Malcolm, Who Have You Been?: Musicalizing the Relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad in X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X

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Malcolm, Who Have You Been?:Musicalizing the Relationship betweenMalcolm X and Elijah Muhammad in X,The Life and Times of Malcolm XLeon James BynumPublished online: 01 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Leon James Bynum (2010) Malcolm, Who Have You Been?: Musicalizingthe Relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad in X, The Life and Times ofMalcolm X , Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 12:1, 55-68, DOI:10.1080/10999940903571312

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Malcolm X: The New Scholarship

Malcolm, Who Have You Been?Musicalizing the Relationship between Malcolm X andElijah Muhammad in X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X

Leon James Bynum

The striking and affecting 1986 opera, X: The Life and Timesof Malcolm X, composed by Anthony Davis, uses clevertheatrical devices in concert with Malcolm X’s own doctrinesto realize its objectives. The opera draws upon events as theywere posited by the memoirs of Malcolm X, coauthored byPulitzer Prize–winner Alex Haley, as well as additionalhistorical sources. Composed by Anthony Davis, with a bookby his brother, actor-director Christopher Davis, and alibretto by his cousin, poet Thulani Davis, X, The Life andTimes of Malcolm X premiered professionally in 1986 at theNew York City Opera. The work inaugurated a new genre:the opera based on a contemporary political subject. Davis’sscore is composed of an effortless blending of swing, bebop,gospel, hip-hop, traditional West Africans rhythms, classicalWestern music, and improvised sections. The piece is succes-sful at examining from several innovative angles the seminalassociation between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad andinevitability of the relationship’s thoroughly vituperative end.

Keywords: Anthony Davis, Christopher Davis, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X,Opera, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Thulani Davis

Souls

Souls 12 (1): 55–68, 2010 / Copyright # 2010 The Trustees of Columbia Universityin the City of New York / 1099-9949/02 / DOI: 10.1080/10999940903571312

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In a 1990 interview with Washington Post reporter David Mills,Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, asserted that Malcolm belongsto everyone and everyone is entitled to his own interpretation of theman and his legacy.1 Spike Lee, one of the first successful Black filmdirectors in the post-blaxploitation era, absolutely applied this to his1992 biopic based on James Baldwin’s One Day, When I Was Lost andThe Autobiography of Malcolm X.2 Lee sought to illuminate aspects ofMalcolm X’s life by using his principles within the framework of hisown film aesthetic. He noted that the film was merely his interpret-ation: ‘‘I feel it’s as simple as that. I’m an artist. I live, breathe, andwill die for my art, for cinema. Malcolm X is my artistic vision. Thefilm is my interpretation of the man. It’s nobody else’s.’’3

In a similar vein, the striking and affecting 1986 opera, X: The Lifeand Times of Malcolm X, composed by Anthony Davis, uses clevertheatrical devices in concert with Malcolm X’s own doctrines to rea-lize its objectives. The opera draws upon events as they were positedby the memoirs of Malcolm X, coauthored by Pulitzer Prize winnerAlex Haley, as well as upon additional historical sources.

First produced in Philadelphia in 1984 and 1985, X: The Life ofTimes of Malcolm X was hailed as the second noteworthy ‘‘authenticAfrican-American’’ opera, following Scott Joplin’s 1910 masterpieceTreemonisha.4 Anthony Davis sought to contextualize the eventswithin the opera historically and illuminate our understandings ofthe characters by the utilization of jazzmusic.5 Its controversial subjectmatter has significantly limited the number of major productions thathave been staged in the twenty-two years since its premiere.6 However,the piece is successful at examining from several innovative angles theclose association between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad and theinevitability of the relationship’s thoroughly vituperative end.

Composed by Anthony Davis, with a book by his brother, actor-director Christopher Davis, and a libretto by his cousin, poet ThulaniDavis, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X premiered professionallyin 1986 at the New York City Opera. The work inaugurated a newgenre: the opera based on a contemporary political subject. Davis’s scoreis composed of an effortless blending of swing, bebop, gospel, hip-hop,traditionalWest Africans rhythms, classicalWesternmusic, and impro-vised sections; his references range fromBela Bartok to Duke Ellington,from Wynton Marsalis to Leonard Bernstein.7 Themes of nationalismand Black activism as explored by Malcolm X are chronicled withoutan expressed political or polemical intention by the creators and aregiven a voice in the realm of operatic theater for the first time.

