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In honor of Martin Luther King's Birthday today, here's the great man talking about jazz as he gave the opening address at the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival:

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

This is triumphant music.

Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from the music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.

And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in a particular struggle of the Negro in America, there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.

In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all these.

Indeed, this uniquely American art form is Freedom Music. It is Triumphant Music.

Support jazz music often and as much as possible.

And before you leave, make sure to watch the end of Dr. King's last speech on April 3, 1968, given the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee -- "I've Been to the Mountaintop!." It's unbelievably prophetic.

In particular, watch at the very end when he leaves the dais and nearly collapses into the hands of his aids.

Here's a complete MP3 of this most famous speech.

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