1963 and 1964 were extraordinary years in the American Civil Rights Movement. Brown v. Board of Education had outlawed school segregation and, by extension, the long-standing “separate but equal” doctrine a decade prior. In the ensuing rush of civil action — including the Montgomery bus boycott, sit ins-in across the southeastern United States, the Freedom Rides of 1961, the Birmingham campaign, and the March on Washington — black citizens and civil rights activists rode what President John F. Kennedy would call a “rising tide of discontent” and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would call “the whirlwinds of revolt.” King and Kennedy’s descriptions referred more specifically to the Spring of 1963, when nationwide protests, including those in Birmingham, where activists — including children — were met with police dogs, fire hoses, bombs, and beatings. America watched on television networks across the nation. In August they watched again, as some 300,000 demonstrators marched to the Lincoln Memorial, and King told the nation, “I have a dream.”
A decade of action brought critical legislation to bear, including the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, (later the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968), prohibiting discrimination in schools and universities and establishing protections for voting rights, equal employment opportunity, and access to public facilities. In the wake of Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, providing a foundation for meaningful enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise of equal protection under the law, a century after is passing.
As the movement continued its work, Margaret Bonds twice toured the Eastern, Southern, and Midwestern United States, performing in North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama Florida, Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Indiana. The tours also brought Bonds to pivotal sites for the movement, including Montgomery, where the bus boycotts of 1955-56 protested segregation on city busses, and Birmingham, where KKK members bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Carol Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Rosamond Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Dionne Wesley (age 14). The Montgomery boycotts and Birmingham bombing were direct inspirations for Bonds’ Montgomery Variations, and they constitute the bulk of its program (i.e. the story it tells). The work’s broader ethos is a celebration of the culture, faith, and determination of black citizens in forever changing their nation.
The music is built around the hymn “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.” Bonds’ choice of this hymn is a clear reference to the bus boycott, during which Montgomerians walked to work instead, costing the public transit system between 30,000 and 40,000 fares per day for 382 days. While dollar estimates vary, Bonds biographer John Michael Cooper suggests a loss of “USD $250,000 to Montgomery Bus Lines (nearly USD $2.5 billion in 2021), several thousand dollars in taxes to the City of Montgomery, and several million dollars in lost business to White businesses.” The hymn’s text can also, of course, reference the entirety of the movement, which regularly called upon biblical narratives as frameworks for justice, and Jesus in particular as symbol of resistance.
I want Jesus to walk with me.
I want Jesus to walk with me.
All along my pilgrim journey,
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.
In my trials, Lord, walk with me.
In my trials, Lord, walk with me.
When my heart is almost breaking,
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.
When I’m in trouble, Lord, walk with me.
When I’m in trouble, Lord, walk with me.
When my head is bowed in sorrow,
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.
Bonds’ original program for the Montgomery Variations’ included a descriptive note for each movement. [Sometime after 1966 she shortened these descriptions, as seen in the concert order printed above.]
I. DECISION
The Negro decides to rise against his oppressors.
The Negro in America is a Judeo-Christian. Though, in many instances[,] his religion is unenlightened, deep in his consciousness is an unshakeable faith in God, the Father, and in his “only begotten son,” Jesus. In his most courageous stand against his oppressors, then, it is the faith in the Divine intelligence which enables him to employ the methods of Passive Resistance — and thereby martyr himself for the Cause of Brotherhood and Democracy.
II. PRAYER MEETING
Before the Bus Boycott the Negro calls on God.
As all Negroes in America, the Negroes in Montgomery gathered in their churches to pray — some in eloquent silence, and others releasing themselves of their repressions with tambourines and shouting, and in many Negro church meetings there is always one sister or brother who cannot restrain himself from resorting to body gesticulations including lifting his arms to heaven and beating his feet — many times marching up and down the aisles of the church, unrestrainedly exhibiting his humility to Almighty God, as well as to the assembled worshippers.
III. MARCH
“If Jesus Goes With Me I’ll Go.” “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine.” As the early Christians, now the Negroes of Montgomery were willing to be thrown to the lions. Jesus, walking with them, they refused to ride on segregated buses.
“Love Ye One Another,” no violence, but no longer would they be subservient to their white bothers. Thus, a steady, determined walking to their jobs to earn their daily bread.
IV. DAWN IN DIXIE
Montgomery is no isolated town. Montgomery became a focal point of the world. The entire South, “Dixie,” began to wake up that something new was happening. Change, no matter how painful, is the Divine Plan.
There is honeysuckle, magnolias, and Spanish Moss hanging from trees it destroys. Spanish Moss is a parasite — miles of it are depressing. Swamps are foreboding. Perhaps one day then, even the camellias known as “Pink Perfection” laugh at the people of the South. The “Dawn in Dixie” caused all of America to awaken.