The three-act opera presents the life of Malcolm X in a sweepinglyepisodic format. Arias and choruses move from one stage of his life toanother in a seamless, almost cinematic manner, placing the primary

56 ^ Souls January^March 2010

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emphasis upon the development of his worldview rather than on mereevents.8 The result is epic, a larger than life rendering of Malcolmas a historical figure, told via the musical styles popular duringMalcolm’s lifetime; it reflects new dynamics of American life andculture with his political message taking center stage.9 Finally, likeMalcolm X’s message itself, the intended audience of the opera isAfrican American. Anthony Davis asserted, ‘‘What interests me as acomposer is the prospect of ringing people into the opera house whohaven’t been there before—the prospect of taking this old Europeanform and making it into a vital, exciting American form. That trans-formation is one of the things that make composing opera so exciting.’’10

Especially innovative are the revelations made by way of havingthe same actor play Elijah Muhammad and Street, the man whointroduced Malcolm X to the world of petty crime and hustling. Afew historical inconsistencies notwithstanding, by coupling ElijahMuhammad with the semifictional Street, Davis argues for the inevi-tability of Malcolm X’s split from the Nation of Islam by positing it asa fraudulent operation by virtue of its connection to an organizer ofdubious motives and values. As a man of integrity and great intellec-tual capacity, Malcolm X has no option but to outgrow the limitedideological and political confines of Muhammad’s organization.Malcolm Little, still to become ‘‘Detroit Red,’’ first encounters

Street in the second scene of the first act of X: The Life and Timesof Malcolm X. It is the Roxbury section of Boston, circa 1940. Theteenaged Malcolm is stoic, finding it difficult to adjust to the less thanbucolic surroundings that exist in the pretentiously upwardly mobile‘‘Hill.’’ Davis’s Malcolm is able to find contentment only in the electri-fying sounds and exhilarating rhythms of jazz music.He is first inculcated into the ways of Boston’s thriving African

American community by way of an enlightening aria by his oldersister Ella, performed by mezzo-soprano Hilda Harris. The beginningof a watershed period for Malcolm, Ella’s exhortation draws uponpositive imagery of nonwhite culture in an effort to encourage herbrother to embrace their community:

Come child, come with me.The whole big city waitsfor you to see.My side of town,they call ‘‘the hill,’’it could be the ‘‘bottom,’’the South Side or Harlem,It’s always bustling and sprawlingbut it’s still like a home.We call the streetsby our very own names.

Malcom X:The New Scholarship ^ 57

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We Negroes don’t leave a placequite the same.

She goes on to speak approvingly of the lifestyle and work ethic of the‘‘Hill’’ residents of whom Malcolm feels so dubious.

In a striking contrast, Ella’s air segues immediately into a seduc-tively persuasive appeal by Street, played by tenor Thomas A. Young,to disavow the middle-class values of the ‘‘Hill’’ in favor of thehustler’s life. With strident horns, driving percussion, and alluringdance rhythms, Street provides Malcolm with an irresistible alterna-tive. Ella’s entreaty is as repugnant to young Malcolm as Street’sbeckoning is completely captivating.

In addition to singing, Street both scats and raps; heretofore, noother character in the opera performs outside of the classical vocaltradition. The musical option offered by Street is beguilingly newand different. Accordingly, his message, the message of the streets,highlighting the necessity of racial separation for survival, appealsto the sensibilities Malcolm developed as the child of Garveyites. Byextension, the exploitation of whites combined with good times, easymoney, and readily accessible women draw Malcolm into Street’sranks completely:

Play the game,get into the ‘‘life.’’Don’t mess aroundwith the white man’s strife.If you want to mess aroundmess around with his wife.If you try and change thingsthey’ll take your life.

The manner of the connection parallels the presentation of hisrelationship to Elijah Muhammad in acts two and three.

While still in prison, Malcolm is introduced to the Nation of Islamby his brother, Reginald, who had converted in 1948. In a dreamlikevision in the first scene of the second act, Elijah Muhammad appearsto Malcolm and, almost literally, escorts him out of prison and thelifestyle that sent him there. As Elijah Muhammad, Young gives anequally extraordinary performance. Especially apparent beginningin their duet that follows, ‘‘Malcolm, who have you been?’’ Muham-mad has an imposing, almost otherworldly quality. In his sturdy,pure, clarion tones, Young’s Muhammad sings commandingly overa mass of barely navigable atonal lines and syncopated jazz-orientedrhythms. The music is an evolution from the conventional jazz asso-ciated with Street and the Boston hustlers to something much morestylistically complex and darkly evocative.


