by Madhuri
One bright afternoon in 1965 a line of people walked down 14th Street in Riverside, bearing picket signs: CIVIL RIGHTS! PEACE AND FREEDOM! WE SHALL OVERCOME!! UNITED WE STAND! END SEGREGATION NOW! Several members of my family marched, including my mother. The Press-Enterprise must have sent a photographer to take pictures, because Riverside was a conservative city and a static and dull one, despite its boasting a university, way up at the end of town under the barren hills. 14th Street was leafy and quiet, with a lot of little old wooden houses and a Mexican market, and a sinister-looking bar or two. I’m not sure why we marched there – perhaps because it was the nearest thing to a slum Riverside had.
I was 13, and just went along with things rather dumbly – but it felt good, if a bit exposing, to march with my family in support of human beings. And then… two white guys were coming towards us – tall, gangly Junior High classmates of mine, also with picket signs. When they got closer I saw that the signs read: KATY AKIN GETS HER CLOTHES AT THE GOODWILL! Then they marched along beside us, with mocking expressions on their spotty faces.
I was supposed to feel ashamed, obviously. This was before ‘vintage’ and ‘recycled’ and ‘upcycled’ – but I was unknowingly poised on the brink of becoming suddenly fashionable for the first time in my hand-me-down life. I was learning to sew in school and would soon start altering thrift-store finds into groovy and original bohemian outfits. But on this afternoon, that upcycled world did not yet exist. You were supposed to buy new (we were too poor) and, very much so, you weren’t supposed to indulge in radical politics.
I felt some shock at being singled out like that – I didn’t know those boys even noticed my existence, as I barely noticed theirs – but I felt protected by the other picketers; their presence, their solidarity. We outnumbered those looming oafs! So I ignored them, and eventually they went away.
And then something amazing happened. The march was over, and we all went into a little store-front with no store in it; leant our picket signs against the wall, and sat down in chairs that were scattered about in the dim space. A man picked up a guitar. And he started playing the Blues.
This was the first time I’d ever heard music like that – and it was real, it was not a performance for an audience, it was a participation, an inclusion, a serendipity of rough and aching and melodious beauty. The man picked casually and sang soulfully yet offhandedly the ache of his people and his life. He strummed and he twanged and he sang his simple repetitions that seemed to carry earth and fullness and the overwhelming, thrilling wealth of lack. He brought richness to us; he gave a gift he was not obliged to give; it was his generosity and his lament all at once. And I knew that that music was something I wanted more of. Something woke in me: this room, this afternoon, this blossoming endeavour towards freedom, where magic could open worlds to us through sound: this is good.
Featured image of Blues musician Mance Lipscomb
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