Words by Ian M.

On February 21, 2006, I reflected on the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. Hot that in Black History Month – I couldn’t find any mentions of this date anywhere in the media or web…so I sat in my room, by myself, and listened to “The Ballot or the Bullet” in its entirety on YouTube.

The speech is incredible. Malcolm X oozes charisma – achieved through charm, humor, confidence, and strength. When you really start to think what he is talking about – and detach from the emotional response he induces – you realize that here, in this speech, the speaker has the crowd on its feet cheering for bloody revolution without even knowing it. As amazing and powerful as anything.

Just recently my friend Anthony Arnove, who created Voices of a People’s History of the United States, sent me a video of an event he organized in Berkeley. The concept is for contemporary artists to recreate important journal entries, essays, and speeches from American History’s oft-marginalized voices. The specific piece is of Mos Def channeling Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grassroots.”

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“America’s problem is us…”

A couple listens through and you start to realize how much sense it makes to have an MC read Malcolm. The two forms – oration and MCing – share tactics, dropping punchlines and verbal cues to persuade the audience. Raise your voice at the end of a sentence and the crowd knows to applaud. Drop the beat at the second half of a bar and the audience knows a dope rhyme is coming. Mos does a great job here, highlighting Malcolm’s verbal dexterity, his propensity to flip words used in repetition. He also nails Malcolm’s humor. A revolutionary with a sense of humor? People forget Malcolm’s ability to reveal the absurd through the use of humor and Mos understands it with dramatic pauses and reflective breaks.

I would like to see more of this type of thing in the future.

Audio version of “The Ballot Or The Bullet”.