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Arguably, Elijah Muhammad registers as an individual who iscapable of much more than other men in Davis’s musical universe.Malcolm X, Reginald Little, and the Garvey preacher, the other lead-ingmale roles in the opera, are accorded strong opportunities for show-casing their vocal prowess but are relatively earthbound in comparisonto the soaring, ethereal melodic lines composed for Muhammad.Ideologically, Muhammad appeals to Malcolm as well; he supplies afamiliar, yet more formalized, mechanism for understanding andnegotiating the institutional racism with which Malcolm struggles:

We seek freedom,Justice,Equality,but to know these thingsyou must know historyAnd you must knowArmageddon comes.It carry its word.

The compellingly unique music and the proud, uplifting messagemake a disciple out of Malcolm, a young man in search of schemafor rebuilding his life after prison.The technical organization of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X

elicits interesting observations. In addition to the doubling, othernovel choices by the creators bring questions about the nature ofMalcolm X’s and Elijah Muhammad’s relationship right to the fore-front. Malcolm X is the central figure in the work; his experiencesand conflicts create the dramatic arc of the storyline. Even still, it isElijah Muhammad, and to a lesser extent, Street, cast as the antago-nists, who provide most of the dramatic thrust and are assigned themost thrilling musical passages. Malcolm X is much more of an iconthan a hero in this work.11 Writes Michael Walsh in Time magazine,‘‘The less savory aspects of his life are glossed over in favor of hisiconographic significance as the avenging angel of black America.’’12

In fact, most of the other characters fade into the background.According to librettist Thulani Davis in an interview with me, the

fundamental reason behind coupling Street and Elijah Muhammadwas that the creators envisioned the pair as two of the most influentialvoices in his life. Street and Elijah Muhammad indoctrinate MalcolmX into their respective worlds and seek to shape his way of relating totheir particular constituencies. Each is responsible for drawingMalcolm X into identifying as part of a distinctive faction that reachedout to segments of the African American working class. Eventually,Malcolm X would also outgrow his relationships with both men.Nevertheless, each relationship played a critical role in the shapingMalcolm X’s ultimate worldview. Says Davis, ‘‘On a more important


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level, I suppose one could say those were two voices that schooled himand two voices that ‘called’ him at some point in his life. The voices areeach evocative, challenging him, seductive, and teaching him thingsthat shape him. Yet they are voices from which he moves on.’’

Street and Elijah Muhammad both presented options for theircohorts that were essentially designed to aid African Americans inenduring an inhospitable racist society. They each understood thepeculiarities of speaking with their unique populations. Quite extra-ordinarily, they were appealing to very demographically similargroups: African Americans who had recently migrated from the ruralSouth to Northern cities. Notes Davis, ‘‘The streets of Northern citiesserved a role in schooling the ‘bamas,’ but they did not organize, andtheir impact was really one-on-one. Muhammad gave them survivalskills and a community.’’

According to Richard Brent Turner, Muhammad posited the Nationof Islam as a way of life with offered coping mechanisms for AfricanAmericans in the quest for racial egalitarianism and ethnic parity.13

Thus, the pairing of Elijah Muhammad and Street reinforces thesimilar nature of their tactics and audiences. For audiences of theopera, the two characters are completely linked.

Also of interest, the Elijah Muhammad=Street role is written to beperformed by one leggiero tenor, the male equivalent of a lyric color-atura soprano voice. It is the highest tenor voice and, since the era ofMozart, Rossini, and Bellini, has been used to perform passagesrequiring great vocal dexterity.14 With its emphasis on the uppersections of the vocal range and the technically challenging, yet beauti-fully florid passages, the part of Elijah Muhammad, in particular,harks back to the lyric tenor roles of Italian operas of the second halfof the eighteenth century; the role of Elijah Muhammad in the operahas been described as a heroic one.15 Performers in these roles wereoften noted for their personal charisma and dramatic strength whileperforming. Most significantly, these roles customarily served thetheatrical function of heroes and lovers.16

