pastiche

People try put us to death; just because we get around; …things they do look awful cold…; I hope I die before I get old; why don’t we all fade away... So sang four angry young men from London. In 1965, the Who, led by Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend belted out what became the youth anthem for the ages: capturing in four lines, the entire zeitgeist of the ‘60s; the angst of a ‘lost’ generation. As they say, ‘if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t really there’…and for those who do remember, the ‘60s was the decade of drugs; death and disillusion. ‘Loss’ was the defining concept of a decade that arguably packed in it more upheaval (three terrible wars: Biafra, Congo and Vietnam; endless coup d’etat in Third World countries; and assassinations: the Kennedys, Martin Luther) than any other in recorded history. Yet out of the carnage and cynicism, the beginnings of a revolution in popular culture were unfolding. When Joe and Katherine Jackson’s seventh child joined his older brothers to perform in the summer of 1968, music and the world would never be the same again. The Jackson 5 typified family in its purest form. Jackie, Tito, Jermaine; Marlon, and Michael (Randy too) – the names too were straight out of Central Casting’s manual on showbiz monikers - what an ensemble; what a collection of heartthrobs. Girls died for them and boys wanted to be like them. These kids embodied talent, work ethic; joint effort and best of all – they were black! Remember those ‘fros? Since then there have been several pretenders to the throne, the Partridge family; the Osmonds all the way down to the Jonas brothers, but none have endured or attained the mystique of the Jackson 5, a family that has also gone on to produce three genuine top notch solo artists (Michael; Jermaine and of course everyone’ heartthrob of the late ‘80s, the ‘snake-dancing’ Janet). And then of course, Michael had to go on and become that rarity – the child prodigy that became adult star. Before Michael Jordan, there was one ‘Mike’ that everyone wanted to be like. Fast forward then; a mere 40 years after the world’s greatest artist was launched, the music finally died. Perhaps not in a blaze of glory – but even if it were a whimper, it is one heard around the world. If it is writ, that only the good die young; it is also fact that the death of a star is the only way to go supernova. It may have become cliché, but since Abel dropped under his brother’s bludgeon, death at a young age has become the one sure-fire way to earn instant legend. From Sam Cooke; Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison; Jimmy Hendrix; Otis Redding; Elvis Presley (Michael’s true precursor; whose only daughter Michael married) Bob Marley; Peter Tosh; Freddie Mercury; Kurt Cobain; Aaliyah; Tupac Shakur to even Movie superstars James Dean; Marilyn Monroe and Bruce & Brandon Lee: die young and your career moves into the stratosphere. Somewhat perversely, we seem to prefer that our stars not grow old like us; that they not become wrinkled, bent and unattractive (much like the Rolling Stones today) but that they remain forever young (a Neil Young classic), vital and vibrant as we like to remember ourselves. Every time Frank Sinatra lurched to another concert to struggle through a song he would have aced not so long ago, the legend lost just a bit more lustre; whereas Jim Reeves, a lesser star remains forever revered; locked in the mystique of what might have been and wasn’t. That is why this loss is so poignant – so like a death in the family – everyone’s family. Michael Jackson grew up before our very eyes and his music defined and marked every rite of passage in our own lives. In the early days, the music was sweet and unaffected: ‘ABC’; I want you back; I’ll be there’ – and then it became tougher: can one forget walking into my first disco ‘jump’ into the pulsating throb of ‘Don’t stop till you get enough’ until it acquired the edge of his seminal ‘Thriller’. It seemed that as my generation was coming of age, Michael’s music was keeping step, tapping out the drumbeats that we marched to; through puberty, past adolescence and into adulthood and independence. There are words that never translate well into English; one of these is ‘fin de ciercle’ – roughly, the end of an age. Michael Jackson’s demise at the age of fifty means for most of us the end of innocence and stark reminder that perhaps the music is over; the dance is stopped and we are entered middle age. The metaphysics of star worship is something that every writer and armchair sociologist has tried to rationalize and failed – the strange, overpowering alchemy that turns adults into children watching fireworks. What is it that makes grownup, ordinarily poised girls weep; drool and swoon in the presence of an artiste is something that can never be explained away. But anyone who wonders why the whole world is permanently starstruck with Michael should go play the vocals on ‘I’ll be there’. The opening lines still have a purity and clarity that may never be surpassed in modern pop: ‘You and I must make a pact; we must bring salvation back, where there is love, I’ll be there’ If you still need convincing, then play ‘Man in the mirror’ or even ‘Speechless.’ Even the lesser known songs were the stuff of pure genius. In his autobiography ‘Moonwalk’ edited by the late Jackie Onassis (herself an iconic figure) Michael wrote: “The price of fame can be heavy one. Is the price you pay worth it? Consider that you really have no privacy. You can’t really do anything unless special arrangements are made. The media prints whatever you say… All this is the price of fame.” Whatever the price for global superstardom, Michael paid it in full. The predominantly white media press even dubbed him ‘Wacko Jacko’. This to a sensitive man who did more to advance the humanitarian agenda than all the politicians in Washington (can anyone forget ‘We are the world’ –the USA for Africa project that Time dubbed the greatest collective effort by artists for any cause since the Vietnam war). Even the admittedly bizarre behaviour - sleeping in a sealed chamber and with a pet chimpanzee (Bubbles, surely the most famous primate in the planet at the time); dangling his baby from a balcony window; and even the quite tasteless sharing of beds with little children – was over-reported. All of these so called wacko behaviour pale in comparison to the antics of some so-called white stars, Keith Richards mixing the ashes of his dead father and snorting it with cocaine; Charlie Chaplin marrying one underage child after another (all his wives were in their teens) and so on. He was not the first star to have a nose-job; but Michael Jackson’s own had to be a sign of mental illness. Years before the Paparazzi chased Diana and her boyfriend into a wall in Paris, they had driven Michael into seclusion in Neverland, which in their ‘unbiased’ view made him even weirder. But when Howard Hughes lives in a darkened room for four months and in seclusion for 30 years, he’s simply labelled eccentric and reclusive. But all that will be forgotten know, surely as everyone falls over themselves to pay fitting tribute to the gloved one; even as they struggle to define his legacy. I leave that unenviable task to the legion of music historians present and unborn; for me I just glad that I lived in Michael Jackson’s era; that I grew up with him and that he gave us insight to primordial beginnings, when music was the only way communed with his gods. Thank you, Michael. You were already legend before you choose to die ‘young’. But perhaps, after all, the respect you always sought; the privacy you so desperately craved; will now come. Indeed, you have died before getting old- but you will never fade away.

