WHAT: 9th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture in Social Justice

WHERE: Zellerbach Theatre, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 3680 Walnut St.

WHEN: 5:30 p.m., Friday, Jan. 22

Inaugurated in 2002, the Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture in Social Justice is an annual event that honors individuals and scholars of African descent who have committed themselves to social justice. This year’s program features Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, in conversation with Camille Charles, director of Penn’s Center for Africana Studies and professor of sociology.

A program highlight will be the performance of the new NAACP anthem, “Someone Is Listening.” The song, composed by Penn music professor Guthrie Ramsey Jr. was commissioned in honor of the NAACP’s 100th anniversary.

The Center for Africana Studies and the Annenberg School for Communication at Penn will present the lecture as part of the University’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Symposium on Social Change. The event is free and open to the public.

Michael Jackson & The Jackson Five

A Message From Dr. Guy

The recent release of the film This Is It documenting rehearsals leading up to a series of ill-fated concerts—his first in ten years—brings into sharp relief all of the things that his fans want to remember.  In a word: the dude was bad.  One of the most amazing aspects of this story are the millions of fans across the widest demographic spectrum that Jackson’s musicianship attracted.  The movie begins with young dancers from all over the planet converging on auditions for the show. In testimonials reminiscent of A Chorus Line, they recount what an impact MJ had on their lives and artistry.

And I can’t forget about my own generation and me.  Michael and I were born one month apart in 1958.  As a young person interested in music, I (and many of my generation) identified strongly with the Jackson 5 when they burst on the scene.  The little prodigy at the helm of ship Jackson quite specifically blew us away.  We were then in the high years of the Black Power Movement.  Everyone in the black archipelago of working class, urban Afro-America was “bigging up” to all things “black”—culture, pride, potential, solidarity, mobility.  There was plenty of “Yes, We Can” in the air though expressed in shorthand: “Black is Beautiful.”  When I was a kid, the size and shape of our newly grown “naturals” or Afros were compared to one of the Jackson brothers.  As we talked about MJ’s passing, my aunt recalled that she had bought my cousin, her pre-teen son, a special birthday present: a Jackson 5 outfit.  She explained her joy to purchase the last one in the department store and still remembered how proud he was to sport it.  “They made us proud,” she said, and gave us some to aspire to for our own family.

Jackson Five – I Want You Back & ABC

These palpable yearnings for social equality were expressed both explicitly and symbolically in musical practice.  The Jackson 5 embodied these aspirations at this historical moment for a number of reasons.  First, there’s always been something fascinating about family musical groups.  Indeed, this talented, courteous, visible and loving nuclear family was just what the “black is beautiful project” needed at the time.   Our interest in them might also support a widely held belief about the mysteries of musical talent itself—that it is “natural,” and that there are those among us who inherit the gift and don’t have to work as hard as others to achieve excellence.  Add to this idea the fact that music making is an extremely social matter, binding musicians and listeners together in powerful relationships, and you begin to understand some of the reasons why watching MJ in action, looking strong and in control, is such a powerful experience.

With the King of Pop gone, this film retrospective of him in rehearsal allows us a precious opportunity to peak behind the heavily mediated curtain of his huge celebrity, a glimpse however edited and calculated for entertainment value.  The film itself is organized around footage of him diligently preparing one or another of his powerful hit songs, each of them defining anthems of their moment, enduring in their appeal.  Watching a master pull the strings of the production, coordinating—together with his choreographer, producer, music director, and technical staff— each element of the show, the dancing, the singing, the dramatic contours, the instrumental accompaniment, ones gets true sense of a person doing exactly what he was put on earth to do.  Gently exhorting and correcting his fellow musicians “in love,” MJ appears to be at home in his skin, a metaphor that I find sadly ironic to write, especially given the river of ink that’s been spilled about his appearance.