Conversely, AnthonyDavis designed the role ofMalcolmX to be sungby a kavalierbariton voice. Roles associated with this voice type includeWolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s title character in Don Giovanni andGiuseppe Verdi’s Giorgio Germont in La Traviata.17 Grippingly, bothof these historically significant characters find themselves wrestlingwith significant philosophical and moral issues that bring about tragicoutcomes. A noteworthy characteristic of these types of roles is that theactor is required to possess a noble masculinity with a strong physicalpresence on stage. Davis’s Malcolm X can be located within thistradition. Historically, though, this is not the category that producesthe most protagonists. The score opera is decidedly postmodernist in


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its composition, not locked into many of the most rigid traditionalexpectations and definitions, yet the overall construction fits comfort-ably within the traditional guidelines of conventional opera. Thatmakes the choices to cast Elijah Muhammad in the hero mold andMalcolm X in that of a supporting player all the more striking.There are noteworthy dramaturgical associations between X: The

Life and Times of Malcolm X and another monumental jazz-inspiredAmerican opera, Porgy and Bess. Connections between Street andSportin’ Life, the pivotal villain in Porgy and Bess, are immediateand palpable.18 Set in 1930s South Carolina, the 1935 work byDuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira and George Gershwin is oneof the most renowned American operas. As such, the observablesimilarities between Street and Sportin’ Life were noted by many ofthe reviewers of several of the major productions.The jazz arrangements in Street’s twomajor arias, ‘‘The Dance Hall’’

and ‘‘The Pool Hall,’’ are directly reminiscent of Sportin’ Life’s twomajor arias, ‘‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’’ and ‘‘There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’Soon for New York.’’ In fact, Thomas J. Young had notably played therole of Sportin’ Life in significant productions of Porgy and Bess; hewas able to bring much of that character’s verve to his portrayal ofStreet. Thulani Davis even asserted that part of the reason that Youngwas cast was to take advantage of his strengths in scat singing.Street’s scatting parallels Sportin’ Life’s in ‘‘It Ain’t Necessarily So.’’There are also many similarities between the two operas in the con-

tent of the material. Like Street, Sportin’ Life is a womanizing cocainepeddler who distrusts Christianity but uses it to manipulate otherAfrican Americans.

To get into Hebben don’ snap for a sebben.Live clean, don’ have no fault.Oh, I takes dat gospel whenever it’s pos’ble,But wid a grain of salt . . .

I’m preachin’ dis sermon to showIt ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa,Ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa,It ain’t necessarily so.

In addition to taking advantage of other Black people, author JohnHope Franklin asserted that characters such as Sportin’ Life existedto subvert white power. Moreover, many of Sportin’ Life’s character-istics could also be applied to W. D. Fard, the founder of the Nation ofIslam and mentor to Elijah Muhammad, especially as he encouragedhis followers not to take the words of whites at their face: he claimedthat whites were dishonest in general and Christianity expressly pro-moted the degradation of Black people.19 According to Richard Brent


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Turner, ‘‘street peddler,’’ ‘‘dope peddler,’’ ‘‘convict,’’ ‘‘charlatan,’’ and‘‘fraud’’ were all applied to Fard during his lifetime.20

The Elijah Muhammad of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X canbe certainly characterized similarly, although perhaps more politi-cally astute and hardnosed than Sportin’ Life. Elijah Muhammadreached out to the same type of audience and also utilized people’sreligious beliefs to promote their agendas. Additionally, his extra-marital indiscretions were well known.21

After the disappearance of W. D. Fard in 1934, Elijah Muhammadascended to the ranks of leader of the Allah Temple of Islam. Shortlythereafter, he founded Temple No. 2 in Chicago, deified Fard, and pro-claimed himself, as Fard’s protege, to be his divinely inspired prophet.Writes historian C. Eric Lincoln, ‘‘Muhammad’s association with Fard,‘the SupremeBeing among all BlackMen,’ [invested] himwith a statusand power that have never been successfully challenged.’’22 Throughthe early Forties, he proselytized all along the East Coast under vari-ous aliases, including Gulam Bogans, Elijah Evans, Elijah Karriem,Muhammad Rassoul, and perhaps most pointedly, Mr. Muckmuck.

Muhammad came to be known as one who would manipulate hisassociates as one would move pawns around on a chessboard. He evenused his 1942 to 1946 incarceration for failing to register for the draftto his advantage by positing himself as a martyr to the Black Muslimmovement.

