[Marxism] Traffic spike

Wed Jul 1 11:49:16 MDT 2009

In a message dated 7/1/2009 8:45:08 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
_lnp3 at panix.com_ (mailto:lnp3 at panix.com)  writes: 

> No, it is a Michael Jackson feeding frenzy based on the search results  
maintained on the Wordpress dashboard: <

Comment 

Michael Jackson is the perfect gateway to revolutionary politics. His  
"prison video" of "They Don't Really Care About Us" captures the circumstance  
and mood of the world proletariat . . . .. really. 

I was to sad, heart broken and disgusted with the bourgeois authority to  
write a meaningful contribution about Michael J and simply poured out anger 
and  contempt for bourgeois society.  All the base political points and the  
salient features of American culture Michael expressed were covered, with 
the  exception of his dance form as the Bob Fosse inheritance; ultimately 
weaving  back to Mr. Bogangles. 

MJ was gigantic. His assault on the bourgeois family form - in it  
industrial mode of life, was huge. 

The world grief expressed at the passing of MJ is real and communists can  
and should write about him as a cherished son of the proletariat. 

Below is a partial rewrite but I cannot quite get it together yet. This  
fragment begins in the middle. 

WL. 

******** 

Michael Jackson carried the Revolution that was Motown to its conclusion.  
Motown - Berry Gordy, road/rode the front curve of the technological 
revolution,  as it affected music production and recast the standard American love 
song using  revolutionary technique to create a different "sound." Motown 
created different  studio music, as this music is experienced via transistors 
and vacuum tube  technology. 

Motown remixed the American North mode of European harmonic structure and  
African rhythm by placing rhythm - bass line, in front of harmonic 
structure. To  effect this Motown deployed new technique like eight track recording 
and  plugging the guitar directly into the recording console. "Your Precious 
Love" by  Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell illustrates this. Listen to the 
first 20 seconds  of this song. _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbX66Ddxtow_ 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbX66Ddxtow)  

Witness the "guitar licks." Motown was not the process wherein the guitar  
emerged as instrumental front man. Motown riveted the “front man” to a 
bassline  as leader. The role of drummer is amplified in the Motown Sound. 

The balance between the drummer and piano can be witnessed on "Please Mr.  
Postman." _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY9mBWuLRL4&feature=related_ 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY9mBWuLRL4&feature=related)  

The first ten seconds of Mary Wells "My Guy" - written by Smokey Robinson,  
is pure magic. _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY9mBWuLRL4&feature=related_ 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY9mBWuLRL4&feature=related)  

On “The Girls Alright with Me” the drum is played with a frightening  
intensity and timed to match the prevailing dance form of 1960s Detroit. Listen  
to the first 30 seconds where Eddie Kendrick first tenor embody and carries 
 harmonic structure following the drums. 
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SSroUYt310_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SSroUYt310)  

Motown changed and redefined American music. Motown ushered in an epoch of  
the male first tenor as lead singer and popularized falsetto as a musical 
form.  Many thought Smokey Robinson’s first tenor was “unmanly” and ran 
counter to the  husky barroom vocal of Frank and Sammy and tood in opposition to 
the male vocal  tradition of the Mississippi bluesman. 

Before the Motown Sound fully evolved, this "sound" was called the "Detroit 
 Sound." This sound was forged on the segregated street corners of Detroit 
by a  population made homogenous by assembly line production and high 
aspirations. 

Several events came together for the triumph of the Motown Sound of which  
the further integration of the black into the industrial proletariat was  
critical. Without the opportunity presented by employment in auto none of the  
other ingredients could come together. 

The Negro sections of Detroit’s industrial classes provided the capital  
market to sustain Motown and allow it to reproduce itself as capital on a  
widening and expanding scale. The post WW II economic boom fed and expanded the 
 segregated Negro entertainment market, even as the wall of Jim Crow faced  
shattering and collapse. This new emerging market was buttressed by the 
high  wages of auto. 

Several music producers with varying dimensions of capital vied for  
supremacy. Berry Gordy, Edward Wingate, Joseph Von Battle and Don Davis   were to 
emerge as the top contender. In the case of Gordy and Von Battle, both  
began as Record store owners seeking to raise capital through record sales.  
Gordy’s autobiography, “To Be Loved” explains the market pressure forcing his 
to  shift from promoter of bebop jazz to popular dance music to survive. In 
the  survival fight Gordy emerged as singular winner, due in no same part to 
his  recruitment of the poetic genius, Smokey Robinson. 

Motown was the patented brand name and marketing means of the Detroit  
Sound. The owner of the Motown Sound was Berry Gordy, a legendary songwriter, as 
 good as anything produced at New York historical “tin pan alley.” In fact 
Gordy  recreated and incorporated the historic “Tin Pan Alley” under one 
roof of  musical production. _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley)  

Gordy was a "general market businessman" as he defined himself. 

In street parlance a street hustler turned capitalist. 

The Jackson 5 would enter this competitive market and had their unique  
signature sound crafted and recast to the Detroit standard - Motown. 

II 

The 50 years of Michael Jackson - 1958/2009 is the framework, context and  
environment defining MJ as he defines and articulated the subtle social 
forces  driving American society. The domestic American music market was where 
the  Jackson 5 and then Michael Jackson were made stars. American imperialism 
would  be the structural force making MJ a world force. 