Any artist will find this film fascinating, as it seems to intentionally focus on creative process.  Split screens allow us to see him on different days working over the same piece, providing a theme and variations, a quality that one associates with jazz and not the hyper pop in which he specialized.  MJ explores the potential of each groove, vamp, and move for all of its emotive potential and dramatic potency.  Another takeaway for anyone who tries to create new music—or any other art form for that matter—is the degree to which MJ’s aesthetic palette was a complex mosaic of American art forms from Ziegfield Follies, classic Hollywood cinema, a heated dance contest during a black block party, a 4th of July fireworks display, or even the high wire, high voltage performance cadences of African American preachers.

To my ears, he could never achieve the stunning vocal acrobatics of his very early years.  His note choices, grown-up oral declamations, subtle rhythmic play with the timeline, his shout chorus improvisations together with his controlled, evenly distributed timbre solidified his reputation as a soul strutting-Wunderkind.  But no matter how much his comparatively diminished vocals brought to a performance, he obviously conceived of performance events as multi-faceted, approached from every visual, kinetic, musical, and dramatic angle possible.   As this film shows us, this was very, very hard work.  And work that meant understanding how to build a team of collaborators whose job was to infuse into the power of his brand the best ideas and unsurpassed execution.

With the illusion of “pop ease” removed and the mortality of this uniquely endowed star framing our experience of this film, This Is It offers up some lessons that will hopefully linger as the years roll on and the critics contemplate the long haul of MJ’s body of work.  Most importantly, it was not the trappings of his pop star machine nor how the larger media responded that should totally shape our musical impressions of the man.  Although we understand that his celebrity allowed him to make his gifts larger than life, it should not have the last word.   One is left wondering if could we could ever imagine a musical landscape where a man could be at home making poly rhythms visible and pop grooves nourishing might possess a popularity that would not become cannibalistic and self-afflicting?  Perhaps, one day.  While it might be difficult to succeed as this seemingly impossible goal, as MJ stated more than once to his killer band in the film: “that’s why we rehearse.”

Michael Jack ‘This Is It’ – Official Movie Trailer

Dr. Guy Ramsey

]]> http://musiqology.com/2009/11/03/part-two-this-is-it-michael-jackson-from-the-beginnings-to-the-end/feed/ 0 musiqology Michael Jackson & The Jackson Five Dr. Guthrie Ramsey Headshot color http://musiqology.com/2009/11/02/part-one-this-is-it-michael-jackson-the-musician/ http://musiqology.com/2009/11/02/part-one-this-is-it-michael-jackson-the-musician/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:02:55 +0000 musiqology http://musiqology.com/?p=446 ]]>

Michael Jackson

 A Message From Dr. Guy

With the unbelievable news that nova-star Michael Jackson had died of a cardiac arrest at the untimely age of fifty, a stunning array of issues from American music history exploded across the global media.  As a historian of African American music culture I spend more time than the average listener hashing over past black music cultures.  But like everyone else, my mind scrambled to understand the rambling impact of this sad information, very present, unavoidable.  As many apparently did, I found the whole thing surprisingly visceral.

Of course there were some basic lessons to take away from Michael’s passing. For one, we learned once again that the larger than life, the immensely talented, the rich, the inaccessible were, in fact, just like the rest of us: finite and mortal.  I can’t think of anything that represents the downside of accessibility as the results of one’s autopsy or a postmortem search of private belongings being made public.  And the visual image of Michael Jackson, the charismatic dancing machine, on a gurney transport, unceremoniously covered head to toe with a matter-of-fact white sheet, was in a word, surreal.

A constant stream of intense media coverage amplified the shock of it all with a coterie of informants answering the same questions ad naseum together with the requisite up-to-the-mili-second speculation after speculation. We heard it all, apparently, because news directors and the advertisers that pay them thought we demanded to know it all.  Without Michael able to run interference the public could finally, it seems, explore its curiosities unfettered, indeed, satisfy this intense interest in his mystery that had been hugely orchestrated by he himself.  And it all surfaced with a dizzying force that only a 24/7 news cycle could generate.  Drugs, money, sex, cosmetic surgery, baby-mama-drama, baby-surrogate-drama, stardom, and fandom formed a cocktail of tantalizing issues worthy of a summer Hollywood blockbuster. But this was real life, and all of the alphabets—CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, BET—worked overtime as diligent publicists for the saddest show on earth.  I suppose Michael Jackson, the King of Pop deserved as much.