Today, we are all Americans!
On September 20, 2001, nine days after the WTC bombing, French President Jacques Chirac, alighting from the chopper that overflew ground zero, muttered these memorable and unforgettable words.
Today we are all Americans.
Not since 9/11, has so much of the world’s population been so connected with America; have so many people from diverse backgrounds been so keyed into things American!
Eight years after Florida, American elections again dominate world news; this time for the right reasons.
Barrack Obama is the 44th President of the United States.
Pause for a moment – freeze this statement; etch it on history’s frieze alongside other momentous statements such as: Veni, vidi, vici - Ich bin ein Berliner- L’etat, c’est moi – etc.
Think of how much meaning and history is packed into that simple sentence, reflect on how 400 years of slavery brought the world to this point and you will understand why everyone feels a sense of the moment.
Years ago, celebrating another momentous happening – when De Klerk and Mandela stood shoulder to shoulder to receive the Nobel Peace Prize- Lance Morrow, one of my all-time favourites, wrote: ‘the ascent from the basement (of the brain) where the crocodile lives, above tribal memory and hatred, to the upper chambers of the brain, is the most impressive climb man has made.’
As one part of the world went to bed on November 4, 2008, America rose out of the basement of racial doubt; above a 200 year history of shame, of lynchings, of Jim Crow laws, of the Ku Klux Klan; above a past where there was such a thing as the Mann Act; where just 40 years ago, schools and buses were segregated.
Americans, mostly young, rose up, and in one bold stroke of history swept all that away, renewing their country in the process and remaking its covenant with the rest of the world.
After today, we would dare call this the American century; we may declare that world peace may yet be Pax Americana.
No-one this side of heaven has ever doubted America’s strength or seriously believed it was in decline – it was still the world’ richest and (in Kissinger terms – ‘a nuclear bomb under your pillow’) most powerful country.
What it had lost was its moral ‘majority’ – its right to be the world’s conscience.
For years, to paraphrase Ed Murrow; America was like a bull in a darkened house, kicking down door after door in search of light; in the process breaking a heck of a lot of crockery.
It wielded a big stick when talking softly would have helped – from Vietnam, Iran and Iraq to Afghanistan; America became a parody of itself – a ‘benevolent superpower’ that was starting and losing war after war.
Just 72 hours ago, America had egg on its face from its foreign misadventures.
Not anymore.
Today, no American need feel shame again.
America can truly stand up and talk to the rest of the world –about human rights, about democracy – because once again there is something called an American dream.
The Star Spangled Banner may now truly wave over the land of the free and home of the brave.
It took real courage to look into the twilight and walk the walk of faith.
The long walk to freedom is not over. Not by a long shot.
As one commentator wrote after the primaries, Obama has proved he can walk on water, now where are the loaves and fishes?
The messy economy still has to be straightened out – the unpopular wars ended – but one thing that has defined America of the past is that elusive compound of hope and self-belief.
And hope, if nothing else, is what Barrack Hussein Obama – 44th President of United States, embodies.
What happened yesterday was not really such a momentous shift – America has always been the land of the possible – the place where misfits and castaways come to make good.
Most people forget – and of course 200 years can create selective amnesia – that the people who sailed to America with the Mayflower, were mostly fugitives and poor folk from Europe. The founders of America were not from the Aristocracy of the old world (whatever the pretensions of the latter-day Brahmins of New England).
So it is not inconceivable that in a country where a wrestler and a body builder (turned actor) all became Governors (and even President) –a Harvard-educated, black lawyer would one day tenant the ‘white’ house.
As Winston Churchill said after the fall of Berlin, this is the end of a beginning.
It's been a season of great symbolism – the latest being the platform where the man of the moment delivered his acceptance speech.
Chicago (immortalized in Candy Staton’s stark song ‘the Ghetto’) where a decade ago another black man defied gravity on the basketball court; in the windy city, 10 years after Michael Jordan won his last ring; Barrack Obama stood and reached for the skies.
In this blue-collar city, so truly African-American, the baton of change was conclusively handed over to a new generation.
There was a final poignant moment for me, when the cameras panned to a face in the crowd.
A man who had been there, seen it all and borne witness, even to the assassination of the first black hope –was standing, alone in the crowd.
It seemed to me just appropriate - that this man, largely perceived as the bridge between that not-so-distant part and the once ‘unattainable’ future; a man who came to embody all the hopes and inconsistencies of the old generation, their great dreams and personal failures (remember his rather grudging un-support for Obama), would be here too, standing at this watershed of history.
Hemmed in by the surging crowd, witness to a ‘dream’ he never really believed feasible, under the wash of lights, Jesse Jackson wept.