Brother Malcolm speaks !
Robert O'Hara directs X:The Life and Times of Malcolm X in New York (****) [cinema]
Author : Jos Hermans
It is difficult to separate the murder of black nationalist and civil rights activist Malcolm X from the political assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK from the same period. Three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of the murder but the true facts, as is the case with the other three murders, remain shrouded in mystery, although it is clear to everyone (the composer included) that it was not X's real murderers who were tried. The Netflix documentary "Who killed Malcolm X?" points to the now-defunct Al-Mustafa Shabazz (William Bradley) as the culprit, a member of Nation of Islam and a suspected informant of the FBI. Malcolm X, after all, was a sharp, eloquent and charismatic critic of American imperialism, the same imperialism that is once again bringing the world to the brink of a world war today.
When "X:The Life and Times of Malcolm X" premiered in 1986, it was absolutely innovative. Never before had a similarly eclectic score been pieced together whose big idea was to create a fusion of notated and improvised music. The other big idea of composer Anthony Davis was to use rhythmic structures as Wagnerian leitmotifs throughout the piece. All the performances were sold out and the hall was three-quarters filled with a black audience. In those days I was a jazz reviewer for De Morgen (a national newspaper in Belgium) and as a jazz performer (piano) Anthony Davis was part of my daily life. A lot of black jazz musicians were Muslim and chose Muslim names in imitation of X. Twenty years after his death, he was still a hero amongst jazz musicians. Free jazz and Black Power had already entered into collusion in the sixties. Jazz did not lend its voice to victimhood. It had always brought a message of resistance. Charlie Parker's "Now's the time" alluded to the time for social change. John Coltrane's Alabama was the response to the KKK's dynamiting of the 16th Street Baptist Church. For jazz to be a meaningful art form, it had to be revolutionary to the core. Jazz was, after all, before all else, "the sound of freedom." Self-reliance was the code word for artistic projects within the black jazz community (the AACM in Chicago, for example). You can see it in large projected letters during this performance. That motivation came from X.
Contemporary woke activists present Black Lives Matter as a re-issue of the Rodney King case. But George Floyd was a criminal and an addict who died of a fentanyl overdose, not of a police officer's overactive knee. The autopsy report leaves no doubt about that. I really cannot place the shameful wave of looting and vandalism that followed his death within the morally justified American civil rights movement of the sixties. Perhaps that is an additional reason why jazz, the voice of resistance, at least in its African-American version, remains so mute today. Because BLM is a lie? But BLM activism did, of course, ensure that Anthony Davis' first opera is on the Metropolitan's stage today.
Few will have realized at the time that Anthony Davis was enjoying a dual career as a classically trained musician. Now let that be the most fascinating thing about this work. Davis speaks as respectfully of Berg and Wagner, two undeniable influences, as he does of Coltrane and other greats of jazz. "This is a real opportunity for the African-American tradition to become the dominant force in opera in America," he said shortly after the premiere of X. I don't know if he would still say that today but when asked which young composers he has confidence in, he did not mention Terrence Blanchard, who has already preceded him twice on the Met stage.
Davis has always resisted calling the work a jazz opera, no doubt because it would then be dismissed as "not to be taken seriously." You can learn more about this in the 1986 interview with Davis that I will post tomorrow. But it is indeed a jazz opera. I wouldn't know what a jazz opera is otherwise. Unless one would reserve this label for an opera consisting solely of jazz music. The emancipation of jazz is still catching up in opera circles. What makes the work a jazz opera is the jazz band (Davis's eight-piece band Episteme including such veterans as Marty Ehrlich (s), J.D. Parran (cl), Mark Helias (b) and newcomers Amir ElSaffar (tp), Michael Fahie (tb), Isaiah Richardson Jr (s) ) that, in addition to the orchestra, handles the improvisation part, and it is here that it happens. The saxophones play with the intonation of the free jazz improviser and not with the dull academic tone you occasionally find in our classical orchestral works. Trumpet and trombone are more adventurous in our orchestral literature but here they are given a jazz infusion. What you hear is : the beat of a real drum kit, tricky changing meters and difficult polyrhythms, moments that flirt with blues and subtle swing, trance-like repetitions, hypnotic ostinati with plucked strings in the double bass, scat singing and echoes of Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach in the character of Street : all the things you never hear in an opera house!
In true biopic style, Thulani Davis' libretto outlines the contours of a short but eventful life: Malcolm's father's murder when Malcolm was a boy in Lansing; his mother's mental breakdown; his move to Boston to live with his half-sister, where he dealt with hustlers like Street and ended up in prison; his conversion in prison to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam; the success of his black-nationalist activism; his break with Muhammad; his pilgrimage to Mecca and the glimmers of a more universalist ideology of peace and racial unity which he barely gets a chance to expound before he is murdered in the Audubon Ballroom in 1965 at the age of 39.
It is the golden proscenium of the Audubon Ballroom which Clint Ramos places at the center of the stage with an art object floating above it like a giant donut that appears to have the contours of a spaceship. While the opening chorus recalls Marcus Garvey's vision of the Black Star Line taking black Americans back to Africa, director Robert O'Hara has placed the ship in the context of the aesthetic of Afrofuturism, an art movement that also inspired Sun Ra (jazz) and George Clinton (funk). It is a unified set in which the spaceship will serve as a projection surface among other things for the names of black victims of white violence. Dede Ayite has come up with imaginative costumes for these extra-terrestrials and for the street life in Harlem. Hanging lamps and prayer rugs will transform the stage into a mosque.
Once again, the sound during this relay was not up to par. The jazz band could be heard with great detail and at appropriate volume levels in the rear speakers of the cinema which created an exciting spatial effect. But the vocalists were once again underpowered in the mix. As a result, all the voices seemed far too small for the space. In such circumstances I cannot judge vocal performance. Will Liverman's portrayal of Malcolm X was sufficiently differentiated but the charismatic figure one would expect from a Malcolm X (he also doesn't look anything like him) he never was. It is also questionable whether the score allows for that. His prison monologue of the first act ("I would not tell you what I know") had a certain grandeur. The character of Street (a spiritual brother of Sporting life in Porgy and Bess) received little sharpness in the person of Victor Ryan Robertson in his Cab Calloway zoot suit. Again, that's down to the score, I'm afraid. Rickey Tripp's choreography was at its best in the street scenes; elsewhere it was sometimes redundant.
Conclusion : the composer mostly fails to come up with truly original lyrical lines for the soloists. The orchestral score is the most interesting part of this composition. Anyway : welcome to the repertoire, Malcolm X !