Yet in the midst of the mad scramble for all the details of Michael’s demise we heard the music.  Yes, the music.  His music.  Michael’s music framed the commercial breaks of newscasts, it was downloaded and listened to with an unprecedented intensity, it was played constantly in public spaces, and it even poured from the most pre-canned, predictable radio formats (who knew that these “corporations of sound” had an ounce of spontaneity and variety in them? Goes to show you they can do better.)   Hearing all of the various strains and stages of Michael prompted me set aside all of the controversy and to think musically about his artistic output, a task that is always an easier exercise once a musician’s body of work becomes a finite and discreet entity.

Hopefully as the months and years past, they’ll be as much rumination about MJ’s body of creative work as there is about the more prurient aspects of his legacy. Not that the reception history of this music can (or should) be easily divorced from its context, its life as a function of the pop music industry, one in which the creation and dissemination of artistic production involves a well-oiled machine that sells “image” (good and otherwise) as well as the song.   But we can, I think, productively consider what we perceive as his musicianship, his work as a singer, songwriter, entertainer, dancer, and producer.

Michael Jackson – Man In the Mirror from “Moonwalker”

….To Be Continued with Part Two: This Is It – Michael Jackson, From the Beginnings to the End

Dr. Guy Ramsey

Downbeat Magazine October 09 - Higher Education Article

Spelman College Glee Club

A Message from Dr. Guy

This week I will be traveling to  Atlanta to visit the charming campus of Spelman College, where I will  speak to two classes and give a seminar for undergraduate music majors.  I consider this visit a great opportunity as a professor and musicologist because of the rich history of this institution, an all women’s, historically black college with a strong legacy of music education.

The Spelman College Glee Club , led by Dr. Kevin Johnson and The Spelman College Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of founder-director Joseph Jennings, have great reputations as performing ensembles, unique as training grounds for female musicians. I have heard the Glee Club in person, and I believe one could not find a better ensemble of its kind.  Dr. Johnson’s and his students’ arrangements of Negro spirituals are featured on their programs.  They are stunningly beautiful and well executed by the ensemble.  And, of course, the stellar academic reputation of this school speaks for itself; indeed, it’s been a place where sisterhood, success, and support are enduring components of its brand.

Spelman College Glee Club – Ave Maria
I will be there to enjoy the charged artistic atmosphere as well as to promote the cause of advanced post-graduate training in music, particularly in musicology and ethnomusicology.  It is an unfortunate fact that these disciplines are still challenged in attracting a large number of minority students to their ranks.  So why not go to an institution with a pool of multi-talented, motivated young sisters to push things in that direction?

I have been vexed for many years to understand why these fields have not attracted more minority scholars.  Music making, after all, has been an important social space in which African Americans have historically done lots of cultural work for themselves both individually and collectively.  And further, as we know, the American musical landscape itself has been disproportionately influenced by the timing, tenor, techniques, and spirit of the traditions born of black musical practices.  But somehow, this all hasn’t translated into a strong tradition of funneling these energies into the scholarly realm.

As a professor in a music department with a long tradition of creative excellence and scholarly innovation, I have to admit that it’s not often that my professional path crosses with the historically black colleges’ activities save for engaging some of the wonderful scholarship of their professors. Although, I’ve been involved in the efforts for “cultural diversity” in musicology for the last twenty years or so, this will be my first opportunity to directly address the students and faculty, face-to-face, and learn what their goals regarding this topic might be and how we can work together to meet them.

And, of course, I’ll check out some of the music in the city and get back to you with what I learned in “The Big Peach”!

Dr. Guy Ramsey