All Proportions Kept

[poliphilo]

Al Sharpton was saying yesterday that Michael Jackson was the first black entertainer to appeal to black and white audiences alike- and my immediate response was, well if that's true it's a big achievement.  But then I thought about it and I saw that in fact it wasn't true-  and then I put myself to sleep listing people who had made that leap across the race divide before him. It turned out to be a pretty long list.

Paul Robeson
Josephine Baker
Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong
Ella Fitzgerald
Miles Davis
Marian Anderson
Sammy Davis Jnr
Harry Bellanfonte
Nat King Cole
Eartha Kitt
Diana Ross
Lionel Ritchie
Chuck Berry
Jimi Hendrix

Well, you get the picture. And I'm sure I could go on adding to it. 

Also yesterday I found myself watching a documentary about Felix Mendelssohn- and how he managed himself as a converted Jew in mid-19th century Germany, and how the Nazis tried to expunge his music and how his family- as people of "mixed race"- struggled to survive under the Third Reich. Felix Mendelssohn was also a child prodigy; he handled fame with grace- and died at 32 having written much great music, revived the reputation of J.S. Bach, founded the Leipzig Convervatory and a whole lot else. There' s achievement and then there's achievement- and Billie Jean may be a pretty good song, but it's not the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.



Felix Mendelssohn, aged 12. 

Comments

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Any American who was a teenager in the early and late 1950's can remember a bevy of black entertainers, along with parental criticism pertaining thereto: "Why are you listening to that ______ music? Arent there any white guys making records any more?"
Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers (Frankie was still a little kid whose voice had not broken, like early MJ). Later, Harry Belafonte, and others too numerous to mention.
I think the reason for all this "fractured history" is that those Americans who were teens in the sixties and seventies were not as aware of recent history as we were. If that is an egotistical statement, so be it. I do know for a fact that my oldest daughter at age 13 asked me if London was anywhere near Boston, MA. Boston's schools had de-emphasized history/geography in favor of "social" studies, that is, basic lessons on tolerance and inclusiveness. I agreed that the new studies were very valuable and needed at the time, but that the old ones should not have been cast out.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

How can we know who we are if we don't know our history?

I guess Sharpton belongs to the generation you're talking about. I'd imagined he was older, but when I looked him up just now I found that he's actually three years younger than me.