Muhammad was known to use sections of the Qur’an and theBible to buttress his religious theories. Though familiar with Islamorthodoxy, he and Fard developed a brand of the religion thatsimultaneously appealed to the religious and sociopolitical sensibil-ities of that group, while firmly promoting with a Black separatistphilosophy; as C. Eric Lincoln observes, Muhammad ‘‘cut the cloakto fit the cloth.’’23

Muhammad’s constituency of southern migrants saw moving to theNorth as something as an exodus into the Promised Land. Says Davis,

The Prophet was a great salesman for the Nation, as, of course, was Malcolm.Muhammad was the popularizer of Fard’s idea, knew the language of the con-stituency, had a bit of street parlance to his approach, but it was more of a South-ern voice. He knew the sentiments and Biblical literacy of the Southern AfricanAmericans who migrated north and this was his base in the 1930s and especiallyin the 1940s when there is a last huge migration, especially to Chicago.

The nature of their plight in the industrial urban North made AfricanAmericans more receptive to the plan offered by Muhammad:

Unlike the European immigrants before them, however, they were not assimi-lated into the mainstream culture—their racial difference precluded that. Theydid not return home because their movement from the South had devastatedits economy. In short, they had no structural advantages available to them tocushion their permanent exploitation.24


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His leadership principles were influenced by Marcus Garvey andNoble Drew Ali, as well as by what he perceived as economic realitiesof American society:

Circumstances and conditions, such as Muhammad’s agrarian background andexperiences in depressed Detroit during the 1920s and 1930s, were directly tiedto his later attraction to the Nation of Islam as a vehicle of financial uplift as wellas spiritual and racial empowerment.25

The Nation of Islam went on to become the most influential AfricanAmerican nationalist group between World War II and the BlackPower movement. Parallels can certainly be made between Muham-mad’s followers, Street’s cronies, and Sportin’ Life’s parishioners inthat the types of people who inhabited Boston, New York, and Chicagoin the 1940s had been in places like South Carolina in the 1930s.Over the years, financial matters gradually began to supplant spiri-

tual concerns on the roster of the Nation of Islam’s priorities; thoughMuhammad was never exclusively inspired by materialistic motives,pecuniary concerns did shape the direction of the movement. Further-more, the movement encouraged stringent discipline, deference, andstrong patriarchal systems and roles. The Nation of Islam’s primarymembership was composed of working-class individuals, yet theirvalue system was a middle-class one. While Malcolm X was a nationalplayer and representative of the Nation of Islam, the group’s rise instanding and membership rose stratospherically. After Malcolm X’sassassination, Elijah Muhammad’s prominence began to wane to avery significant extent; he never again publicly spoke of Malcolm Xin a positive light.Street is an obvious stand-in for ‘‘Shorty,’’ a composite character

from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, who based largely on MalcolmJarvis. The two Malcolms met in a Roxbury pool hall in 1942 andbecame fast friends. For a period, the pair lived together and wenton to commit petty crimes and date white women together. In 1946,the duo was sentenced to jail time together.26 Malcolm X and Shorty’sexperiences were chronicled in both the 1992 biopic and the MalcolmX=Haley, but the extent of Malcolm’s criminality seems to have beengreatly exaggerated. According to his brother, Robert Little, ‘‘Malcolmwas not the big-time hustler he was made out to be by Alex Haley’sbook. He hustled, but everybody hustled one way or another becauseit was about trying to survive. I think the book was heavily drama-tized.’’27 While some of the details of Jarvis’s relationship withMalcolm X were changed, the fundamental element of his beingMalcolm X’s (literal) partner-in-crime in Boston is present in the opera.Notably, the virtuosic passages written for Street and Elijah

Muhammad are among the most impressive and vividly written ones


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in the entire work. Given that Malcolm is depicted as a distracted andwayward youth whose interest can be piqued only by the alluringincursion of jazz, it is nothing less than inevitable that these twomen would have influenced him to such an extent. Furthermore,the strength and sheer impressiveness of the material given to Streetelevates both characters to a place where their influence overMalcolm X is readily understandable.

Much of the dramatic tension is drawn from the power strugglebetween Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad and the subsequentphilosophical shift experienced by Malcolm X toward the end of hislife. Malcolm X’s struggle to assert his own identity outside of ElijahMuhammad’s influence is a major theme of the opera. Anthony Davisexpressed a strong interest in the exploration and development ofidentity, personal and political.

