{"id":40982,"date":"2020-02-07T11:45:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T10:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/a-change-is-gonna-come-a-hymn-for-civil-rights\/"},"modified":"2022-02-03T15:39:24","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T14:39:24","slug":"a-change-is-gonna-come-a-hymn-for-civil-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/a-change-is-gonna-come-a-hymn-for-civil-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;A Change Is Gonna Come&#8217;, a hymn for Civil Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-36406 pam-featured-content\" src=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/39ef3b45-muhammad-ali-and-sam-cooke-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"840\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/39ef3b45-muhammad-ali-and-sam-cooke-1.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/39ef3b45-muhammad-ali-and-sam-cooke-1-759x531.jpg 759w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/39ef3b45-muhammad-ali-and-sam-cooke-1-1010x707.jpg 1010w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/39ef3b45-muhammad-ali-and-sam-cooke-1-661x463.jpg 661w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/39ef3b45-muhammad-ali-and-sam-cooke-1-465x326.jpg 465w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/39ef3b45-muhammad-ali-and-sam-cooke-1-375x263.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(min-width:1010px) 759px,100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Once a week during Black History Month, PAM will be bringing you emblematic pieces of music from Black American artists that reflect the country\u2019s history.&nbsp;<\/b><\/span><\/h4>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Photo:&nbsp;Cassius Clay &amp; Sam Cooke en studio, 1963 (DR)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">When times are tough, and hope struggles to find its way through the fog of history, listening to \u201cA Change Is Gonna Come\u201d helps us to imagine that another future is possible, no matter who\u2019s singing \u2013 from Seal to The Fugees via Lhasa, Ang\u00e9lique Kidjo and many more&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Just after releasing this song and recording with his friend Muhammed Ali, Cooke was murdered under somewhat mysterious circumstances. The story behind this masterpiece \u2013 and the song itself \u2013 is enough to give you goosebumps.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Almost 60 years on, it is hard to imagine what it meant to be a chart-topping African American artist. This was way before Jay Z and Beyonc\u00e9. In the midst of segregation, in a country where the Jim Crow laws prohibited black and white spectators from attending concerts side by side, no black artist had ever been as successful as Elvis Presley. That is, except Sam Cooke. Shortly before writing \u201cA Change Is Gonna Come\u201d, this Mississippi pastor&#8217;s son was hot on the King\u2019s heels at number 2 in the charts. Cooke\u2019s journey is unique, both from an artistic point of view and in relation to the record industry. For many, his assassination in 1964 was considered akin to a triple homicide: the murder of a man, of an artist, and of a symbol of standing against racial segregation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wEBlaMOmKV4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b><br \/>\nMister Soul<\/b><\/span><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">At the outset of the sixties Cooke \u2013 whom the African-American community had dubbed \u2018Mister Soul\u2019 \u2013 had already sold fifteen million albums, and was the most well-known singer of the genre that was shaking America and included Wilson Pickett, Smokey Robinson, and Marvin Gaye. So soul, so American\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Like them, Cooke had started off singing in churches where his father, Charles S. Cook (our Cooke added the \u2018e\u2019 later in life) was a minister. Like many Americans born during racial segregation, he found life in the South impossible, and eventually made his way north to Chicago, the city where many go to make a name for themselves and where Barak Obama launched his career.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Sam Cooke was born in 1931 in Mississippi. At first he flirted with the gospel music of his father, before finding his way to pagan pop. For his parents, many in America at the time, and his colleagues from the gospel group Soul Stirrers, this was the \u2018Devil\u2019s music\u2019. Between 1950 and 1957, Cooke gained success with this group with hits such as \u201cTouch the Hem of His Garments\u201d and \u201cThat\u2019s Heaven to Me\u201d, before starting out on a solo career. In 1960-61, he signed with Elvis Presley\u2019s label RCA. Most importantly, he was the first black artist to found his own publishing company, which gave him the copyright on his own music.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">His first big hit, \u201cYou Send Me\u201d sold more than 2.5 million copies in 1957 which was enough to open the door to the small screen. So, like many stars, he moved to the city of angels: Los Angeles. But the fact remained that as a black artist in a segregated country, racism is never far away. We might say that there were two Americas.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">A few months after the release of \u201cYou Send Me\u201d, Cooke was invited onto the Ed Sullivan Show, but his performance was cut off because the live show had overrun. The show received so many complaints that Cooke was immediately re-booked. A little later he was the first black person to be invited onto the Dick Clark Show, which was nearly stopped due to threats from the Klu Klux Klan demanding that the show be cancelled. The show took place anyway!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=71P9w-B59jc<\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b><br \/>\nBlack and white times<\/b><\/span><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">When Cooke was set to perform in Memphis in the Ellis Auditorium, in front of a crowd where black people and white people were segregated, he refused to play until the spectators could mix. Two hours before the start of the show, he canceled. Like Ray Charles and others, he was split between his mainstream stardom and his \u2018inferior condition\u2019 as a black man. Like them, he juggled as best he could with the ups and downs of an undeserving era, gradually conquering the white audience who were charmed by this young man with a velvet voice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">In the middle of the 1960s Cooke became friends with Malcolm X, the African-American footballer Jim Brown, and Cassius Clay \u2013 the future Muhammed Ali. This group of Black American celebrities, from whom would grow the Black Power movement, met at the famous fight between Clay and Sonny Liston. When Cassius Clay became world heavyweight champion, his first words in the ring were for Sam Cooke, whom he invited to join him in front of the cameras.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-36390\" src=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/8f09c858-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-3-e1581071657325.