Skip to main content

Michael Jackson some thoughts
By Abdul Turay
Published Postimees 27 June 2009

Like many people I am in absolute shock that Michael Jackson is dead. The only thing more shocking is if the Queen died. No actual this is more shocking, the Queen is old, Michael Jackson was only 50.

And for once I am not just in shock as a person, but as a black person.

Michael Jackson was the most famous black person in world history. It is impossible to underestimate his importance to black people. It wasn't just that he made incredible music created amazing videos and put on ground breaking shows, he also broke down barriers in a way that hadn't been done before and can't be done again.

It hard to believe it now but before Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, black entertainers were in a cul-de-sac. Black musicians were continually struggling to reach a wider audience outside of black communities.

Twenty five years ago MTV had an unofficial policy banning videos by black musicians. Herbie Hancock, an early pioneer of techno music, famously made a video in which he was not in it.

Jackson changed all that not by political statement but simply by producing material that was so vibrant, so kinetic, and so damn entertaining that it demanded to be shown.

Jackson worked in many genres. Strictly speaking from about the time of “Thriller” he was not an R n B musician. Rhythm and Blues isn't a genre, it's a marketing term for music which is popular with Black America. Jackson's music was popular with everybody. But his roots lay in African-American music of the 50's and 60's, in the dance routines of James Brown in song machine that was Tamala Motown and the youthful appeal and catchy melodies of Frankie Lemon and the Teenagers.

In recent years Jackson had managed to alienate many black people. As an African-American showbiz friend once said to me para-phasing one of Jackson's songs,

“It doesn't matter if you are black or white and Michael Jackson has proved that because he used to be black and now he is whiter that any white man.”

Yet even before his unexpected demise there was still good will towards him.

A story in the American press that the all the Jacksons apart from Janet had fallen on hard times with one stacking shelves in a supermarket, was greeted with; well-wishes, disbelief and anger at the “lying white media” in black-centric internet forums.

People were genuinely excited about his comeback, though it was clear that he was doing it for the money. He will be sadly missed.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black men, Estonian women: the truth By Abdul Turay Published Postimees 11 November 2009 Well that got your attention; the headline I mean. Any story on this subject, the technical term is miscegenation, is bound to get punters. The yellow media, women's magazines and reality TV shows are obsessed with the subject. Not a month goes by without some publication writing about it. Anne and Style, for example, recently ran a long feature about mixed couples. Most of these stories are muddle-headed and wrong. There's paranoia in this country that there is an army of dark-skinned men form Turkey, the tropics, some place south, who are going to make off with the nation's women. It's never going to happen. I'll explain why in a minute. Seriously, I think there are more important things to think about and worry about. I worry about feeding my family. I worry about other people being able to feed their families, so I write about politics and economics. But the p...
9 comments
Read more
The second sex Published Postimees 16 January 2013 One issue scares the hell out of me. Men's rights. We are are told that we live in a male dominated society, that men have it easier than women; there are people who make a living by telling us this. In Estonia there are a dozen organisation dealing with women's rights there is even a gender studies unit (i.e. women's studies unit) at Tartu University, but there isn't yet far as I am aware, and I have checked, even one organisation dealing with men's right. It is inevitable that anybody who challenges this hegemony will come in for a barrage of criticism from an army of well-funded groups. When men's rights are discussed, it is in the context of men's health. Men are dying off. Men die younger and are more likely to commit suicide than women. Even God it seems is against men. Last week January 10 2012, for example the ministry of internal affairs published figures that show, ...
2 comments
Read more
The Great Migration Published Postimees  13 Sept 2012 Recently, I asked a group of young people, if they have Facebook accounts. They looked at me like I was mad. "That's like asking us, do we have a noses?" one of them said. "Come to think of it even people who don't have noses have Facebook accounts," another said to much laughter. Last week 6 th July, Kanal 2 did a program "Minu Facebooki sõbrad". It was a light hearted look at the social network phenomenon. But the whole Facebook is king challenges some of our cherished beliefs about modern Estonia. 10 years ago when I first visited here, Estonia was more advanced than my own country the United Kingdom. It was a revelation. Estonia was my introduction to whole concept of social networking. Rate.ee was founded in May 2002, that's a year before Orkut, or MySpace, two years before Facebook. I so wasn't impressed when I first saw Facebook. "So...
Read more