The great novel of soul: this is how the soundtrack of the fight for civil rights emerged

Music is like a big river: it mixes everything, and it is difficult to explain its value and impact.

In 1946, in the United States, black music was classified as racial music, until Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records managed to change it with the more friendly name of rhythm & blues.

Along that path, it is said that the embryo of soul arose one summer day in 1954 when Ray Charles was traveling with his band and heard the song

It Must Be Jesus

, by The Southern Tones, on the radio.

He liked it so much that he decided to cover it, transforming it into

I Got a Woman

.

And it caused that kind of

shock

that comes from seeing something done that

cannot be done

.

In the religious congregations – then fundamental in the African-American community – they considered that Charles “adulterated” a sacred feeling.

Because the song was the same, but if The Southern Tones' song is a gospel that sings to the force that Jesus transmits,

I Got a Woman

is an ode to a magnificent lover waiting in her house.

This was happening in an urban context that had begun to change 13 years earlier, when when the United States entered World War II, President Roosevelt eliminated segregation in factories to accelerate production in the arms industry.

The result was a massive migration of African-American communities from the rural southern states to cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York and Philadelphia.

The so-called Great Migration: a physical movement that led to something similar to a cultural and social revolution.

They were just the beginning, but everything was there:

the harshness and joy of new times, youth, fresh money, the incipient black music business in search of the fabulous market of the white consumer - rock'n'roll had already broken the first dams against racial segregation - and a progressive search for justice and freedom.

Gospel and rhythm & blues were already there, which over the years were transformed into another type of music: soul, which would end up being “the soundtrack of the fight for civil rights,” underlines the writer Manuel López Poy.

Together with the illustrator Pau Marfà, López Poy publishes

Soul.

The graphic novel

(Redbook, 2023), a book that narrates the birth, vicissitudes and triumphs of that music in its tumultuous cultural, political and social context.

'Soul' page.

The graphic novel', by Manuel López Poy and Pau Marfà Bruguera.Redbook Ediciones

From bitterness to warmth

Soul gave everyone the possibility of expressing vulnerability, of showing the feelings and emotion of everyday life intermingled with political vicissitudes.

As Peter Guralnick writes in his book

Sweet Soul Music,

soul music transformed the bitter fruit of segregation into a warm, humane statement of pride and affirmation.

Sam Cooke, Solomon Burke, Etta James, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson - author of 4,000 songs -, James Brown, Sam and Dave and Curtis Mayfield with and without The Impressions appear in the novel by López Poy and Marfà. , among others.

There is talk of the wonderful Fame studios, in Muscle Shoals (Alabama), and there is a map of the United States that geographically locates the record labels that made an entire nation vibrate: Rounder, Aladdin, Atlantic, Stax, QWest, Soul City, The End, Brunswick, Federal or Motown.

And Martin Luther King Jr, the American football player Jim Brown, the Black Panthers, Malcolm the Vietnam War.

“Soul was a music to enjoy, but at the same time it evolved towards clear political connotations,” emphasizes López, who with Marfà already published

Blues.

The graphic novel

(Redbook, 2022).

“My interest in soul comes more from the social side than the musical side.

The cultural ties between white and black society are beginning to dissolve, and in the book we reflect the context in which it was developed,” López reflects.

This translates into the format of the novel, with large, double pages, where in addition to stages or recording studios you can see streets, demonstrations and protests, and where the singers are almost always accompanied by the public, families or friends.

“It is difficult to draw music, but in the case of soul I wanted to reflect its complexity and cultural richness,” explains Marfà.

Soul was a speaker of a new world that allowed a thriving industry of singers, composers and labels to develop around it.

Their melodies conquered radio and television, the parties and bedrooms of black and white teenagers.

At first he sang about the pleasures and ravages of love - in a velvety or raw way depending on the record label - in songs like

I Rather go Blind,

by Etta James;

Ain't no Mountain High Enough

, by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, or

Ruler of my Heart,

by Irma Thomas.

But as the struggles and frustrations arose, it evolved towards more political positions until channeling the feelings and anger in the homes and on the streets, with songs like

Respect,

by Aretha Franklin - an anthem for women in a sexist country. ,

Said it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud,

by James Brown, or

War

, by Edwin Starr.

“The challenge was to portray in a few pages a lot of years of music and contextualize soul, not to make a book of musical stamps,” argues López.

'Soul' page.

The graphic novel', by Manuel López Poy and Pau Marfà Bruguera.REDBOOK EDITIONS

If Ray Charles' boldness in 1954 was the seed of soul, this music's commitment to the social situation could be dated to 1963. It was when Bob Dylan published

Blowin in the Wind

, which inspired Sam Cooke to compose

A Change is Gonna Come

after suffering an altercation while trying to register with his band at a white hotel in Shreveport (Louisiana), a fact reported by

The New York Times.

That of Cooke, composer, singer, owner of a record label and social activist, was an act of protest that, linked to many other mobilizations and demonstrations, paved the way for the approval of the Civil Rights Law.

The new legislation, in 1964, officially prohibited discriminatory practices in restaurants, hotels and theaters and ended segregation in schools, libraries or swimming pools.

A new and bright path that had to face bloody resistance.

Love and assassinations

Dylan and Cooke's songs united a generation of young people - previously separated by race - to fight against brutal political violence.

In 1963, the same year both songs were released, a Mississippi civil rights activist named Medgar Evers was assassinated by a white supremacist member of the Ku Klux Klan, and United States President John Fitzgerald Kennedy himself was publicly shot on a large avenue in Dallas (Kennedy promoted the Civil Rights Act, which his successor Lyndon Johnson signed when he died).

As remembered in

Soul.

The graphic novel

, in 1964 Cooke himself died under strange circumstances when he was shot by a worker at the hotel where she was staying.

The funeral of Cooke, a music superstar – in 1958 he was number 2 on the charts, only surpassed by Elvis Presley – was attended by 200,000 people, but his murder was treated “simply as that of another dead black man”, according to the article. journalist Renee Graham in the documentary

The Two Murders of Sam Cooke

(Netflix, 2019).

As Mohamed Ali said, if Frank Sinatra had been shot dead, the FBI would have investigated him better.

Later, between 1965 and 1968, three more assassinations were added: that of Malcolm X, that of Martin Luther King Jr and that of Robert Kennedy.

The successive assassinations - especially that of Martin Luther King Jr - led to new demonstrations and riots, and the sending of the North American Army to the streets of cities such as Chicago or Washington or Detroit.

But in Boston, at least for a couple of days, nothing happened.

Twenty-four hours after King's assassination "with the country on the brink," according to African-American philosopher Cornel West, James Brown gave a citywide televised concert and his performance managed to channel the desperation and rage of the black community (which was his own).

Activist and friend of King, on stage at the Boston Garden, surrounded by armed police, Brown managed to sublimate the explosive energy of an outraged crowd into something resembling catharsis.

“As he often did through his music, he offered his wounds and scars to heal,” West explains in the documentary

The Day James Brown Saved Boston

.

“That's black power,” says Brown himself, remembering that night in 1968 on the tape.

Marfà confesses that she is preparing

Soul.

The graphic novel

gave her “a kind of attack of nostalgia when she saw that it was a music that sought change, a music of community,” she says.

Now, so many decades later, the echoes of soul resonate with a vitality and an air of innocence that almost break the heart.

Maybe that's why their songs continue to be a kind of nutritious food to empathize more with each other.

As Otis Redding sang in

Try a Little Tenderness

: it may sound a bit sentimental, but it's good to be a little more tender and understanding.

All you have to do is try.

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