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"745\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/8f09c858-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-3-e1581071657325.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/8f09c858-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-3-e1581071657325-759x565.jpg 759w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/8f09c858-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-3-e1581071657325-661x492.jpg 661w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/8f09c858-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-3-e1581071657325-465x346.jpg 465w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/8f09c858-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-3-e1581071657325-375x279.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(min-width:1010px) 759px,100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown and Cooke would celebrate this victory together. This made some people dream of a better tomorrow, but it made others worry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018Being a successful musician wasn\u2019t enough for Cooke. I was also sick of scoring and winning matches\u2019 says footballer Jim Brown in the Netflix documentary <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Two Killings of Sam Cooke.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2018When you become a crossover celebrity in this country you wonder whether you should be careful or if you should speak the truth and get involved?\u2019<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Cooke never disowned his Black audiences, nor denied that there were problems, but one event in particular made him cross the Rubicon, and pushed the voice of an angel to call for change.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">In 1963 Cooke arrived at a Louisiana hotel where he had made a reservation by telephone. Upon seeing him, however, the receptionist denied him access. A scandal. Cooke&#8217;s wife advised him to let it go and leave. \u2018No, we&#8217;re not going to leave and no one can kill me, I&#8217;m Sam Cooke!\u2019 replied the singer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">That night \u201cA Change Is Gonna Come\u201d came to him in a dream, the only song to have come to him in this way. Cooke was so afraid that it took him a year to finish the song. He entrusted the almost symphonic string arrangements to Ren\u00e9e Hall. Those rich violins of the intro are in sharp contrast with the raw reality at the beginning of the song which tells the story of an entire country. \u2018I was born near a river in a little tent\u2026I&#8217;m afraid to die\u2019 sings Cooke. He was being both threatened by the KKK and harassed by the music mafia because of his attempts to set up an agency that would bring artists together to protect their rights and place them at the heart of the lucrative music business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">When Friendly Womak first heard the song, he said of it, \u2018it feels like death\u2019. It scared everyone. Drummer John Boudreaux refused to record it and even Sam Cooke himself didn\u2019t want to play it on stage, save once on a TV show, the recording of which has since disappeared. \u2018Yes it talks about death, it\u2019s a part of me and the birth of a new Sam Cooke\u2019 the singer confided in Womack, according to the Netflix documentary. \u2018Change is coming and I want to be part of that change.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">But the record label, RCA, were timid, waiting a while before releasing this work of art as a single. A few lines were also cut from the official release, ones that speak explicitly about segregation in the South under Jim Crow laws.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018I go to the movies and I go downtown.<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Somebody keep telling me<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">don\u2019t hang around.\u2019<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b><br \/>\nCooke may be gone, but the song\u2019s hope never will&nbsp;<\/b><\/span><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">On the night of 10th December 1964, Sam Cooke was shot three times at the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles. He was just 33 years old. The owner pled self-defense \u2013 Cooke was said to have attempted to force his way into her office after taking a young girl (who turned out to be a sex worker) to his room. She disappeared with $5000 in cash. Cooke\u2019s entourage called for a real investigation&#8230;but it never took place. 200,000 people attended his funeral, and \u201cA Change Is Gonna Come\u201d became a hymn for the changes demanded by the civil rights movement. <br style=\"clear: both;\">&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-36393\" src=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/736ab207-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"850\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/736ab207-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-2.jpg 640w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/736ab207-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-2-465x157.jpg 465w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/736ab207-a-change-is-gonna-come-sam-cooke-2-375x127.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(min-width:1010px) 759px,100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\"><br \/>\nSome time later, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Langston Hughes were also brutally killed, taking with them a profound and intimate part of 1960s Black America.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cA Change Is Gonna Come\u201d came out as a single after Cooke\u2019s death. The day he was elected, Obama paid homage saying, \u2018a change is coming to America!\u2019. Eight years later, after Donald Trump\u2019s victory, with over a million women in Washington DC for the Women\u2019s March, Ang\u00e9lique Kidjo from Benin got on stage to sing \u2018A Change Is Gonna Come\u2019 a message that has lost nothing of its power over the years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Ang\u00e9lique Kidjo - &quot;A Change is Gonna Come&quot;  - Women&#039;s March Washington\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7n56tZvC7mw?feature=oembed&#038;autoplay=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Discover our <a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/?post_type=post&amp;s=black+history+month\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Black History Month<\/em><\/a> series here.<\/span><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once a week during Black History Month, PAM will be bringing you emblematic pieces of music from Black American artists that reflect the country\u2019s history.&nbsp; Photo:&nbsp;Cassius Clay &amp; Sam Cooke en studio, 1963 (DR) When [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":36406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10913,7834,9398],"tags":[],"location":[7976],"yst_prominent_words":[8403,29876,29873,29872,29893,29879,29892,29878,29894,29889,8414,8447,29877,29874,8402,8435,29875,8543,8619,29895],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40982"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=40982"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=40982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}