Posts Tagged ‘music’
Her Diamonds Secret Meaning
Friday, September 25th, 2009Africans Critical Still Mourn Jackson
Sunday, June 28th, 2009Zimbabwe:
Africans hailed Michael Jackson Friday as a pioneering ’son’ who fused black and white music but some questioned his bizarre personal life and alleged he tried to disown his black identity. Tributes poured in from South Africa to Ethiopa after the death of the star on Thursday, and radio stations blasted out his hits across the continent, which Jackson first visited at the age of 14.
Jackson’s relationship to Africa is perhaps best remembered through the 1985 song “We Are The World”, co-authored with Lionel Richie to raise aid for the Ethiopian famine.
Mahmoud Dirrir, Ethiopia’s tourism and culture minister, led tributes to the star saying: “In big Ethiopian cities, many people will have a special feeling towards his death.”
The 50-year-old singer, from a poor, black family in the United States and a descendant of African slaves, visited the continent for the first time with The Jackson Five in the 1970s. He returned on a trip to several African countries in the 1990s and was welcomed to the Gabonese capital Libreville by tens of thousands of fans and a banner screaming “Welcome Home Michael”.
“He is the first artist who made an impact across the whole globe, and among all races,” said Ali Ben Bongo, Gabon’s defence minister and the son of late longtime president Omar Bongo Ondimba. Ali Ben Bongo had organised Jackson’s trip to Gabon.
“He proved music had no frontiers.”
In Kenya, popular singer Eric Wainaina hailed Jackson as an artist who “did extraordinary things.”
“Most importantly he broke down the barrier between black and white music,” Wainaina added.
In South Africa, where Michael Jackson attended the 1999 birthday of another icon, Nelson Mandela, the Mandela Foundation lamented the “premature” loss of the star.
“Michael had a great fondness for this country, he spent a lot of time here both when he was touring and quietly and privately,” Duncan Gibbon from Sony Music told South Africa’s Talk Radio 702.
But if his musical genius was undisputed across the continent, his attitude towards his African heritage and his personal life raised questions. One bitter memory is a 1992 trip to the Ivory Coast. Jackson pinched his nose as he descended from a plane on arrival, drawing criticism from many in the west African nation.
“It angered the Ivorians, because they thought that with this gesture Michael Jackson meant that Ivory Coast smelt bad,” recalled journalist Tiburce Koffi, who covered the event.
Others voiced disappointment that Jackson appeared to be trying to distance himself from his African heritage.
“He was a great man but he disappointed us by trying to whiten his skin, which made him look scary,” one man in Sierra Leone said.
Jackson insisted that his increasingly pale complexion was down to a rare skin condition known as vitiligo and lupus; his detractors speculated he had undergone skin-bleaching. Even the Ethiopian culture minister Dirrir, effusive in his praise for the star’s efforts to bring aid to his country by writing “We Are The World”, was not entirely positive.
“Apart from his personal behaviour, he will be remembered as an icon, especially for his song calling for us to leave this world a better place for future generations,” Dirrir said.