I think it’s fair to say that there is a theme like that [running] through my work.That’s part of the struggle, how one deals with expectations and who you are, howyou [confront] the limitations of your environment to try and determine your pathor identity, to free yourself and then feel how exciting it is . . . . It’s the same kindof sense of possibility, of how you can do something that affects others, or how youcan make yourself go beyond what you’ve been set out to be.28

‘‘America Is a Glass House’’ from the fourth scene of act 3, portraysa post-hajj press conference where Malcolm X outlines his new philo-sophy. The transcendent music and the trenchant lyrics revealMalcolm X as a fundamentally changed man after his hajj. Little evi-dence is given anywhere in the opera that these ideas had been slowlyformulating for months or years before. Malcolm X’s more raciallysensitive, economically aware, and politically participatory outlookis a spontaneous product of his pilgrimage to Mecca. As suggestedby The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic, itis a fundamentally changed view of the practice of Islam that inspiresthe transition, rather than political acumen.

There is a great deal of evidence, however, that Malcolm X’s philo-sophical changes had begun much earlier than his hajj. As early asthe immediate aftermath of the 1962 murder of Ronald Stokes, therewas somemeasurable change in the articulation of Malcolm X’s valuesand viewpoints.29 Richard Brent Turner asserts that the final year ofMalcolm X’s life can be divided into two distinct phases: his tran-sitional period, from March to May 1964, and his final period, wherehe advocated a racially inclusive brand of Sunni Islam for AfricanAmericans and began to espouse a much more overt brand of pan-Africanism. This final period lasted from June 1964 to February1965. During this period, he firmly defined himself and his ideologyoutside of the Nation of Islam. He founded the Muslim Mosque andthe Organization of Afro-American Unity in order to facilitate his


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new articulation of the path to Black empowerment, one thatencouraged a full range of Black political participation. He also soughtthe support of and connection to similar freedom struggles across theglobe. He espoused economic reforms, a rejection of capitalism,Garveyite concepts of self-help and racial pride, and an awareness ofthe role of the press and government in suppressing the political voiceof African Americans.30

Malcolm X asserted that racism was largely a political and econ-omic corollary of capitalism; he believed that some form of socialismwould be a better option to combat institutional racism, classism,and sexism. His goal was not simply the creation of civil rights legis-lation or the setting of legal precedents, but rather, better access toquality education, jobs, health care, and housing for Black Americans.Most significantly, he sought to get African Americans to expandtheir thinking to international proportions:

Here in America, we have always thought that we were struggling by ourselves,and most Afro-Americans will tell you just that—that we’re a minority. By think-ing we’re a minority, we struggle like a minority. We struggle like we’re an under-dog. We struggle like all of the odds are against us. This type of struggle takesplace only because we don’t yet know where we fit in the scheme of things.31

Malcolm X used his separation from the Nation of Islam and his hajjas a springboard for the articulation of his new sociopolitical andreligious principles.

One of the major troubles that I was having in building the organization that Iwanted—an all-black organization whose ultimate objective was to help createsociety in which there could exist honest white-black brotherhood—was thatmy earlier public image, my old so-called ‘‘Black Muslim’’ image, kept blockingme. I was trying to gradually reshape that image.32

It’s important to emphasize the gradual nature of the change. Hissteady intellectual and philosophical growth was the result ofpersonal, professional, and world events that led him to see the lim-itations of Elijah Muhammad’s philosophy and his personal foibles.Nevertheless, Malcolm X understood that a complete political andphilosophical separation from Elijah Muhammad would be necessaryfor wide-scale acceptance of his new agenda. He used his experiencesas a disciple of Elijah Muhammad and his subsequent split from thisgroup to add gravitas to his new ecumenical agenda by positing it asthe culmination of a religious renaissance. All the same, Malcolm X’sdevelopment toward this philosophy was evident well before the riftcaused by his comments after President Kennedy’s assassinationand his subsequent silencing by Muhammad. In fact, though, as earlyas 1962, the Nation of Islam leadership had started to become jealousand distrustful of Malcolm X’s rise to national prominence.33


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The question of the inevitability of Malcolm X’s separation from theNation of Islam becomes an especially interesting one when inter-preted through the framework of the opera’s interconnected ElijahMuhammad and Street characters. Because the same actor plays bothparts, each role necessarily informs our understanding of the other.Muhammad and Street are illustrated as con artists endowed withbeguiling personalities and gifted in spinning gripping rhetoric. Assuch, Street’s criminal enterprise makes the more dubious aspectsof Elijah Muhammad’s theology and inconsistent politics all the moretransparent. That Malcolm’s relationship with Street has suchnegative results, including a prison sentence and feelings of despair,foreshadows certain disaster with Muhammad as well.

