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5)
Louis Armstrong (Part 2): The Colors of the Rainbow.
Back to
the Little Rock incident, Louis Armstrong was devastated when he saw on
television that the national guards had been sent to stop eight black children
from going to school. He was scheduled to go on a tour of the Soviet Union for
the State Department. This would have been
the very first time that an American band would tour that part of the world
during the cold war. Without hesitation, Louis Armstrong cancelled the whole trip as a sign of protest coming from the heart. Even
today, there is a lot of racism and injustice in the United States. Most of the
famous musicians we have mentioned, such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday,
Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and the list goes on and on, had to undergo
horrible discrimination no matter how famous and
celebrated they would become. In some cases, during performances, if they
would try to go to the restroom without bodyguards during the break, they would
be beaten up before they got there.
Despite
everything, he still believed that the world could be wonderful, and as the song
says: "The
colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky Are
also on the faces of people going by".
For Louis Armstrong, there are people of all colors sharing this planet, and this apparently naive song is in fact at the cutting edge of modern philosophy today. It says that diversity is wonderful, that differences are to be recognized, honored and respected.
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