Michael Jackson career appears different to three generation depending on  
when and where each generation encountered the musical form he popularized 
and  extended. 

The Jackson 5 musical career opened at a critical transition period in  
America’s evolution towards a “more perfect union.” Their six year tenure at  
Motown begins in 1968 or one year after Detroit’s “Great Rebellion.” By the 
time  of the 1967 rebellion, (at that time the greatest uprising against 
the state  since the Civil War), several cultural changes were underway 
expressed in the  changing of the musical guard. 

Motown displaced the leading male vocalist as Italian, expressed in the  
amazing music of Frank Sinatra.  Beginning his career in the swing era,  
ostracized and condemned by the most Anglophile musical critics, Frank would  
become America’s most famous “barroom” balladeer, and in the post WWII a male  
embodiment of vocal cool. Motown would displace barroom vocal cool with, 
well,  Motown and usher in the era of the male black as lead singer. David 
Ruffin and  Marvin Gaye were the victor. Michael Jackson would further alter 
the cultural  artifact of the lead male vocalist but not after and without 
assimilating and  inheriting all peculiar to David and Marvin. 

It is submitted for your inspection the Jackson 5 render of “Who Loving  
You, ”Michael Jackson’s interpretation of Ruffin’s rendering of the same  
song.   _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVbCpPQBZmU_ 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVbCpPQBZmU)  

The Temptation’s rendering of “Who’s Loving You,” with David Ruffin on  
lead. _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E66cHwKhH0&feature=related_ 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E66cHwKhH0&feature=related)  

The Temptations rendition is in turn a re intepetation of the original  
release written and song by Smokey Robinson. 
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7twuP2cyIJc_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7twuP2cyIJc)  

Motown was musical production on the mode of mass assembly line production, 
 with changing body styles and identical internal guts. Songwriters wrote 
and  producers produced using changing singers. David Ruffin’s history 
altering  singing and performing has yet to be fully recognized in American 
popular music. 

As performance art Michael would inherit, assimilate and recast Motown’s  “
Broadway” presentation with a strong tilt to Bob Fosse’s dance form and 
David  Ruffin‘s delivery.  Fosse’s dance form is in the last instance, on a  
continuum extending back to Bogangles. One of Ruffin’s last recoded  
performances, as musical art, can be witnessed in his presentation “Stature of a  
Fool.” _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18RBbHY16-4_ 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18RBbHY16-4) . 

Here one can witness Michael’s use of his hands as dance form - Bob Fosse,  
and as vocal body art of male vocalist - David Ruffin. 

The Jackson’s possessed their own unique sound before arriving at Motown.  
This “sound” was Northern and industrial as distinct and counterpoised to 
its  Southern counterpart expressed in Stax. 
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stax_Records_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stax_Records)  

Michael’s signature dress as military chic was popularized by Marvin Gaye.  
Michael inherited, assimilated and recast all of that, which is the unique  
American musical and dance form and presented this form to the world. The  
Jackson’s technique was honed and further crystallized in the Motown Sound, 
as  the sound dominated and shaped the music market of the 1960’s and 70’s. 

Such is the pedestal upon which the Jackson’s and young Michael stood. 

Later he would thrill them and then become “Bad.” 

Between 1979 and the release of Thriller, the Jackson’s with Michael as  
lead man would morph into the Michael Jackson my children’s generation love. 

III. 

America is different. America was not feudal or founded with institutional  
relations of blood monarchy as privilege. Our entertainers are pronounced  
secular Kings and Queens based on their performances. Aretha Franklin is the 
 Queen of Soul. James Brown is the Godfather of Soul. Michael Jackson is 
the King  of Popular Music. 

Sing and dance or get off the stage. 

Michael Jackson is, was and died a Jackson. The Jackson’s are a musical  
dynasty unlike anything in American history. The Jackson family lived in the 
eye  of the public and a profit driven media thriving on sensation. America 
has an  intimate relationship with the Jackson family in the same way a large 
part of  the world feels an intimate relation with the music of Michael 
Jackson. 

When the father outlives the son, the son’s story is a narrative bound to  
the father. Somewhere in this story the Jackson family transition from Gary  
Indiana steel town to the automotive capital of the world - Motown and then 
to  “world town” is part of the narrative. Michael’s planned “comeback” - 
musical  resurrection, coincided in time exactly with the planned “comeback”
 and  resurrection of two of the American based auto producers. 

Michael belongs to the world through America. 

His story cannot be told and understood without the father because the  
father is alive and he is the seed. Joe Jackson’s musical aspiration are well  
documented but his early life and that of his family was that of the 
American  industrial proletariat of the post WW II years. Joe Jackson was and 
remains hard  as steel and worked in one of the only integrated areas of 1950’s 
American  society: Factory town USA. In this dimension Joe Jackson and Berry 
Gordy’s lives  were perhaps inexplicably bound, with the latter having 
worked in the Lincoln  division of the Ford Motor Company. 

Steel and auto. And music. And industrial production of music and assembly  
line family discipline. The Jackson family was forged. Michael became the 
blunt  instrument, the cutting edge of the steel. 

Joe and Berry had gigantic dreams where others had big dreams.

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