Had Malcolm X not been weighed down by the leaden anchor ofMuhammad’s fringe doctrines and unfavorable reputation in main-stream society, perhaps he would have been able to accomplish manyof his goals. Based on his demonstrated intellectual capacity and leg-acy he left behind, there is every reason to believe that this is thecase. Malcolm X has been posited as preeminent African Americanthinker by a wide range of scholars, from James Baldwin to AngelaDavis to Robin D. G. Kelley. As early as 1966, Amiri Baraka, in hisessay, ‘‘The Legacy of Malcolm X, and the Coming of the BlackNation,’’ had begun to place Malcolm’s overall contribution withinthe constellation of Black intellectual outturn and cultural critiques:

The point is that Malcolm had begun to call for Black National Consciousness . . . .Malcolm X’s greatest contribution, other than to propose a path to international-ism and hence, the entrance of the American Black Man into a world-wideallegiance against the white man (in most recent times he proposed to do it usinga certain kind of white liberal as a lever), was to preach Black Consciousness tothe Black Man. As a minister for the Nation of Islam, Malcolm talked about ablack consciousness that took its form from religion. In his last days he talkedof another black consciousness that proposed politics as its moving energy . . . .If we take the teachings of Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X (as wellas Frazier, Du Bois, and Fanon), we know for certain that the solution of theBlack Man’s problems will come only through Black National Consciousness.34

X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X makes the argument that therealization of Malcolm X’s ambitions are stymied by the results ofhis long association with Elijah Muhammad.

[The opera] accepts the idea that Malcolm X’s conversion to Islam was part of aprocess of maturation that—had he not been cut down by militant blackassassins—might have made him into a force for reconciliation between blacksand whites: strong, devoted to black interests, but no longer confrontational ina way that undercut the cause.35

Malcolm certainly had the tools to accomplish his goals, but just asthe relationship between Street and Malcolm is doomed to meet a


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penitentiary end, the affiliation with Elijah Muhammad is fated toend fruitlessly. While Davis stops short of explicitly asserting thatElijah Muhammad is an unscrupulous swindler, that is an evidentconclusion from what is offered in the opera. Street’s correlation toSportin’ Life further serves to reinforce that concept. All of these con-sidered, the likelihood of there not being a momentous shift in opinionand then ensuing disconnection between the two is very small.Reflecting on the quote by Betty Shabazz that opens this essay,

engaging with Malcolm X’s philosophies and legacy oftentimespresupposes that each individual’s interpretation will be diffusedthrough the lens of his or her experiences and perceptions. HistorianRobin D. G. Kelley writes in support of this contention:

Malcolm X has been called many things: Pan-Africanist, father of Black Power,religious fanatic, closet conservative, incipient socialist, and a menace to society.The meaning of his public life—his politics and ideology—is contested in partbecause his entire body of work consists of a few dozen speeches and a collabora-tive autobiography whose veracity is challenged. Malcolm has become a sort oftabula rasa, or blank slate, on which people of different positions can write theirown interpretations of his politics and legacy. Chuck D of the rap group PublicEnemy and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas can both declare MalcolmX their hero.36

Indeed, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X functions in this manner.To accomplish their goal of producing a potent work that chroniclesMalcolm X’s theoretical development and the nature of his separationfrom Elijah Muhammad necessitated that the creators of the operastructure its aesthetic design accordingly. The positioning of ElijahMuhammad and the drug hustling, Gershwin-inspired Street asinterconnected and almost fungible roles brings the audience intothe realm of the opera where the collapse of the relationship betweenMalcolm X and the deceitful Muhammad was inescapable. Malcolm Xis shown to be a solidly capable and thoughtful individual; the onechink in his armor is his relationship with Elijah Muhammad, whichbrings about his untimely yet inevitable downfall.

