Let Freedom Sing
(TimeLife)

Let Freedom Sing! Music of the Civil Rights Movement  

 

Like many, I discovered my love for music   while listening to the tunes my mother, grandmother and other relatives would listen to when I was a child. My mother was a pianist and she would often play and sing songs in the evening before bedtime. One particular song that stood out was Four Women by Nina Simone. It was then that I started paying attention to music and how it made you feel. I paid attention to the lyrics, the stories behind the chords- the message.

Let Freedom Sing! , is a 3-CD box set full of songs that were stimulated by the movement to stop racial discrimination against African Americans. It is a blend of messages within songs of struggle, hope and freedom.

The CD includes a booklet with a brief history of each song and how it originated in that era. Chuck D., who wrote the introduction, sets the tone by starting with the abduction of a race and how the ships, the chains, the treatment and the water all played a part in African American music.

Let Freedom Sing! traces a seventy- year journey of emotions with well known songs as well as rare recordings-all inspired and affected by the Civil Rights Movement.

It is a timeline of a troubled period in our history and each song not only reflects the feelings of the singers and songwriters who were there to experience discrimination first hand, it shows how music has amplified and helped protest against hatred.

You will visualize the Strange Fruit, a song recorded by Billie Holiday that describes the lynching of African Americans-mostly from the South. 

You will imagine seeing signs that motivated the song No Restricted Signs by the Golden Gate Quartet. You will cry for Emmett Till and you will be inspired by I’m Black and I’m Proud by James Brown.

This is a remarkable CD- combined with fifty- eight songs of historical events; fifty-eight songs of tribulation and triumph.

 

 

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