(originally written on May 23, 2006)
I must start this day off with a rant my friends. And I think you already know what this rant is about. I got home last night and went to bed rather late. I woke up on time but my attempts to catch the bus were foiled by a bad case of the runs. So, I was home when morning TV was on. Yes, I saw, briefly, Taylor Hicks singing "Living for the City". I was undone. Flabbergasted.
How can you sing "Living for The City" with a smile on your face? And in that same vein (as Z and I have discussed before) "Try A Little Tenderness" is not meant to be danced around on. I think that the interpretation of "soul" by white America actually translates into something more akin to : jovial, sexy (although Taylor scarcely manages this), vibrato, and any type of feigned rhythm. For them soul is not rage, emptiness, joy, pain, grace the way it is for us. When I listen to "Living for the City" I break down and cry....I DO NOT dance around in a purple suit. And maybe that's because I really am living for the city, trying to survive with what I got, makin it through on faith and hope. Taylor, you cannot communicate this. For you soul now amounts to anything that manages to be entertaining, while I know that my rage (while intriguing to you) certainly is not. How does a purple suit find itself anywhere near these lyrics:
Her brother’s smart he’s got more sense than many
His patience’s long but soon he won’t have any
To find a job is like a haystack needle
Cause where he lives they don’t use colored people
Living just enough, just enough for the city
Living just enough
For the city oh, oh
His hair is long, his feet are hard and gritty
He spends his life walking the streets of new york city
He’s almost dead from breathing in air pollution
He tried to vote but to him there’s no solution
Living just enough, just enough for the city
In Stevie's version, the chords are moody and futuristic, the organ is psychadelic, his voice somewhere between hope, disillusionment, rage, and death. I have thought on many occasions (often while riding home on the bus) that this song is a sonic masterpiece. Taylor's rendition was, to put it simply, white man in "black" face. And lets just remember that I didnt need to see the whole performance to diagnose that. All i needed was the glare of the purple suit and i was done.
I also felt that this performance and others like it are misinterpretations of the work of Stevie Wonder. It seems that in our post-70's, what my baby daddy Mark Anthony Neal often refers to as "post-soul" memory Stevie Wonder emerges as part genius, part entertainment maelstrom. Now, in his older age he is an artist that we trot out for showcases, nostalgia, inspiration and honor without giving much thought to the context and real content of his music.
More than making us dance or making us love Stevie created music that made us think. Perhaps the joy and grace that Stevie has always put into his music made it easy for us to ignore the pain, the anger, and calls for revolution. When you think Stevie you may automatically think of the pop magic of: "AS", "I Just Called To Say I Love You", "Always", or some of his early Motown recordings. But now as Stevie ages, and I age too, I'm thinking about him in light of the scathing criticism of "You Haven't Done Nothin", the storytelling on "Pasttime Paradise", the melancholy movement of "Superwoman" and the blues commentary of "Livin For The City". And maybe what I'm really learning about is passing the party and gettin down to the nitty gritty of the music that makes an artist relevant.
Soul is about more than how well you perform, how you dance, or get people to move. Sometimes its about actually "moving" people. When Otis sang "Young girls they may be weary..." he meant that shit. Cause young black girls really are weary, and I'm one of them. Sick and tired of this fake love, constantly misbehavin, and shamin love we get from white people. Leave me alone if you can't figure out what I mean in my entirety.
I am actually amused by Taylor thinking he is on the Soul Patrol. I watched the show last week and I died laughing when he sang "Try a Little Tenderness" and hugged himself like he was a damn Care Bear. That was great TV. I even told Z that at many homes across middle America wives were not washing the dishes that night b/c of Taylor (y'all know its true). So while Taylor is great TV, I cannot sit idly by while he crosses the line into that "place where no soul-less person shall enter". That place is in our blues, our gray area, the nuances of soul and how it is conveyed. It is there that I recognize black folks and soul music in their entirety. And that place is sacred. Amen.
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