THE MUSIC DIED

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED The difference and the distance between "I heard it through the grapevine," and "Psychedelic Shack" is more than cultural and anthropological ; more than tonal and lyrical. It was sociopolitical. When those bass drums, baselines of Marvin Gaye's ritualized rhythms and vocals assailed the ambient consciousnesses of black America in 1968, it was reveille! A wake-up call! It was revelation. Its subliminal communications were unmistakable. "Get up ! Rise up !" It was saying between the lyrics of estranged love between lovers of the day. It was like slaves' codes of days gone by: Speaking with and to those with ears to hear, with hearts to understand, what the Lord saith! Almost overnight, in 1969, we were musically offered "Psychedelic Shack" (psychedelic shackles) that heralded the entry of mind-altering drugs and the normalization of escapism, to black communities via radio, tape and stereo, that pulled in the opposite direction of least resistance. Along with that genre of nerve racking music, flamboyant fashion, laissez-faire lifestyle, drug abuse on multiple levels, came even more subtly the death of the movement's momentum. As soon as 1970, the same Marvin Gaye was worriedly singing of an "Inner City Blues;" was asking "What's Going On?" I was wondering as well! What happened to the music of the '60s? I was not alone in my query. A novelist named Joseph C. Smith wrote a sapient social-biography of our people's music entitled, THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED (1981). I devoured this book ! It was affirming suspicions that I held about the black freedom movements' manipulation by music mavens. Change the beat, change the threatened conduct, nationally, internationally. This change was not wrought by cultural accretion but by political and economic means, including Motown leaving Detroit for Los Angeles; vamping on Black Panthers' outposts in city after city; Nixon's "law and order." With movement leaders dead , in jail, or in flight; with illegal drugs now normative behavior, with black laissez faire individualism having displaced collective strivings, with the music now raucously raunchy, no longer polished and lascivious , we found ourselves to be similar to rudderless ships, lost at sea. We remain lost in many respects. That is one reason why I wrote this song.