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“Today I want to tell the city of Selma, today I want to say to the state of Alabama, today I want to say to the people of America and the nations of the world, that we are not about to turn around. We are on the move now,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said on the steps of the Montgomery, Alabama state house on March 25, 1965. An excerpt of the famous speech was played for a crowd at South Philadelphia High School, 2101 S. Broad St., that had gathered to celebrate Monday’s Martin Luther King Day of Service project that kicked off Principal Otis Hackney’s campaign to bring music back to Southern.
“Let us march on poverty until no American parent has to skip a meal so that their children may eat. … Let us march on ballot boxes until the [George] Wallaces of our nation tremble away in silence,” the speech, popularized by the January-release of the film “Selma” famously reads. And Paul Bryan, dean of faculty and students at the Curtis Institute, had put together a small musical program to honor King and his speech, and to galvanize the connection between music and moments of historical import.
“We tried to put the program together in a way that we could tie a couple important events, like what happened almost 50 years ago exactly this year, to music. When you connect a historical point in time or moment of significance to something musical, the impact can be powerful,” Bryan said. “So we tried to do that with MLK’s speech excerpt.”
He also brought his selective music conservatory’s brass ensemble and they performed “Jericho Clangor,” a piece inspired by Dr. King, commissioned by Bryan and composed by Curtis alum Darin Kelly. He also asked a vocalist, Jamez McCorkle, to sing a traditional spiritual, and he magnificently performed “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho.” “Why should I feel discouraged? / And why should the shadows come? / Why should my heart be lonely?” McCorkle sang. “For his eye is on the sparrow / And I know he watches me / so I sing because I’m happy / And I sing because I’m free.”
It’s a spiritual that King quotes in his legendary “Our God is Marching On” speech, the one Bryan brought to Southern’s day of service. “Cause the battle am in my hand,” King recites, and tells a hopeful crowd: “The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us.”
Curtis’ visit to Southern was facilitated by Wells Fargo, whose partnership with Curtis brought Bryan and Hackney together, and is a symbolic start to a relationship between the under-resourced public high school and the world-class conservatory two miles up South Broad Street.
“To me, it was much more of a real symbolic restart of something that was once very special. All of us at Curtis are concerned about music going forward,” Bryan, noting that music education in public schools is a dwindling dream, but one that Hackney’s committed to, said. “The opportunity has been taken away [for music education in public schools]. This looked like an opportunity for us to help bring it back.”
“The right person had the right conversation at the right time. We met and everything moved quickly from there,” Hackney said. “This was the kick-off event to get the music program up and running again at South Philly High.”
There was a music teacher in the building when Hackney started five years ago, and since the instructor’s disappearance, he has been trying, with pressure from alums as well, to get music back to a famously musical high school.
“A year from now, there should be strong evidence of music instruction here at Southern. I currently don’t have a music teacher, but it is a priority for me to identify the right music teacher for next year. If I can set up the space for you and provide you a ready-made relationship with Wells Fargo and City Year and Curtis,” Hackney believes, this music teacher can make magic happen. “Music can be used as a tool to teach students — they can learn how to learn, and they can apply that skill elsewhere.”
For Hackney, it’s about allowing kids to take risks where they feel supported, and giving them an opportunity to excel at something other than reading, writing and arithmetic.
“Let me provide you with something else where you can really shine and now you feel more confident and you’re willing to take a risk,” he said. “For the skills that it takes to learn how to play an instrument and read music and recreate a song, and getting to a point where you can create or write your own music, it’s one of the highest demonstrations of learning,” Hackney told the brass ensemble audience, a refrain he had told volunteers who’d come up to clean the music room in the morning.
“It’s like a different planet, it was really really amazing to see it,” Bryan said of the music room’s conversion from morning to afternoon. “The way the space looks now, it’s just so much more conducive to someone learning in there.”
Hackney said “it was a junk room,” a collection of discarded furniture and odds and ends. But now Southern’s 777 students may soon be paid more visits from students, instructors and music-oriented service fellows care of Curtis.
“One way or the other we look forward to continuing that partnership, we just don’t know how that will look,” Bryan said, staying positive and open-minded about what a Curtis-Southern musical partnership will become.
Nisah Abdul-Sabur, a City Year program manager and mainstay at Southern, used to lead teams at Gray Ferry’s Universal Audenried Charter High School, 3301 Tasker St., which has significantly more resources than Southern as a charter. City Year’s focus is on grades three through nine, but in the South Broad Street building, there’s no task they don’t have their hands in, including extracurriculars.
“In public school you have to get a little more crafty. It’s such a great opportunity when a new partnership is developed,” she said. “We’re all trying to work together in an environment that’s conducive to learning and one where students are proud of their school and invest in it. The administration recognizes that there are challenges, but they’re willing to step up to the plate and develop partnerships that will promote growth.”
Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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