a pawn shop, he came across a violin in the corner of the store.
The instrument became a kind of therapy for him. He began immersing himself in the New York loft scene, playing with such luminaries as Sam Rivers, David Murray, and the artist who would become his most regular collaborator, William Parker, before the bassist became a member of Sun Ra’s Arkestra.
Despite his continuous musical explorations, there was always one journey that Billy Bang had resisted—the one into his past, to face the recurring nightmares of Vietnam. The first step in his musical rehabilitation were the two LPs he released in the mid-’00s, Vietnam The Aftermath and Vietnam Reflections, both of which entwined Afro American jazz traditions with pentatonic Vietnamese scales.
Here is his poignant tribute to Vietnam warriors killed in or missing in action:
The Jamaican musical giant of reggae and soul James Chambers, known to the world as Jimmy Cliff, also sang about Vietnam but from the perspective of someone not involved in the fighting.
Yesterday I got a letter from my friend
Fighting in Vietnam
And this is what he had to say
'Tell all my friends that I'll be coming home soon
My time it'll be up some time in June
Don't forget, he said to tell my sweet Mary
Her golden lips as sweet as cherries
And it came from
Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam
Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam
It was just the next day his mother got a telegram
It was addressed from Vietnam
Now mistress Brown, she lives in the USA
And this is what she wrote and said
Don't be alarmed, she told me the telegram said
But mistress Brown your son is dead
And it came from
Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam
Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam
Somebody please stop that war now
When we listen to songs for Memorial Day, we have to remember that many songs also spoke to ending or stopping wars.
Folk singer Pete Seeger wrote “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” in 1955, and it has gone on to be recorded by a host of musicians from multiple genres. The most notable soul version was recorded by Earth Wind & Fire in 1972.
Also in the R&B/soul genre, Motown records “took a risk” and addressed war.
Classic Motown has this backstory:
On the day that Edwin Starr’s “War” was released in June 1970, two Detroiters in their twenties were jailed for five years for ransacking a Chicago draft board office and burning its records – yet another example of the anger and rebellion which America’s prosecution of the Vietnam war was continuing to stir among the country’s young. The artists of Motown were hardly known at that time for social commentary and controversial material, but Starr had no superstar reputation to put at risk when he cut the song in May 1970. (Read more about the singer here.)
By contrast, the Temptations did, and the record company was concerned about how such a provocative lyric would affect their career and play in the media. The group had recorded the song just a few months earlier, for their Psychedelic Shack album. According to author Gerri Hirshey in her book Nowhere To Run, more than 4,000 students then wrote to Motown asking for “War” to be released as a single, or re-recorded by another artist. After producer Norman Whitfield was told of the Temptations’ career risk, he focused on cutting the song first with Rare Earth – they refused – and then Starr.
Edwin was determined to stamp “War” with his own personality. “I said, ‘I can do this but I have to sing the vocals my way,’” he recalled in liner notes for The Complete Motown Singles Volume 10: 1970. “I have to do what I feel. So…‘Good God y’all’ and all those ‘Absolutely nothings’ are my ad-libs.” Later, Starr acknowledged the criticism he received. “I got a little heat for it. While the song was number one, I never did any work at all. I mean, there was very few places where you could go and sing, ‘War – what is it good for’ in the political atmosphere of the United States.”
Here’s Edwin Starr’s hit:
Stevie Wonder, who has never shied away from making political statements and addressing social issues, recorded and released “Front Line” (link to lyrics) on his 1982 album, Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium I.
It is described by New York Times music journalist Robert Palmer as “a starkly economical, eloquently anguished portrait of a Vietnam veteran's bitterness and dead-end fatalism.”
I’ll close with the words and lyrics from poet and singer Gil Scott-Heron, in “Did You Hear What They Said,” from his 1972 album, Free Will.
Lyrics
Did you hear what they said?
Did you hear what they said?
Did you hear what they said?
They said another brother's dead
They said he's dead, but he can't be buried
They said he's dead, but he can't be buried
Come on, come on, come on, come on
This can't be real
Did you hear what they said?
Did you hear what they said?
Did you hear what they said?
They said they shot him in his head
A shot in the head to save his country
A shot in the head to save his country
Come on, come on, come on, come on
This can't be real
Did you hear what they said?
Yeah, did you hear what they said?
Did you hear what they said
About his mother and how she cried?
They said she cried ‘cause her only son was dead
They said she cried ‘cause her only son was dead
Woman, could you imagine if your only son was dead
And, and somebody told you he couldn't be buried
Hey, hey, come on, come on, come on, come on
This can't be real
Members of my family fought and died in all the wars this country has been part of, starting with the Revolutionary War. I honor their service here today. There are many more songs, which I don’t have space to place here, but will post to the comment section below, and I hope you will join me and do the same.
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