Music Is My Life, Politics My Mistress

Director: Donnie L. Betts
Country: United States
Runtime: 56’ and 110’
Language: English
Year: 2005

Poet, jazz singer, composer, trade union activist, radio host and senatorial candidate, Oscar Brown Jr. was a self-educated polymath whose voice, both musical and political, reached the empowered and disempowered alike. A playful and charismatic performer, Brown was also an acclaimed jazz lyricist who worked closely with Abbey Lincoln and Nina Simone and collaborated with Max Roach, Miles Davis and Bobby Timmons on some of the most memorable compositions of the hard bop era.

Beyond his musical achievements, Brown also engaged in a parallel career as a lifelong political activist of tireless strength and unceasing moral stamina, and his entire life can be read as a parable of the civil rights and Black Power eras in the United States. His lyrics touching on every subject from human dignity and childhood wonder to marijuana and cockroaches, Brown emerges as a kind of Black Everyman.