There are also placards stating the virtues of discipline, decorum, respect, and attention. Duke Ellington holds the place of honor, above the center of the blackboard. The band room is decorated with the faces of jazz masters. Now the Malcolm X Shabazz Marching Band is considered one of the best in the state, in demand for its pealing brass, explosive drum line, and manic energy. According to Donald Gatling, a longtime teacher at Shabazz, the school had a lacklustre band when Williams arrived, seventeen years ago. He got into teaching almost by accident, looking for work that would keep him busy between gigs. He then played jazz in New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere with musicians such as Walter Bishop, Jr., and Woody Shaw. He served in the Army for twenty-one years, leading marching bands in the 82nd Airborne Division and in the 25th Infantry. Some students enjoy Williams’s class, which meets for three hours every afternoon, because they love playing music others see it more pragmatically, as a way to get through the day unscathed.Ī tall, suave, mellow-voiced man with a mustache and a gleaming shaved pate, Williams is a native of Ozark, Alabama. Upon arriving, I found the corridors empty the guard at the door pointed me toward the band room, and added that the students were „at the memorial.“ The memorial, I learned, was for Dawud Roberts, a sixteen-year-old Shabazz football player, who, a few days before, had suffered a fatal stab wound on Johnson Avenue, a few hundred feet from the school. Not long ago, I went out to Malcolm X Shabazz High School, in Newark, New Jersey, to meet Hassan Ralph Williams, the director of the marching band.
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