The political and social activist Bayard Rustin was a major, if oft overlooked, figure in the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and -60s. As an avowed socialist and gay man during a time when the Red Scare was in full gear and homosexuality was oppressed by society, Rustin faced incredibly challenges in his life. But undaunted he became a pivotal strategic partner and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and had an enormous impact on the ending of the Jim Crow laws of the South. Drummer/composer/bandleader Bryan Carter was inspired by Rustin's life story to create a concert “Celebrating Bayard Rustin,” that will be presented as a premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Oct. 18-19.
Like so many people, Carter had only a limited awareness of Rustin’s work until he watched the 2020 film MLK/FBI directed by Sam Pollard—a documentary that explored the intense harassment that the governmental organization undertook to take down the civil rights leader and many of his peers. After hearing about Rustin’s impact on King and the movement, Carter says he was surprised that he didn’t know much about the man. “I couldn't believe that I hadn't learned or heard more about Bayard Rustin, this pivotal figure at the time,” he says. “We were in workshops for a musical that I co-orchestrated called Some Like It Hot and I went up to its composer, Mark Shaiman, and I said, ‘Mark, have you heard of this guy?’ He said, ‘No.” I said, ‘Mark you should write a musical about him.’ A few days later, Shaiman came back after researching the activist and reversed the charges. Instead of taking on the job, he told Carter, “No, you should write a musical about it.” The seed was planted.
As Carter did more research on Rustin’s life and work, he found much about Rustin that resonated with him, and that also explained why he hadn’t heard much about the activist. “Bayard is such an incredible figure because he’s the one who plans the March on Washington,” Carter says. “He planned the first Freedom Rides. He was a mentor to Dr. King. Bayard is really the one who brought this idea of civil nonviolence to Dr. King. And he was one of his leading advisors. But the reason why we haven't learned about him in history class is because he was gay.”
Rustin’s sexual orientation might not seem like a big deal now, but in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it mattered a lot. As a gay male, Carter had even more respect for Rustin’s commitment to social justice. “At that time, it was very rare to have someone who was openly living as a homosexual and also being a very visible leader,” says Carter. “I heard someone say that when he was outed in front of the entire country by Strom Thurmond, he would have been probably the most visible homosexual in the United States. To also be a person of color and a civil rights leader took a tremendous amount of courage. I'm so inspired by this human being.”
Carter also learned that going to jail on behalf of his principles was an ongoing theme throughout Rustin’s life. “He was no stranger to the jails,” he says. “Twenty years before the Freedom Rides, he planned something called the Journey of Reconciliation, where he was putting to the test, this new constitutional amendment where they were allowing integrated intrastate travel. They basically picked him up on a loophole. He was arrested in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and they said because he was traveling within the state that he had broken the law, and he would have to go to jail. He spent time on a chain gang. And this was after his arrest for essentially draft dodging or not going to war. He was arrested many, many times.” The strategy of civil disobedience and thereby overfilling the jails became an important part of King’s attack on the Jim Crow laws of the deep South. King’s own “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” became an iconic mission statement for the movement.
In short, Rustin, though not as widely known as many figures in the civil rights movement, was bigger than life. So how do you capture that in music? “You want to say everything, but you really can't,” Carter explains. “You have to pinpoint the things that you want to focus on and beyond that, you want to make sure that within the music that instead of telling people, you're making them feel something. Instead of saying Bayard was saddened by this particular challenge, you make them feel that with the music and with the orchestration and with the libretto.”
To make the project come alive, Carter turned to an ensemble he had created in way both spontaneous and strategic way back almost a decade. “This all started years ago, when I graduated from school, and I would literally FedEx box arrangements to singers and be like, ‘Hey, I saw that you were performing with this orchestra here and here's a free arrangement if you want to play it.’ There was this challenge of trying as a young arranger and composer to get people to play my music. I was lamenting to the great John Clayton one day that it's such a challenge to get people to play my music. And he said, ‘Well, why don't you start your own orchestra?’ And I said, ‘Well, I can't do that.’ He looks at me and he goes, ‘Why not?’ I tried to think of excuses, and of course I didn't have a good one. So I did just that. I started my own group. We've been playing together since 2016. It’s a phenomenal ensemble of musicians who love all sorts of music from jazz to classical repertoire.”
But it was an event in 2019 that truly brought things together. “We were celebrating the first World Pride in New York City and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots,” he explains. “I didn't see any jazz programming going on, so I decided to put together a show at Le Poisson Rouge. It started off as, ‘Maybe we'll just get a couple of friends together and we’ll play some tunes and talk about Strayhorn or whatever.’ Then it turned into an octet. Then it was a big band. And before I knew it, there was an orchestra on stage.”
The resulting ensemble, the Jazz at Pride Orchestra, not only celebrates the contributions and issues facing the LGBTQ+ community, but also features many jazz artists from that community. A nearly revolutionary development given the historically homophobic nature of the jazz world. Carter will be pulling from past concerts by the ensemble for this show at Jazz at Lincoln Center. “Every year we do this Jazz at Pride program,” he says. “And every year I'm adding more and more repertoire to our library. So we're going to be pulling some arrangements from that as well. We have this kind of vast library, but it's everything from Ellington and Strayhorn to anthems that you would hear if you went to a gay bar here in New York City, like Shania Twain. It’s all been re envisioned by me to a set by a jazz orchestra.”
In addition to those various songs that the orchestra has been doing, Carter composed a suite dedicated to Rustin’s legacy called Rustin in Renaissance. “It’s a labor of love,” he says. “It started with a ton of research and then pinpointing the periods that I wanted to touch on and figuring out the feeling that I wanted to convey to everyone. I'm so lucky to have this 35-piece orchestra, where there's a lot of orchestration tools at my disposal. So that's a real treat.” Although the piece was workshopped at North Texas State, this concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center will be the premiere of the work.
For the concerts at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carter will also be presenting several special guests in the form of vocalists, including Vuyo Sotashi, Shenel Johns, Georgia Heers and J. Hoard. “They are some of my favorite singers in New York City, so I'm so thrilled to have them,” he says. In addition, Carter says that there will be even more artists appearing as surprise special guests, but he is unwilling to spoil that surprise by announcing their names in advance.
Asked what he hopes the audience will take away from the concerts on Oct. 18-19 at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carter is three-fold clear about his intentions. “I have a few goals for every show that I put on,” he explains. “One, I want people to walk away with a knowledge of who Bayard Rustin was and what his legacy is. I think looking at the stage, they'll see that we are his legacy. We are his contribution to the world. Two, I don't want it to feel somber. I don't like the feeling of people walking on stage and the audience seeing strings and thinking that it has to be all hush-hush. That's not the vibe we want people to. I want people to have a good time. If you feel something we want to hear you. And, three, and this is another one that comes from the great John Clayton, with the music that I write, I really want to convey a sense of honesty, clarity, and integrity in everything that I do.”
Indeed, honesty, clarity and integrity sound like words from the Bayard Rustin playbook.
