GLS15: Common, John Legend On Glory – “We Wanted To Reflect the Time We Live In”

The Summit is thrilled to welcome the hip-hop artist Common to perform his song Glory in Session 7. Glory was the theme song for the 2014 film Selma, which portrayed the 1965 civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery. Common also co-starred in the film as 1950s Civil Rights leader James Bevel. The song won the award for Best Original Song at the 87^th Academy Awards (2015) and the 72^nd Golden Globe Awards (2015).

Common talked about his inspiration for the song with Deadline|Hollywood here.

Sample lyrics of Common’s rap verse: The movement is a rhythm to us. Freedom is like a religion to us. Justice is a juxtaposition in us. Justice for all just ain’t specific enough. One son died, his spirit is revisitin’ us. Truant livin’, livin’ in us, resistance is us. That’s why Rosa sat on the bus. That’s why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up. When it go down we woman and man up. They say, “Stay down,” and we stand up. Shots, we on the ground, the camera panned up. King pointed to the mountain top and we ran up.

Selma is about the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.-led march for voting rights between Selma and Montgomery, Ala., in 1965. In writing the song, though, Common and [John] Legend invoke current events, because they see the film as a mirror of what’s happening today. Is it a risk? They certainly could have chosen to play it safe, but went another direction.

“I think it is a little controversial to bring the now into the song because these are things that are being debated right now in this moment, but we have to also realize that Dr. King was controversial,” Legend told me in a recent phone conversation. “Dr. King was seen as a radical by a lot of people. Dr. King wasn’t extremely popular before he died, and so for us to talk about things that may not be popular with everybody, it is part of carrying on with his spirit. I always quote (jazz singer and civil rights activist) Nina Simone. She said, ‘It’s the artists’ duty to reflect the times they live in,’ and so with this song we wanted to pay tribute to the important roles that all the people play in Selma, but we also wanted to reflect the time that we live in.”

Common gives great credit to Legend’s chorus for inspiring his rap verses.

“I think when I heard what John was singing, I felt like this was a song that, in his chorus, was of the now even though it carried the tradition of the people back then who were fighting for freedom and standing up for human rights and civil rights,” Common said. “It had that spirit, but it also felt now. And I thought that Selma itself was really relevant because even though I hadn’t seen the film before we wrote the song, I still knew that I was reading about things, about voting rights that were being reversed recently and I was like, wow, this movie is becoming even more present. And with situations like when I saw what happened with Mike Brown and Eric Garner, it was like I knew what we had filmed and I felt this is of the now. It’s necessary to speak about it and show that, yes, we’ve come a long way but we have a long way to go. So with these situations we are still facing right now, we have to acknowledge them and do what we can to heal them and move forward.”

To read the rest of the article by Pete Hammond, click here.