In the summer, they go on the road to band camp. each school day but also play most weekends, either at football games or at public events. Members of the Shabazz band, who range in age from eight to eighteen, work hard. Two clarinettists responded by jumping out of their seats and dancing around, half gleefully and half sardonically.
„A long time ago, before electricity and TV and radio, people used to dance to this,“ he said. He wanted them to bring out dance rhythms, such as the habanera, and the songful Italianate shape of the melodies. „Listen downward,“ Williams kept saying, trying to get the upper lines in sync with the lower ones. When I walked in, the Shabazz band was rehearsing „The Stars and Stripes Forever.“ The kids were making a happy noise, but details were getting lost in the rumble. Williams encourages the students to learn musical notation at the computer, and to write their own music. „How ironic.“ In front of the blackboard are five computers, each equipped with the Sibelius composing program and various tools for teaching notation. „Mozart died while trying to complete this piece about Death,“ one student wrote. One of them says, „The future belongs to those who prepare for it.“ A corner of the blackboard is posted with some recent student essays on the topic of Mozart’s Requiem. There are also placards stating the virtues of discipline, decorum, respect, and attention. Duke Ellington holds the place of honor, above the center of the blackboard. The band room is decorated with the faces of jazz masters. Now the Malcolm X Shabazz Marching Band is considered one of the best in the state, in demand for its pealing brass, explosive drum line, and manic energy. According to Donald Gatling, a longtime teacher at Shabazz, the school had a lacklustre band when Williams arrived, seventeen years ago. He got into teaching almost by accident, looking for work that would keep him busy between gigs. He then played jazz in New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere with musicians such as Walter Bishop, Jr., and Woody Shaw. He served in the Army for twenty-one years, leading marching bands in the 82nd Airborne Division and in the 25th Infantry. Some students enjoy Williams’s class, which meets for three hours every afternoon, because they love playing music others see it more pragmatically, as a way to get through the day unscathed.Ī tall, suave, mellow-voiced man with a mustache and a gleaming shaved pate, Williams is a native of Ozark, Alabama.
Upon arriving, I found the corridors empty the guard at the door pointed me toward the band room, and added that the students were „at the memorial.“ The memorial, I learned, was for Dawud Roberts, a sixteen-year-old Shabazz football player, who, a few days before, had suffered a fatal stab wound on Johnson Avenue, a few hundred feet from the school. Not long ago, I went out to Malcolm X Shabazz High School, in Newark, New Jersey, to meet Hassan Ralph Williams, the director of the marching band.