Malcolm, Malcolm Semper Malcolm

Archie Shepp (tenor sax), David Izenzon (bass) and J.C. Moses (drums). From the album Fire Music (1965).

Malcom X was an American speaker, Muslim minister and activist. For his followers he was a brave defender of black rights, but his detractors accused him of promoting racism and violence. During his childhood he suffered the continuous move of his family’s residence, fleeing from the aggressions of racist groups, which resulted in the murder of his father in 1931. In 1942 he went to New York and became a street criminal. Sentenced to seven years in prison in 1946, thanks to his brother Regiland he abandoned his addiction to drugs and approached the Nation of Islam (NOI), a Muslim religious movement led by Elijah Muhammad.

Released from prison in 1952 under on parole, he joined the NOI and changed his surname to the “X”, symbolizing the original African surname that American blacks had lost. Malcolm was appointed minister and national spokesman for the NOI. Then he used newspapers, radio and television to spread the the NOI message throughout the United States. Thanks largely to him the number of NOI members rose from 500 in 1952 to 30.000 in 1963. The NOI considered blacks Allah’s chosen people and whites as demons that didn’t allow African Americans to achieve economic, social and political success, and advocated the foundation of a country for them in the southern United States until they could return to Africa.

However, Malcolm learned that Elijah Muhammad had had secret sex with six women and even had children, when celibacy was practiced in the NOI. Therefore, in 1964 he created his own organization, the Muslim Mosque, converted to Sunnism and made a pilgrimage to Mecca. He traveled to several Muslim countries and through his experiences understood that the brotherhood of all races was possible. He then abandoned separatism and proposed a black nationalism based on the control of their own organisms and communities. From then on he began to receive death threats from the NOI and finally shot to death on 21 February 1965 when he began speaking to 400 people at a conference of the Organization of African American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.

The composition starts with Shepp reading a poem dedicated to the murdered Malcolm X. He is accompanied only by Izenzon with the bow and Moses with the mallets, and the rest of the performance is a collective improvisation. Shepp plays slowly and painfully sometimes using the altissimo register, Izenzon alternates the bow and the pizzicato and Moses uses the mallets. To close, Shepp plays twice a more energetic phrase.