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December 26, 2005
Music for Disturbed Souls
> Mary Lou Williams - Dirge Blues
The church was a fundamental part of the American civil rights movement; music created by artists of faith during this time adopted an often militant and contemplative struggle that redefined the music as a movement: neither religious nor musical, but human. Take faith to mean what you will, but in this case I use it to highlight piously-inspired jazz that next to A Love Supreme, which is undoubtedly the greatest expression of faith in modern music, scratches at the burdensome task of explaining devotion.
In 1964, ten years after having a revelation at a concert in Paris in 1954 and leaving the stage armed with a list of people that she felt she needed to pray for, never to record again, Mary Lou Williams released “Mary Lou Williams Presents St. Martin de Porres.” The album, which is eclectic and often contradictory, sought to bridge the gap in Williams’ own torn soul between the Jazz movement she was very much a part of and her late blooming religious beliefs which had left her at odds with her livelihood. “Dirge Blues” stands out on the album as daunting and heavy-handed. Williams has been quoted as having said that she wrote "Dirge" days before John F. Kennedy was assassinated while afflicted with an inexplicable sadness. The piece itself is a blues without any irony; the melody is entrancing and pensive, pointed, premeditated but never old and the delivery is sparse enough to transport us to its convincingly somber place, but short enough not to keep us there.
Posted by pd3000 at December 26, 2005 4:19 PM