Jimi Hendrix & Civil Rights

Jimi Hendrix stands as an icon of late 1960s counter-culture, not only due to his complete embrace of the era’s tenets of peace, love, and freedom, but also due to his exceptional abilities at weaving the intricate, outspoken and feedback-laced soundtrack of the time with his musical talent. When I first heard his music, I was in awe of the explosive sounds coming from his guitar, and I didn’t even consider his race because his music completely transcended any kind of compartmentalization. As I thought about Jimi for this writing, I realized I couldn’t think of a single quote off the top of my head that discussed his feelings about race and civil rights. As a fan of his music, the song lyrics ring clearly in my head, but I couldn’t pull up a single one that told a story that had anything to do with race. I had to wonder what he may have had to say about race and civil rights, and I managed to find some valuable quotes that gave me greater insight to his feelings about his own skin color as well as the skin color of others.

Jimi said, “Race isn’t a problem in my world. I don’t look at things in terms of races. I look at things in terms of people. I’m not thinking about black people or white people. I’m thinking about the obsolete and the new.” I found this quote interesting because he must have experienced prejudicial treatment growing up in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. His parents’ difficult relationship, inability to keep jobs, and lack of effort to maintain the family unit had a powerful impact on his childhood. Racism may have contributed to the situations that created this family dynamic, but that detail didn't seem to have a lasting effect on Jimi’s views on race. It’s possible he may have experienced poor treatment as a guitar player in the early 1960s with another well-known black icon of music, Little Richard. With Richard, Jimi traveled what was known as the “chitlin circuit”, a loose collection of theaters and dance halls throughout the American South that served rhythm and blues music along with collard greens, beans, cornbread, and chitlins (all considered soul food as they were a substantial part of the food culture of southern Blacks), hence the name. These locations geared their entertainment to Blacks, and in a time when Jim Crow laws were maintaining the “separate but equal” concept, this was certainly separate from the entertainment white people may have chosen during that era. Jimi left the circuit when he decided he wanted to present music to a wider audience, and he also wanted the freedom to create new music of his own. This new music was far from obsolete.

Jimi was given an opportunity to introduce his own music by moving to England at the request of the British man who became his manager, Animals bassist Chas Chandler. In London, he quickly rose to fame and acclaim with his performances and originality, using feedback, overdrive, and self-taught finger techniques to blow away audiences (and amplifiers) in the process. In his lyrics, he told stories about the strong women who set his life on fire, like “Dollie Dagger”, “Foxy Lady”, and “The Wind Cries Mary”. He also concocted fantasy worlds to be explored by listeners, like “Purple Haze”, “Voodoo Chile”, and “Axis: Bold as Love”. His love of the blues drove him to choose covers like “Hey Joe” and create originals like “Red House”. Every song exuded strong emotions and imagery that gained countless fans, and new generations have continued to be entranced by his art long after his death in 1970. All of the messages in his lyrics could be narrowed down to four general topics, love, peace, freedom, and the blues. While the blues are rooted in the tradition of Blacks, these other ideas went far outside the norm of what many considered “Black music” at the time. His lack of commentary within his lyrics on the racial upheaval of the time matches with his quote above, effectively saying that he felt things were not about race, but about a lack of love, peace, and freedom.

Jimi also said, “It isn’t that I’m not relating to the Black Panthers. I naturally feel a part of what they’re doing, in certain respects. Somebody has to make a move, and we’re the ones hurting the most as far as peace of mind and living are concerned. But I’m not for the aggression or violence…especially in your own neighborhood.” This second quote shows that he sees the horrific difficulties Blacks were facing at the time, and it also shows that he felt that violence was not the way to fix these problems. While he felt very much a part of the Black community, he felt a far more all-encompassing connection with all of humanity, and he believed that we should place our focus on filling the world with kindness.