Lydia Spencer-Elliott
On this day in 1963, Martin Luther King gave a speech that would become iconic for decades to come.
“I have a dream,” he said to 25,000 people who had marched through Washington in the name of civil rights.
UK resident Hugh Alexander, has sampled the speech in his new song “One Day”, which he wrote while trapped in El Faro, Mijas during Spain’s lockdown.
“I had a horrible dream about a big race riot in London,” Alexander told Olive Press. “I was seeing everything going around about Black Lives Matter and George Floyd and I just felt so helpless.”
George Floyed was killed by police in Minnesota in May after allegedly using a counterfeit bank note.
“I started thinking about what I could do. Then lyrics just came to me and I realised the Martin Luther King speech matched what I’d created. So, I decided to sample it at the start of the track.”
“Racism is out there and we need to kill it completely. All lives matter. Every colour, every person, is important. That message is at the heart of the song.”
“You notice racism more in London because there aren’t the same levels of black people in Spain that I’ve seen in the UK. London is a melting pot of all nationalities.”
“You’ve got black, asian, white people and with the pressure of lockdown it’s just like a kettle that every now and again blows.”
“I’d like people to hear my music and think about their next action: how they might react to the next person that upsets them or if they’ll share a piece of media that could make the problem worse. We all need to help the problem heal.”
