Black music often reveals the politics of political chicanery
By Derek Joy
What’s Going On?
That was the musical question asked by the late Marvin Gaye in his 1970 revolutionary recording with that title.
It was a mega hit. Changed the re-cording industry. Impacted the movie industry by influencing a more creative use of movie sound tracks.
Just so happened Gaye, signature Motown artists, wrote, recorded and released “What’s Going On?” when America was at war in Vietnam. Scientists and institutions of higher learning focused on the ecology.
And so it is, some 43 years later. Black Music Month 2013. America is a-gain at war. Afghanistan, the War on Terrorism rages on.
The ecology – with the likes of global warming, and more – is on the front burner.
Music, of course, has changed. The Rap and Hip Hop genres have changed the recording industry. Gone are the big band sounds. No more orchestras.
Both have been replaced by manufactured instrumentals in which stringed instruments are conspicuously absent. Synthetic music wrapped around poetic lyrics at breakneck paces.
Fortunes are being made in the Rap and Hip Hop Cultures. It is a different attack on current issues. Sells a different perspective of love. Twists and turns of the inherent values in our moral fiber.
Capitalism makes it so. The almighty buck in exchange for entertaining masses of people with the destruction of social values, cultural division to the detriment of the Black American family unit.
Therein lies at least a glimpse of valid answers to Gaye’s musical query, “What’s Going On?”
Meanwhile, we see a wealth of political chicanery among politicians at the local, state and federal levels. Non-stop.
Take a peek at the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). Florida’s public schools students must pass the FCAT to advance in grades and eventually graduate from high school.
No such requirements of students attending private schools. Yet public and private schools grant diplomas that are accepted by institutions of higher learning.
While the Brown v. Board of Education (Kansas), struck down the “Separate but Equal” practice segregation in public schools, FCAT presents the economic practice of “Separate but Equal.”
Another overlooked discriminatory reality is the fact that none of the politicians at the local, state or federal level are required to pass the FCAT, or any other academic test.
They simply raise money and seek to capture a majority of the votes cast. Not a single test on parliamentary procedures, the various charters or constitutions. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Surely, it is easy to ask, without much of any reasonable answers to, “What’s Going On?”
