A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke

When we think of music that we love, we often think of specific events that our memories have intertwined with certain songs. The interesting thing is that often when we think of memories songs come to mind as well. Because music has the ability to capture feelings, tying music to memories helps preserve how moments feels which in some ways is more meaningful then what actually happened.

The inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States is without a doubt a significant historical event. In some ways, the inauguration of all of our presidents are historical but for many people Obama’s inauguration is different.

There has been a lot said about the significance this event has on Civil Rights in America. It is clear whenever I hear African Americans who are passionate about Obama talk about the inauguration, that this is for them a deeply emotional moment in their lives

I don’t know anyone who marched in the Civil Rights protests in the 1960s. My parents came to America in 1978, after the Civil Rights act had been past. I’m not saying that when my parents came to America there weren’t Civil Rights issues, I agree that they are still present today, but it they my parents were not connected to the Civil Rights movement and did not suffer threw institutionalized segregation.

I do have some understanding of the issues that the African American community deal with as my parents have been discriminated against and stereotype but not to a degree that it has significantly affected their lives. My parents have a different perspective as they voluntarily immigrated to the United States while many African Americans were forced to come to American.

I’ve never faced open discrimination or been called racial slurs and I don’t ever feel that people truly judge me on my race. I understand that having an African-American president is historical and represents our development as a country but I don’t fully feel the power of this event in my heart.

In the same way, I will never understand why “A Change Is Gonna Come” is considered one of the most powerful and significant songs for the African-American community. Some have called it the “Black National Anthem” but all agree that it is one of the greatest songs by Sam Cooke, a pivotal and powerful force in popular music.

I came to know Sam Cooke through his earlier works, which were harmless, fun, soul music. The first song that I remember associating with Sam Cooke was “Wonderful World.” When I bought a collection of Sam Cooke’s songs on CD, most of the songs had this cleaned up shimmer to them. It was clear that Cooke had a beautiful voice that was effortless but still had weight and depth to it. Cooke didn’t so much sing the notes but dance around the melody. However, every once in a while at the end of a long note or towards the end of a song, you could hear a slight edge and a deeper emotion then the song portrayed. That soulfulness, the expression and passion that you could sense in his music came to the forefront with his last recorded song “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and to a teenage Asian boy in Seattle Washington, soul music came alive.

You don’t have to listen very far into “A Change Is Gonna Come” to be struck with the impact of Cooke’s voice. The way that he floats up to “born” in the first line and grows through the note is perfect. It balances just right amount of clarity to hear the pitch and feel his dark tone with a gravel and edge in his voice to understand the desperation and pain in the retelling of his circumstances.

“Just like the river, I’ve been running ever sense” is one of my favorite lines in pop music. It gets to me every time. There is something so sad about comparing oneself to the never-ending motion of a river. Metaphors are somewhat strange in the way that by comparing two things that aren’t related, making unnatural comparisons, we make the meaning more clear. So often in music metaphors are clever, or finish a rhythm but rarely are they as powerful as in the first verse of “A Change is Gonna Come.”

The words “ a change gonna come” appears at the ends of the verses. They are not sung at the peak of phrases but at the last part of the phrase after the energy of the phrase has been settled. It feels that Cooke is more trying to convince himself that change will come than that he actually believes it.

There is no hope in the other lyrics in the song. Cooke doesn’t even find solace in the afterlife. He openly admits to not know what’s beyond the sky. This is not so much a commentary on not being Christian but rather Cooke being completely honest telling us what he actually believes and not what he wants to believe.

The background features a full orchestra, which not only provide a palette for Cooke’s emotions but also supports the text of the song. When Cooke sings about going to a movie the brass and the timpani have an almost marching like rhythm that comes to the foreground while transform into an angrier tone that represents the person who told him not to hang around.

Throughout the bridge, a single French horn responds to Cooke’s pleads illustrating the conversation his is having. At the end of the bridge, the strings illustrate Cooke fall to his bended knees starting on a high note and dropping to a low suddenly and dramatically. In the last verse, Sam Cooke sings about thinking that he can carry on. The instruments take over after he sings “change gonna to come” for the last time and the music rises to bright color like sunlight breaking through a cloud. These touches add an almost subliminal meaning to the music enriching the emotions that Cooke expresses.

Cooke was singing about the struggles of African Americans in American in the 1960s and for people who went through that struggle and heard this song when it first came out, I can understand how Barack Obama becoming president is that sunlight at the end of this masterpiece.

Understanding this song and relating our own life struggles brings us closer to what Sam Cooke is talking about in this song. It’s important that we try as we can to relate to each other while acknowledging that our understanding of each other’s feelings can be never be complete, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.

If you weren’t crying when Obama won the election or when he was inaugurated that’s fine, but when something means so much to so many people I think we own it not to them but to ourselves to try to share in that feeling to get a better sense of our shared humanity



On the Saturday, before the inauguration Bettye LaVette and Jon Bon Jovi performed "A Chang Is Gonna Come" in front of the Lincoln Memorial as part of the We Are One concert. At the end of the song, they changed the last line to “I know a change has come.”

Whatever your political beliefs are, a change has come to America and it is for to see if this is the change Sam Cooke was hoping for. I hope that it is, not because I want to be validated in my support of Obama, but because I want to believe that our world can be a better place, not because of one man, but because all of us.