EIF 2023 Endea Owens The Hub 23rd August Review
Endea Owens at The Hub this afternoon was an event more than a performance, as this work commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival is based on Martin Luther King Jnr’s final visionary speech “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”.
This now iconic speech was delivered on April 3rd 1968 at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, and as a storm raged outside, his speech started with the words “Thank you very kindly, my friends”. Martin Luther King knew then, as he had always known, that his non-violent approach to the struggle for freedom of so many people was only ultimately possible not through hatred, but through friendship.
The words of Martin Luther King are interwoven into the very fabric of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival and the title of his fourth and last book, published in 1967 (he was assassinated in 1968), “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community” are digital and in-print cornerstones of this year’s statement of hope for the future.
Endea Owens is one of the most gifted musicians of her generation and as well as being an award winning bassist and composer, her influence is being felt far outside jazz and music spheres.
With the words of Martin Luther King’s now iconic speech being read out on stage by different members of Endea’s sextet and interspaced with music that drew its inspiration from diverse sources including jazz and gospel music, somehow we were all transported back in time to imagine that just for a moment we could have been there in Memphis, Tennessee too.
Songs of passion, dignified protest, a belief in one’s own self and that unquestionable faith that God was on your side and, no matter how long it took, things would change, flowed fluidly in and out of Martin Luther King’s works with vocalists Jhoard and Shenel Johns adding so much to the emotional resonance of this work. Always there too interpreting music and words seamlessly was the rest of Endea Owens’ sextet. There would of course have been a huge disappointment in this audience if there were not opportunities to for Endea to showcase her own skills on bass and, when she did, the reasons why her profile in jazz and music in general is rising so swiftly was obvious to us all.
I have to admit that watching this performance as a white Scottish male who has no concept of what being black in a racially segregated America felt like, I can have only a limited understanding of what the Black Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King really meant to millions of people. To try to understand all of this better, I need people like Endea Owens to tell me and to keep telling me so that we never in society make these terrible mistakes again.
The Civil Rights movement and people like Martin Luther King succeeded in the longer term, they broke the chains, but we must always remember that they only broke some of those chains, some of those links. There is still a very long way to go, still many more links, many more chains to be broken until everyone irrespective of race, colour, gender, religion, social and economic status is free to follow their own dreams and achieve their own full potential as human beings.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
This now iconic speech was delivered on April 3rd 1968 at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, and as a storm raged outside, his speech started with the words “Thank you very kindly, my friends”. Martin Luther King knew then, as he had always known, that his non-violent approach to the struggle for freedom of so many people was only ultimately possible not through hatred, but through friendship.
The words of Martin Luther King are interwoven into the very fabric of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival and the title of his fourth and last book, published in 1967 (he was assassinated in 1968), “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community” are digital and in-print cornerstones of this year’s statement of hope for the future.
Endea Owens is one of the most gifted musicians of her generation and as well as being an award winning bassist and composer, her influence is being felt far outside jazz and music spheres.
With the words of Martin Luther King’s now iconic speech being read out on stage by different members of Endea’s sextet and interspaced with music that drew its inspiration from diverse sources including jazz and gospel music, somehow we were all transported back in time to imagine that just for a moment we could have been there in Memphis, Tennessee too.
Songs of passion, dignified protest, a belief in one’s own self and that unquestionable faith that God was on your side and, no matter how long it took, things would change, flowed fluidly in and out of Martin Luther King’s works with vocalists Jhoard and Shenel Johns adding so much to the emotional resonance of this work. Always there too interpreting music and words seamlessly was the rest of Endea Owens’ sextet. There would of course have been a huge disappointment in this audience if there were not opportunities to for Endea to showcase her own skills on bass and, when she did, the reasons why her profile in jazz and music in general is rising so swiftly was obvious to us all.
I have to admit that watching this performance as a white Scottish male who has no concept of what being black in a racially segregated America felt like, I can have only a limited understanding of what the Black Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King really meant to millions of people. To try to understand all of this better, I need people like Endea Owens to tell me and to keep telling me so that we never in society make these terrible mistakes again.
The Civil Rights movement and people like Martin Luther King succeeded in the longer term, they broke the chains, but we must always remember that they only broke some of those chains, some of those links. There is still a very long way to go, still many more links, many more chains to be broken until everyone irrespective of race, colour, gender, religion, social and economic status is free to follow their own dreams and achieve their own full potential as human beings.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com