Strung Out Episode 87. The Music for The Dance

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As we bid farewell to Black History Month, we take a look at how Black American history has been shaped by Canada.  Martin talks to Pastor Drew Jacques of St. David's Presbyterian Church in Campbellville, Ontario.  Jacques starts with a lithograph that appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1891, showing four African-American men, musicians, heading to a gig.  Entitled, "Music for The Dance", the scene is one that is almost photographic in it's capturing of a rare moment of musicians, relaxed, not playing, but heading to a winter dance.  They are confident, happy and carrying their instruments for an evening of playing music-hard work for any musician who has had to keep dancers out on the floor. 

Pastor Drew uses this picture as an analogy of where things are today, musically as well the social standing and well-being of black people on either side of the border.  He quotes the Reverend Martin Luther King, when he gave a speech in Ontario in 1968, just months before his murder.   King talks about Canada's contribution to African-America and also the role music played in the political and societal shift away from slavery and ultimately freedom.

Jacques family was involved in the underground railroad, having schooners on Lake Huron that were used so bring rye across to Rochester, New York and smuggle fugitive slaves across to Canada.  

We also touch on the fact that the notion of individual freedom today has been distorted in the recent protests in Canada.  The mixing of the notion of individual responsibility that freedom requires with the notion of individual entitlement that is anti-freedom and undemocratic.  Listen in. 

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