MLK and the Microphone
His impact was felt in so many ways. But if it weren’t for the power of sound, we may not be celebrating the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and MLK Day today.
When I listened to this landmark American’s great speeches this morning, as I do every MLK Day (and probably should every day of my life!), I get the same shivers when his voice touches my eardrums. MLK’s tireless crusade for basic human rights gained the most momentum when his timeless thoughts connected to his vocal cords just so, issuing words, phrases, sentences and whole speeches that were reverberant in a way not heard before or since.
What do you hear when you listen back to the sound of Martin Luther King’s Jr’s voice?
One can only imagine the motivational utterances he made one-to-one, in closed rooms in small meetings with nary a camera in sight. What a momentous charge must have resulted when Dr. King patted you on the back, or grasped you on the shoulder with a few words of personal encouragement. Those lucky enough to have such encounters surely never forgot those precious seconds.
For the rest of us, we can thank the magic of the microphone to conduct that emotional electricity. While audio has evolved exponentially since King was the civil rights movement’s most prominent leader from 1954-1968, recording know-how was doing just fine at that time. Today, all of us who commemorate Dr. King’s fearlessness by listening back on YouTube, or any other medium we have available to us, may not think too hard about the microphone, reel-to-reel, and audio engineer who captured it all. Thankfully, every component and professional that day did their job, leaving us with an inspirational legacy that should echo forever in our minds.
As we do every year on MLK Day, SonicScoop is proud to take a look back at one of our favorite features. In this article, we had the privilege of interviewing the GRAMMY-winning producer/engineer/mixer Kevin Killen, who had his own role to play when U2 recorded their epic MLK tribute, “Pride In the Name of Love.” Visit here to read it, and later keep listening to MLK – with your ears and all the rest of you.
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