KWEE: Liberian Literary Magazine AUGUST 1, 2015 ISSUE | Page 8

Liberian Literary Magazine
of all time, a position that
increasingly became chapter and
verse as his career progressed. His
music was seen as a totally
original combination of Afro
Diasporic
rhythms,
Black
traditional melodies, Afro forms
like the Blues and the rhythmic
vamp, blended with European
harmonies, and forms like the
musical suite.
Yet,
even
his
advanced
harmonies often contained notes
of dissonance, and it seemed
everything he did musically,
including his percussive piano
style, retained a strong “Negro”,
African origin. By the time he
received the commission to do
“The Liberian Suite”, he’d already
been in the music industry almost
25 years, with his hits, “It Don’t
Mean A Thing if it Ain’t Got That
Swing”, “Black Beauty”, “Black
and Tan Fantasy”, “Creole Love
Call”, “Caravan”, “Don’t Get
Around Much”, “Do Nothing Till
You Hear from Me”, Take the A
Train”, and many more already
staples of jazz and pop music, as
well as American life.

Ellington in particular had a
reputation for the specific ability
of his music to represent African
American
life,
from
the
disembarkment from the slave
ships, on through cotton, tobacco,
sugar cane and rice fields, through
the black triumph of the Civil War
on to the position of Black people
in the cities in the modern era. His
titles and music , “Black Beauty”,
“Harlem Air Shaft”, “My People”,
“Black, Brown and Beige”, “Drum

July 15, 2015 ISSUE # 0715
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is
a Woman”, Creole Rhapsody”,
very specifically covered topics of
Black pride and what was then
called “Negro life.” Ellington was
what was known in the ’20s as a
“race man”, an individual who had
devoted his talents and voice to
the sophisticated, deliberate
progress of the Negro race, all
over the world. He had been
raised with this strong sense of
racial pride by his parents in
Washington D.C, where there was
a
strong
educated
black
community even in the years after
the Civil War. During his 1920s
residency at the Cotton Club his
orchestra provided the music for
scandalous dance shows featuring
lightly tanned female dancers
doing dances in jungle outfits and
settings for Jazz Age white
patrons. He came up with an
imaginative style called “Jungle
Music” by some, featuring the
powerful growls of trumpeter
Bubber Miley. This music with its
reimagining of Africa was hailed as
a major musical innovation.
Make no mistake, getting
Ellington to compose music for the
Liberian centennial was a major
coup for the nation that deserves
more attention. Liberia was
getting possibly the freshest and
most original composer recording
music at that time. It was also
however, a special opportunity for
the Duke. Ellington premiered his
extended suite “Black, Brown, and
Beige” at Carnegie Hall in 1943
and
it
was
met
with

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condescending criticism, mainly of
the sort that jazz was not a music
suited to demanding longer forms.
“The Liberian Suite” would be not
only Ellington’s first international
commission, but also his first
commission from a Government of
any sort. The suite was performed
at Carnegie Hall twice, but to my
knowledge has yet to be
performed in Liberia itself.
The suite begins with the
beautiful hymn like ballad “I Like
the Sunrise”, performed by the
Ellington bands velvet voiced
Baritone, Al Hibbler. The song was
meant by Ellington to invoke the
yearning
for
freedom
and
independence of an enslaved
person in America, with the land
of the rising sun, Africa and the
east, being the symbol and focus
of hope. This song is therefore a
theme song for those hoping to
find freedom in Liberia, which if
we study history closely, includes
many more people than the
Americo Liberians of the 19th
century. It also includes tribes like
the Fanti, Mandingo and other
tribes, West Indians, many people
from other parts of Africa during
the times of colonial domination,
and many other Black Americans
who came to Liberia in the almost
170 years since its original
founding. Ellington is writing of
Liberia as a land of hope, promise
and freedom from soul draining
bondage.
The song begins with a beautiful
trumpet obbligato and features
quiet restrained backing as
Hibbler sings of the promise of
Liberia. This song has also been
interpreted over the years by

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