A Peoples’ Music

“I’ve seen black musicians when they’d be jamming at a jam session… that black musician, he picks up his horn and starts blowing some sounds that he never thought of before. He improvises, he creates, it comes from within. It’s his soul, it’s that soul music. It’s the only area on the American scene where the black man has been free to create. And he has mastered it. He has shown that he can come up with something that nobody ever thought of on his horn. Well likewise he can do the same thing if given intellectual independence… He can invent a society, a social system, an economic system, a political system, that is different from anything that exists or has ever existed anywhere on this earth. He will improvise; he’ll bring it from within himself. And this is what you and I want.”   Malcolm X, 1964 Speech at the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity