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Last Stop for the Conductor of the Soul Train
Youngsters who only know Soul Train from its waning and then sad years, when guys like Shemar Moore and Mystro Clark were hosts, might not totally grasp the big deal of this show and what Don Cornelius meant to us with a few more years on them.
Soul Train was, for Black folk, the original “Must-See TV”. Saturday mornings in the 70’s were planned around watching the Soul Train Gang and it was a cross-generational thing. It wasn’t just the teeny-boppers tuning in, it was moms and dads and teens and youth and kids...everyone was gathered around the one living room set entranced by “the hippest trip in America.”
Soul Train was cool school.
This was dance class 101! We watched Rerun from “That’s My Mama” and ShabbaDoo Quinones and the Lockers teach us poplocking, we got the camel walk from James Brown. We did the robot, the funky four corners, the funky chicken, the bop, the freak, the spank, the rock and every other new move that came along. It was “a stone-gas, honey!”
I first saw the Moonwalk, not when Michael Jackson wowed the world on Motown 25, but when Jeffry Daniels, the former Soul Train dancer and member of the group Shalamar, performed to Jackson’s “Working Day and Night” on Soul Train. Daniels went on to teach the “King of Pop” his moves, but they all began right there on Soul Train.
This was fashion 202! We saw “mini-skirts, maxi-skirts and Afro hairdoos,” the stack-heels and platform shoes straight from the Flagg Brother’s catalog, the SuperFly suits and butterfly collars...we saw it all and we wanted it all! We wanted to look like we’d just stepped off the Soul Train.
This was music theory and appreciation! We saw The Ohio Players and Earth, Wind & Fire and Barry White and Marvin Gaye and Gladys Knight and Slave and The Jackson 5 and Willie Hutch and Curtis Mayfield and Mandrill and The Bar-Kays and Teddy Pendergrass and Rufus featuring Chaka Khan (she was fiiine!!) and on and on and on...
We learned marketing watching the Afro-Sheen and Ultra-Sheen commercials. We saw beautiful Black people on the screen and couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride. We were blown away by the Afro-Sheen Blow-Out Kit...tick...tick...BOOM!! And there Michael Jordan selling hair grease when he had no hair. Every guy loved watching Jayne Kennedy sipping TAB. We were seeing ourselves in our glory for the first time and loving what we saw.
Soul Train wasn’t just a show, it was a happening...an awakening. Don Cornelius wasn’t just a host, he was a member of our extended family. He was the cool uncle we all wished we had. He was the man. He was The Don.
Don, we wish you now, and in your next incarnation, what you wished us each and every week: love, peace and soul.
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PBS Documentary Creates Emotional Stir at Sundance
Sundance Film Festival attendees gave the new PBS documentary Slavery By Another Name a rousing, 2-minute standing ovation. The film, which focuses on the period just after emancipation, touched a raw and open emotional nerve with the audience.
The 90-minute film is directed by Samuel D. Pollard, who’s also directed episodes of Eyes On The Prize and American Masters for PBS, and is based on the book by Douglas A. Blackmon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
Look for Slavery By Another Name when it debuts on PBS on February 13th as part of the national celebration of Black History Month.
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Innocent and Innocence Lost
She was only seven. She should have been completing her wish list to Santa. She should have been giddy with anticipation for Christmas; doing her best to be a good girl, to be on the "nice" list. She should have been innocently contemplating every good thing a child can imagine during this holiday season. She should not have been found bound and gagged in a trash compactor. She should not have been sexually assaulted and beaten to death. She was.
Jorelys Rivera had an abrupt tragic and gruesome end to her short life. Her death captured the attention of the nation and struck fear into the north Georgia town of Canton, about 40 miles north of Atlanta. You don't need to have kids to be horrified by this senseless crime, but when you have a seven year-old daughter of your own; it touches you in a whole 'nother way!
