Through almost 4 months now, we have been
taking a look at all the African American music background, and as an
individual thought, I think we have to analyze and consider all the facts which
surround a society environment, because we could be really surprised with how
wrong are we. Four months ago, I had a completely different position on African
American society, and I had even been pointed as a racist person, however, I
took this entire story to clear my thoughts and to have a different concept. It’s man’s man’s man’s world, performed
by James Brown should be a good example to show to all of you, that now I know
something about this topic, and I will never have the same concept about
African American people I had a few months ago, never.
This video shows us a black man, inside a
comfortable house, in a snowy day. Behind him, a cotton plant lies in a jar,
and it works as a time machine, because it immediately takes this man to his
childhood, which took place on the cotton plantations of Barnwell, South Carolina.
The streets are empty, and a Gospel church shows up, and it’s full of black
people, who are praying and singing to their Lord: they just want to be heard,
they just want their voice to rise to heaven. Then, a terrible memory goes back
to this guy mind: he looks at himself as a boy who plays the harmonica, just as
his old fellows did, and a drunk adult
(probably his father, or even his stepfather) beats him so hard, that his
little musical instrument ends up on the floor.
Those were hard times for African American
society, since they had to deal with a terribly racist white society, who had
this awful belief about them being the better race, the superior race. White
people were so racist, that they couldn’t stand the fact of them sharing a sink
with them: they were “colored”, they were “different”, and they were worth
“less”. White society was so sick, that they even hung black men in trees, and
this was considered a ritual, an insane leak of evil which soiled American
ground. This kid had lived all of these kinds of darkness, as he even had to
grow up with a sinful behavior, which included delinquency (caused by a
discriminative society) and a couple of years behind the cold bars of jail.
Time went by, and black people were sick of that illogical discrimination: they
gathered, they rose, they wanted all the American people to feel the Black power, and they had a charismatic
leader, who took charge of this anger ship. Martin Luther King was shot dead by
a white man (not surprisingly at all, they were just sick), and It worked as a
catalyst to the black power rise. They were heard and felt during the 1968
Olympic Games, when Tommie Smith made the black power salute in front of
thousands of people after winning a gold medal there.
 |
| Eyes down, hard times, no doubt. |
This man began his singing career, and all we
can see is representative instruments of the music that was born in an African
American world, such as saxophones and trombones. African American people has
given so much to music, and it has put its influence on so many genres, that this
man’s success in a man’s man’s world is
a good way to show how you can take all the bad experiences you have left
behind and take advantage of them in order to become a better person. The kid
that grew up in a cotton field, being discriminated and humiliated, took all
the dust off his shoulders and now looks at his current town from the top, in
his house full of memories, memories that come out every time he looks at that
plant, that is not just a cotton plant.
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