Curtis Mayfield: the Sound of Activism

Curtis Mayfield, in addition to being one of the 20^th century’s great musicians, was an influential figure in socially conscious soul music of the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s, first with his work with the Impressions during the Civil Rights movement and then later as a solo artist.  This political bent is apparent not least in 1070’s “Move On Up,” an anthem about progress and liberation which goes, in part: “Hush now child, and don't you cry/ Your folks might understand you, by and by/ Move on up, toward your destination/You may find from time to time/Complication/Bight your lip, and take a trip/Though there may be wet road ahead/ And you cannot slip/So move on up for peace will find/Into the steeple of beautiful people/Where there's only one kind.” It is an acknowledgement of incredible adversity, but simultaneously an upbeat song of confidence and resilience in the face of that adversity—he assuredly states that “the steeple of beautiful people” will once day be attained.  Interestingly, it also reflects a divide present in black activism in this era in which the younger generation was beginning to deviate from the previous generation’s approach to achieving equality primarily through “respectability.” This is an encouragement, in a music style that was at the time (and still is) distinctly associated with African-American culture, to persevere to a point at which “there’s only one kind” (which is not echoed by Kanye West when he samples it in “Touch the Sky”). This sense in Curtis Mayfield’s work, the tension of acknowledging difficulties and injustices and being simultaneously proud in who and what you are, which sometimes exposed generational differences, can also be seen in his soundtrack for Superfly. The enormously popular soundtrack for the 1972 Blaxploitation film that the NAACP responded to by saying “we must insist that our children are not exposed to a steady diet of so-called black movies that glorify black males as pimps, dope pushers, gangsters, and super males” (though the movie was also funded heavily by Harlem organizations), traffics heavily in themes of social issues and black empowerment. The music of Mayfield, who from the 1950s engaged in the work of making socially conscious, political music, underscores the point that “it takes all kinds,” and that the creation of the modes of thought and culture that foster and lead to activism is just as essential as the agitation itself.