The Deep Faith of Mary Lou Williams
I have fallen in love with the music of Mary Lou Williams. I participated in a project with colleagues and new friends to explore her music. I couldn’t turn down this invitation because Mary Lou’s music is a part of the musical history of the Catholic Church. Her music is also a part of black history, feminism, social change, and racial equality. So much was working all at once and pushing me beyond myself. I had to see what it was all about.
Mary Lou’s career placed her alongside such legends as Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Dizzy Gillespie. The first line of her New York Times obituary proclaimed she ‘was the first woman to be ranked with the greatest of jazz musicians.’ As told by that same obituary, she became fed up with the sin of the music industry and one night got up from her piano and quit then and there. She spent the next few years praying daily at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in New York which eventually led to a conversion to the Catholic Church. At the encouragement of two priests and Dizzy Gillespie, she returned to music. One of the fruits of her musicianship and her conversion is Mary Lou’s Mass.
Her faith is palpable in the music. She structures her Mass around the formula of the Roman Catholic Mass ritual. The words of the songs are driven toward supporting the jazz style or focusing on a particular thematic emphasis. While not usable in place of the liturgical texts in the Roman Catholic ritual, it is none-the-less a beautiful expression of the faith of Williams as well as the wide teaching of the Catholic Church including Eucharistic theology, social teaching, and daily devotion.
My favourite movement of the Mass is probably Gloria. ‘We praise you, we bless you, we thank you because you are who you are,’ sings the recurring refrain. This is the full focus of the Gloria text, the full focus of the Mass, both Mary Lou’s and the ritual itself. The music jives along with a childlike excitement for who God is without actually losing control. In direct contrast, Act of Contrition is a quiet and pleading setting of the prayer learned by our youngest penitents. A simple bass line underscores the prayer of real repentance: ‘I resolve with the help of Thy grace, O God, never to sin again.’ The jazz stylings of the vocal line reveal the real emptiness when one reaches the point of realizing just how helpless one really is.
Her Mass is not without songs which might be called modern spirituals. The last work on the album riffs on the famous speech of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream. ‘Listen, O Lord, while I pray: the people shall be free.’ The text and music are easy to learn and repeat themselves so as to allow congregational singing. In the heart of the work for racial equality, she beckons us to the Gospel call to welcome the outcast and she stirs our hearts to the true peace which comes from living the Gospel message.
My favourite discovery and surprise about Williams is the penultimate song on the album, one which was not a part of the project in which I participated. She shows us just what is expected of us at the end of our lives; she shows us the fruits of dying well. I have no doubt Mary Lou wished this for herself. I will let her words speak for themselves:
If you’re around when I meet my day,
don’t want a long funeral.
And if somebody delivers the eulogy,
tell him not to talk too long.
Just say I tried to feed the hungry,
tried to love somebody.
If you’re around when I meet my day,
tell him not to talk too long.
Put my casket on an old wagon
drawn by two fine mules.
Bury me in my hometown Atlanta, Georgia.
Tell him not to talk too long.
Mary Lou Williams will be with me for quite a while. She is an example of one who tries to live the faith well in a mixed-up world. She is an example to me not just as a Christian but as an artist.
As one Catholic to another, thanks, Mary Lou. I hear you loud and clear.
