[Dixielandjazz] Maggie Brown interviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Well, at least Maggie Brown is saying it like it is.  I think a lot of us are tired of the crap we are exposed to these days.  


Maggie Brown Celebrates Her Legacy
Singer keeps dad's memory alive in show
by Howard Reich
Chicago Tribune, January 20, 2012
When the distinguished Chicago singer Maggie Brown drives her kids to school or picks
them up, they usually switch on the car radio, at which point Brown winces at what
she hears: song lyrics that would make a sailor blush.
Quickly, Brown turns the dial.
"You hear them saying these incredible things," says Brown, quoting explicit lyrics
that would not be published in a mainstream newspaper.
"This is wrong, and we accept it -- and we shouldn't accept it."
Certainly Brown doesn't. For fully two decades, she has performed her one-woman show,
"Legacy: Our Wealth of Music," as an antidote to prevailing musical tastes in our
popular culture. Tracing the history of African-American creativity, the performance
piece examines the roots of black musical culture and its greatest flowerings. From
African chant to early ragtime, from classic jazz to modern blues, "Legacy" represents
Brown's view of the noblest innovations in American music.
Part concert, part monologue, part lecture, "Legacy" has taken Brown onto concert
stages around the country and, perhaps more important, to schools across the city.
So when she celebrates the 20th anniversary of "Legacy" Friday evening at the University
of Chicago's International House, she won't just be putting on another show: She'll
be making a deeply felt, personal statement about cultural values and, in effect,
reminding listeners of how long she has been championing her own.
"If the ancestors went through all they went through, fought, bled and died for freedom
they would never enjoy, they did it for future generations," says Brown. "We are
the future generations.
"And what are we doing with that freedom?" she says, referencing the sounds that
pour out of the car radio -- and practically everywhere else.
"We should raise the standards."
Brown's standards were set high from the outset, for she's the daughter of Oscar
Brown Jr., one of the greatest sociopolitical songwriters of the 20th century. Civil
rights-era classics such as "Signifyin' Monkey" and "Work Song" rang out with Oscar
Brown's brilliant lyrics; the shattering "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite" that Brown
wrote with Max Roach still resonates today; and socially conscious Brown shows such
as "Great Nitty Gritty" and "Kicks & Co." broke new ground in bringing scenes from
the tough streets of Chicago onto the musical stage.
That tremendous Legacy shaped Maggie Brown's aesthetic and resonates in her work.
Not surprisingly, then, her show includes a great deal of music and poetry by Oscar
Brown Jr., who died nearly broke in 2005 at age 78. For all the ingenuity and originality
of his music and words, he never received a fraction of the recognition and fortune
he deserved.
Considering the breadth and depth of his achievements, that may be difficult to comprehend.
But the songwriter himself said he understood why great fame never came his way.
"I was always trying to be free -- free of knuckling under to what somebody else
told me to do," he told me, with characteristic defiance, in 1995. "And that costs
you."
Like his daughter, Oscar Brown Jr. railed against accepted norms, yet he refused
to be embittered by his lack of commercial success.
"In a way, I don't mind that I've been broke most of my career, because that has
kept me creative," he told me in 2002. "I've had to keep creating to stay alive.
"If I had become rich, I would have spent more time collecting awards than creating
material."
That material lives in the art of Maggie Brown, as does her father's refusal to knuckle
under.
"He never compromised," says Maggie Brown.
Neither does she.

--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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