When black and white move and groove together:
Rock and Roll and Multiculturalism 

 

Richard Penniman aka Little Richard aka The Georgia Peach, born Macon, Georgia, USA, 5 December 1932.

This story starts with TV footage from 1964.  

The TV station is white. The backing band is white. The adoring audience is white The Star, however, is  black. When he speaks, the public listens attentively. When he starts singing and playing the piano, he really moves these young white youth, he actually makes them discover something: their body, their bodily senses. This is 1964 and we’re in a studio of  Granada TV in the UK. The Star is Little Richard aka The Georgia Peach, singing a wild tune called ‘Jenny Jenny Jenny’ backed by Sounds Incorporated. In his native country, the self-declared Light of the World known as the USA, travelling black show biz people still had to use separate entrances and rooms in hotels and restaurants. Their hits were listed in separate charts for Race Music.

Black moves white

But that is not my point. My point is a lot simpler. It’s about the white audience moving to and being moved by the black groove. About the white backing band finding it an honour to accompany this true original singer-musician. The incredible influence of black American music  - whether rhythm and blues, jazz or rock and roll - on white pop musicians in Europe.

Little Richard was black and we couldn’t care less. His audience here was white and he couldn’t care less.
In 1957, he quit rock and roll to commit himself to the ministry and religious music, releasing the album ‘God Is Real’ in 1959. By the time he hit the stage of Granada TV for this fabulous performance in 1964, he had re-embraced rock and roll.  Anyway, Little Richard was a most religious man. Fine, we didn’t give shit. Nor did he give shit about the white audience's beliefs.

What would you like to call all that? Cross-culturalism? Multiculturalism? Diversity? That black guy played black music and the white audience loved every note of it. That black guy was the originator, the inspirator. We had no posh sociological terms for that then. It was all so natural. You see, before doing ‘Jenny Jenny’, Little Richard says this to the audience: I love you, I love being in your country because you also love me, concluding – and here I quote: “Love draws love, so I’m here”. [1]

Share, exchange  

I’m getting to the point. Today, we are having these huge and often mean debates about ‘diversity’, ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘respect’.  Look, I’m fed up with being told that I should have respect for this or that because it is different, even because someone proclaims it to be so. Automatically, ontologically almost. Questioning is out of order, even ‘offensive’.   
I’m sorry, but it takes love and understanding to respect and accept someone else, especially if backgrounds are totally different. Like these sixteen-, seventeen-year English boys and girls on the one hand and this black American God-fearing  performer from Macon, Georgia, almost twice their age on the other hand. You need to connect first, find each other on a similar, identical or recognizable level. There must be something to share and exchange. And I don’t mean material things, because these cannot be shared -  only used. And I don’t mean ideology, because it drives people into opposite corners. And I most certainly don’t mean religion, because this excludes and, therefore, condemns, submits and wipes out everyone else.  

Create together

To share isn’t good enough. To share and to exchange still isn’t good enough. There should be an enhancing effect that deepens respect, heightens understanding, makes love grow. This is only possible when the two parties are involved in one another, committed to each other, do something together, live the same experience, recognize one another’s capabilities: when they create together, professionally or not. Like Palestinian and Israeli musicians playing in the same orchestra or a stageful of poets from most diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Or something far more down to earth and within everyone’s reach: the black performer and his English teenage fans, together creating the vibes and the atmosphere, interaction that only live shows can bring about.

When this happens, I don’t give shit that back home Little Richard will become Mr. Penniman of the local ministry again. As an atheist I have no problem with being touched by Elvis when he praises the Lord: gospel songs do that, even if you don’t believe because they also work on a level that can be shared and exchanged, viz. the level of symbolism and imagery. As the famous Dutch poet Martinus Nijhoff once wrote ‘Lees maar, er staat niet wat er staat’, i.e. ‘You can read this, but it doesn’t say what it says’. When the poet’s work is done, the reader comes in, interprets what it says it doesn’t say, which is his way of creating with the poet, even in his absence.

Multiculturalism? Diversity? Respect?
Ideologies will fight it because only one system can be Right. Religions will oppose it because only one belief holds the Truth. If you want true multiculturalism to happen, try the arts.

Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll.

© Eddy Bonte [06 Nov. 2016]

WATCH THE VIDEO here: https://www.facebook.com/heppestofthehep/videos/774835509321779/
https://www.facebook.com/heppestofthehep/?pnref=story

NOTE
[1] Was he referring to Teresa of Avilla’s “Love draws forth love”?