Michael



Around a decade ago during a casual chat about music, I mentioned to a friend of mine that Jackson defined the eighties. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘He was the eighties.’

Those who had their formative years in the eighties would certainly agree. You are touched by his music regardless of which part of the globe you came from. In our lives, we cherish some First-Time moments that are very special and very fresh that we'd cherish for the rest of our life. Like hearing the the initial beats of Bad; the shock of Jackson turning into a zombie in the Thriller video, The bursting joy of watching the moonwalk, and the lilting hiss of a voice that caressed You Are Not Alone.’

Those were the joyful and entertaining moments of our lives. We danced, however awkwardly, to Beat It, Billy Jean, Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel, Black or White, Remember the Time. We thumped our feet angrily to Earth Song, They Don’t Really Care About Us. We cried to We are the World, Heal the World, and Liberian Girl. Several decades later, we still see Jackson in the sound of hip hop, and dance movements in every wannabe artist in the world and actor in India. His Thriller revolutionised the concept of music video where the intended effects of the film still works with the first time viewer.

The hungry and insouciant racist tendencies of the western media never fully understood the artist and never left him in peace. For all the wealth and incredible fame, he lived a traumatic life. His anguish and struggle with the media cost him his art and his work. Eventually we ended up being the losers. Imagine having lost ten more Beat Its or Earth Songs. The world paid the price of Jackson being an American and being an Afro-American. Had he not changed his skin tone, would he have been as successful? That’s the question for which we’ll never know the answer. People respond to this question with contemporary examples like Beyoncé, but we must understand that we live in a totally different generation. We especially live in a post-Jackson era where the concept of colour is seen totally differently. Had Jackson not changed his skin tone, would we have looked at Beyoncé and Halle Berry differently? And how much of soul searching did the white society was made to do with that strange act of plastic surgery? How guilty would the baby boomers have felt about Jackson’s surgery whose fathers jailed a black woman for just occupying the wrong seat in the bus?

Above all, the questions that were raised about Michael Jackson were not raised about other white artists of the past who had behaved far more erratically. Artists like Jim Morrison, Syd Barrette and Ozzy Osbourne overdosed on LSDs, turned violent towards women and even ate a live bird on stage but those were often explained away as the outburst of their creative genius but Michael got branded as Wacko for allegedly sleeping in an oxygen tent.

Finally, and finally Jackson gets the peace that had been eluding him in his life. After the constant bickering of the media, the scrutiny of the justice system and the endless ridicule of the society having taken a huge toll on his art, there is peace at last. One of the fans said in the TMZ Website: ‘God bless you Michael, heaven just got another beautiful angel.’