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Black Radicalism

Introductory Remarks - June Jordan - Bang Bang Über Alles

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Bang Bang Über Alles, an anti-KKK musical
Bang Bang Über Alles is a musical drama by June Jordan written and produced with musician Adrienne B. Torf. The couple wanted to create a union of music and poetry. Jordan wrote the lyrics and Torf created the music. The musical explores the vast complexities of racial bigotry and discrimination by mixing together seemingly contrasting styles of music such as gospel, rock, blues, new wave, and classical. The storyline centers around a group of performing artists who, after learning of the murder of a Jewish family and the lynching of two black people by white supremacists, decide to combat the violence of the Ku Klux Klan through their music.
In the ensemble song, the cast members all sing “death to the Klan,” a violent declaration that aligns with black radical thought. In another scene, one of the characters articulares his opposition to collaborating with a white person. This type of rhetoric is something that would be expected of George Cleaver and can be seen in his novel Soul on Ice. He mentions that he “[does] not love white people” (59) and after the death of Malcolm X, Cleaver states that “One wants to strike out, to kill, crush, destroy, to deliver a telling counterblow, to inflict upon the enemy a reciprocal, equivalent loss” (74). This demand for violence is similar to that of the demands for dead Klansman in Jordan and Torf’s musical.
The musical premiered at 7 Stages Theatre, in Atlanta, Georgia from June 12 - July 13, 1986 and provoked protests from conservatives as well as protests from Klan members in Alabama.
Unlike Baldwin who sympathizes with white people as seen in his novel No Name On the Street when he says “I knew how [white people] felt about black men… I couldn’t blame them” (15), Jordan and Torf are blatantly opposed to racism, white intolerance and the KKK.
Introductory Remarks. Bang Bang Über Alles.
Bang Bang Über Alles is musical drama written and produced with musician Adrienne B. Torf. The couple (June Jordan and Adrienne B. Torf) wanted to create a union of music and poetry with within this musical. The musical explores the vast complexities of racial bigotry and discrimination by mixing together seemingly contrasting styles of music such as gospel, rock, blues, new wave, and classical.