Fighter for Rights
Dave Brubeck believed musicians should have the right to write using their style without the burdens of tradition. Through music, Brubeck fought for civil rights, such as in The Gates of Justice.
"Dave Brubeck is a quintessentially American figure. One of the things that's most striking about Dave is his basic decency as a human being. And this comes across in the music. His music does have this embracing warmth. Similarly, if you look at Dave's career outside of life onstage, as a family man, what he did for civil rights, you get a sense of that same warmth."
-Ted Gioia, jazz critic
Fighter for civil rights
Brubeck championed civil rights. Once, performing in an integrated university, he put Eugene Wright, his black bass player, at the front of the stage, where he could be seen clearly by the audience.
"He maintained his level as a musician while also being a humanitarian. It's rare for musicians to do that. It's either one or the other." |
"Jazz... It's the voice of freedom all over the world. Jazz seemed to always work and express freedom. The way to get to the rest of the world is cultural exchange." |
"The reason you fight is for the truth to come out and people to look at it. Nobody was against my black bass player. They cheered him like he was the greatest thing that ever happened for the students."
-Dave Brubeck
" They wouldn't let us go on with Gene [Wright] and I wouldn't go on without him...the kids were starting to riot upstairs. So the President of the school had things pushing him from every side: The kids stamping on the floor upstairs, me refusing to go on unless I could go on with my black bass player. So we just stalled and the bus driver came and said, 'Dave, hold out. Don't go on. The president is talking to the governor and I think things are going your way.' And the Governor says, 'You'd better let them go on.' So we held on and the president of the college came in and he said, 'Now you can go on with the understanding that you'll keep Eugene Wright in the background where he can't be seen too well.' And I told Eugene, 'Your microphone is off and I want you to use my announcement microphone so you gotta come in front of the band to play your solo.' We integrated the school that night."
-Dave Brubeck
Freedom for the people
During the 1958 Cold War tour in the Middle East, Brubeck was showing the world a better vision of America and spreading the feeling of freedom through jazz. Many countries ruled by dictatorships banned jazz because it gave people a sense of freedom.
"In the Eastern Bloc... jazz represented freedom on another level. Jazz music was an art form born of a culture that was discredited as shallow, decadent, and damaging. This meant that by nodding their heads or tapping their feet along to the beat in smoky nightclubs, citizens of the Soviet Bloc countries were symbolically resisting the political regime by emotionally engaging with the 'enemy' culture."
-Andras Simonyi, former Hungarian ambassador to the U.S.