Notes

1. David Mills, ‘‘Interview with Betty Shabazz,’’ Washington Post, February 16, 1990; David Mills,‘‘Concentrated Juice: Ernest Dickerson, Emerging from Spike Lee’s Shadow,’’ Washington Post, January17, 1992.

2. Graham Thompson, American Culture in the 1980s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2007).

3. Spike Lee and Ralph Wiley, By Any Means Necessary: The Trails and Tribulations of the Makingof Malcolm X (New York: Hyperion, 1992).

4. Michael Walsh, ‘‘Trajectory to Martyrdom,’’ Time, October 12, 1992.5. Ken Bullock, ‘‘Malcolm X the Opera at Oakland Metro,’’ Berkeley Daily Planet, June 2006.6. Charles Amirkhanian et al., ‘‘Music Criticism, Politics, and Marginalization,’’ New Music Box,

September 1, 2002; Alison Carb Sussman, ‘‘Black Biography: Anthony Davis,’’ Answers.com, http://


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www.answers.com/topic/anthony-davis-football-player?cat=entertainment (last accessed November26, 2009).

7. Sam Hurwitt, ‘‘Malcolm in Snapshots,’’ East Bay Express, June 7, 2006; Joshua Kosman, ‘‘ScrappyOakland Theatre Triumphantly Revives Gripping Malcolm X Opera,’’ San Francisco Chronicle, June 6,2006; Jason Victor Serinus, ‘‘Music,’’ San Francisco, June 2006.

8. Donal Henahan, ‘‘Anthony Davis’s X in Premiere,’’ New York Times, September 30, 1986.9. Donal Henahan, ‘‘Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,’’ New York Times,

September 26, 1986; Robert Avila, ‘‘Time That Won’t Quit,’’ San Francisco Bay Guardian, June 14,2006; John Rockwell, ‘‘X: A Pre-Debut,’’ New York Times, October 11, 1985.

10. Arlo McKinnon, ‘‘History in the Making,’’ Opera News Online, URL: http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/issue/article.aspx?id=1767&issueID=79 (last accessed November 26, 2009).

11. Edward Rothstein, ‘‘Heroes Make Good Operas; Icons Don’t,’’New York Times, February 12, 1995.12. Walsh, ‘‘Trajectory to Martyrdom.’’13. Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1997).14. Richard Boldrey, Guide to Operatic Roles and Arias (Redmond, Wash.: Caldwell, 1994).15. Kosman, ‘‘Scrappy Oakland Theatre Triumphantly Revives Gripping Malcolm X Opera.’’16. J. B. Steane, ‘‘Lyric Tenor,’’ New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan,

2001).17. Bard Suverkarp, ‘‘Kavalierbariton,’’ IPA Source, URL: http://www.ipasource.com/baritone (last

accessed November 26, 2009).18. Albert Goodwyn, ‘‘X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,’’ San Francisco Bay Times, June 8, 2006.19. C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1994).20. Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience.21. Claude Andrew Clegg, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York:

St. Martin’s Press, 1997).22. Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America.23. Ibid.24. Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience.25. Clegg, An Original Man.26. Malcolm Jarvis and Paul D. Nichols, The Other Malcolm: ‘‘Shorty’’ Jarvis—His Memoir

(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001).27. Lee and Wiley, By Any Means Necessary.28. MacKinnon, ‘‘History in the Making.’’29. Abdul Alkalimat, ed., ‘‘His Legacy: The Malcolm We Knew,’’ Malcolm X: A Research Site, URL:

http://www.brothermalcolm.net/aug04/legacy.html (last accessed November 26, 2009).30. George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks (New York: Grove Press, 1990); Steve Clark, ed., Febru-

ary 1965: The Final Speeches (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1992); Louis A. De Caro, On the Side of MyPeople: A Religious Life of Malcolm X (New York: New York University Press, 1996); Malcolm X and AlexHaley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine, 1965).

31. Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks.32. Autobiography of Malcolm X.33. Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, eds., Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance,

Reform, and Renewal—An African American Anthology (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).34. Amiri Baraka, The LeRoi Jones=Amiri Baraka Reader (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2000).35. Rockwell, ‘‘X: A Pre-Debut.’’36. Robin D. G. Kelley, ‘‘Malcolm X,’’ Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American

Experience (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999).


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Documents

Malcolm, Who Have You Been?: Musicalizing the Relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad in X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X