V. ONE SUNDAY IN THE SOUTH
What is meant by “Southern die-hards?” The Negros were having such a good time praising God and Jesus one Sunday morning in Alabama. (The trumpet announces “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me,” in a major key.) Little children were being taught Faith and to love their neighbors. Die-hards planted a bomb in the church to teach Negroes their place.
VI. LAMENT
In the Passive Resistance Movement one does not resort to violence. “Vengeance is mine sith the Lord.” One cries, moans and groans and calls for help from the Mother-Father God. Here the theme is stated simply, with little decoration, with exception of a few embellishments natural to Negro improvisation in their churches of the primitive type.[…]
[VII. BENEDICTION. No description for this final movement was including in Bonds’ original notes. The description appearing in later versions reads, “A benign God, Father and Mother to all people, pours forth Love to His children – the good and the bad alike.]
Bonds also noted the compositional model for her treatment of Variations’ musical theme, namely “the manner in which Bach constructed his partitas – a bold statement of the theme, followed by variations of the theme in the same key – major and minor,” yet specifying that, “[b]ecause of the personal meanings of the Negro spiritual themes, Margaret Bonds always avoids over-development of the melodies.” Bonds draws from Bach — here technically and later spiritually — as she lends her musical voice to pursuit of justice.
“Decision” begins with a bold presentation of the hymn’s melody in horns, trumpets, and trombones. These are the instruments of fanfares – instruments that in Bach’s time would announce the entrance of royals and nobles, and in this case heralds a movement of millions.
“Prayer Meeting” begins in “eloquent silence,” backed by a distant tambourine that foreshadows the coming jubilation. Bonds thereafter quotes another hymn of protection, “Angels Watchin’ Over Me,” in the strings, and from there the energy builds to a frenzy, as congregants “releas[e] themselves of their repressions with tambourines and shouting.”
Timpani and pizzicato basses echo the “steady, determined walking” of Montgomerians in opening bars of “March.” Bassoons sound out a dignified rendering “I want Jesus to Walk with Me.” They are the first to march, and gradually the entire orchestra joins in their steady pace.
The next three movements constitute the heart of Bonds’ Montgomery Variations. Above the lilting accompaniment of strings, harp and horns “IV. Dawn in Dixie” uses the birdsongs of flutes and clarinets to signify a literal dawn, but the movement as a whole signifies that “Dixie” (i.e. the American South) is “wak[ing] up that something new was happening.” This movement too grows steadily in volume and instrumentation, again signifying a growing movement. Yet Bonds original program notes foreshadow something darker, that “Change, no matter how painful[,] is the Divine Plan.”
That darkness arrives in the following variation, “One Sunday in the South.” The movement begins in a placid joy, as “The Negros were having such a good time praising God and Jesus one Sunday morning in Alabama,” and a solo trumpet sings “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me” in D Major, rather than the original D minor. The trumpet bears special significants in the music of Bach as well, especially as a symbol of the divine in his church cantatas. So while Bach’s partitas provide the technical manner in which Bonds treats her themes, the cantatas (a form that Bonds had explicitly used in the Ballad of the Brown King) begin to emerge as a larger framework for of the Montgomery Variations. Yet another Bachian influence comes from in his first two Brandenburg Concertos, the melodies, rhythms, and instrumental colors of which are here heard clearly when the strings, flutes, and trumpets take over after the quiet introduction. A Sunday morning in Alabama shines forth with the sounds of classical music’s most iconic musical liturgist.
“One Sunday in the South” ends, however, with tragedy, as the crashing of bass drum, cymbals and timpani signify the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. This leads directly into the following movement, “Lament,” where a dialogue between violins and violas, both playing in the dark sounds of their middle and lower registers, sounds out with palpable grief. Violas and cellos join thereafter, while Bonds’ choice to leave out the basses altogether places the entirety of the movement within the range of the human voice, further humanizing the musical lamentation.
“Benediction” emerges directly from the sound world of these lamentations, with low strings (still no basses), yet in the course of five bars the music shifts toward brightness, heralding the first real key change of the piece, to the tranquility of F Major. F Major is also a pastoral key, used over centuries of western classical music as a reference to nature — or perhaps, in the ethos of Christianity, to God’s creation. It is an extraordinary moment of musical comfort, and fitting to its name. A benediction is a blessing at the end of a Christian service, and church cantatas were themselves part of a liturgical framework. With soaring brass chorales, the musical “liturgy” of the Montgomery Variations sends the listener out into the world, as though from a house of worship, to build a better nation, one worthy of all those who walked, marched, and sang for justice.
I must acknowledge John Michael Cooper, whose observations and analysis of Bonds music and its historical context have invaluably informed these notes.