When and how do you equip young children to deal with grim realities of a world populated with people so confused about their own divinity that they can perpetrate the most despicable acts with no remorse? How do you teach them to respect their elders, but also caution them to avoid those predatory elders who hold positions of trust, like coaches and counselors and priests, and not turn them into frightened and cynical neurotics? How? I don't know and it's really a damned shame that somehow we have to figure out ways to do it.
R.I.P., Jorelys.
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Black-On-Black Crime
I’m almost certain that Dr. Conrad Murray didn’t actually intend to kill Michael Jackson. After all, why would he want to kill the goose that lays golden eggs before he had a chance to collect even one of those eggs? Dr. Murray was promised a salary of $120,000 a month for attending to MJ during his grueling 50-date concert tour, but the final contract with the tour’s organizers had not been signed at the time of MJ’s death.
Murray got caught up in the trappings of celebrity and the promise of wealth so much so that he abdicated his to sworn duty under the Hippocratic Oath to make his patient’s welfare paramount above all other interests.
Dr. Murray must have been operating out of a mindset consumed by the fear of losing his plum position with his mercurial star patient. How else can one explain the inexplicable use of operating room anesthesia as a sleep aid simply because his patient demanded it?
Dr. Murray compromised his integrity out of fear of losing a payday and just like every decision made from that perspective, the consequences were devastating. When we make decisions based on fear, we set in motion the very things we dread. “What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me”, fretted the biblical character Job. Surely, Dr. Murray is singing that same tune. If he had only demonstrated the courage of convictions to stand up for what was right, he might very well have earned MJ’s respect and still had a job. Even if not, he would have retained his name, reputation and freedom.
As the trial unfolds, I’ve been heartened to see that Michael Jackson had a core of Black people surrounding him who were entrusted with the care of him and his children, e.g., his personal assistant, cook, nurse, head of security and even private physician. Unfortunately, it was a brother who let him down when he needed him most. It’s doubly sad that this whole sordid incident is being revealed to be yet another Black-on-Black crime.
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Cleaning Up After 9/11
I wasn't sure of what to expect as I flew back into New York City on Saturday, September 10, 2011. The incessant media chatter building up to the anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 was dominated by the fear of the possibility of commemorative terrorist attacks. Heightening the already tense times was a "credible", but unconfirmed threat of possible cell unit targeting either Washington, DC or New York City. News reports from the day before showed trucks and large vehicles being randomly checked and searched at bridge and tunnel toll plazas. I was prepared for chaos.
Almost instantly, what struck me and my fiancé, who insisted on a travel life insurance policy before boarding, was the relative calm of the city and the scarcity of lack of people in LaGuardia. There were no waits for bags. We went straight to a taxi with no one either before or after us to even start a queue. Traffic was extremely light on the Grand Central Parkway and we cleared the Midtown Tunnel with ease.
As a couple, we were in town for the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, she is a huge tennis fan, but personally I was also here for the 9/11 memorial. It felt appropriate since I had been in New York on that fateful day ten years (ago) prior and couldn't think of a more fitting place to be.
The societal changes that have occurred between September 11, 2001 and September 11, 2011 have been pretty astounding. Industries like music and publishing underwent seismic shifts due to new technologies. Those same technologies transformed the way we talk, write, share, play and have even redefined what it means to be a "friend". We have fought the longest wars in our country's history and suffered an economic downtown of epic proportions as a consequence. The country had a budget surplus from the buoyant eight years of the Clinton administration. Even the new, lightweight president Bush couldn't mess things up too much. Could he?
Well, we are still cleaning up from eight years of fear mongering, belligerence and unchecked spending on waging ill-conceived and unjustifiable wars. We knew the check had to come eventually. The bill had to be examined at some point and the damage assessed. The bill came and we were in a mess. And now, just as with so many other messes that white folks have made: there's a brother left with a broom feverishly trying to tidy it all back up while dealing with the attitudes of those who think he's not sweeping fast enough. Even these 10 years haven't changed that.
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