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Makes me wanna holler

West Point Missionary Baptist Church at S. Cottage Grove and E. 36th Street, Chicago (photo by K. Bigger)

Gaye’s exploration of violence, violation, and social disruption takes place within the context of American constructs of race and racism. You’ll notice, though, that Gaye makes no explicit references to race or ethnicity. Although undeniably drawing from African American musical influences, idioms, and experiences, and critical of the effects of racism, Gaye implicitly denies the concept of race a real place at the table when it comes to understanding what is wrong or responding to it. Again, this is protest music where there is no “us and them,” only “us.” He is speaking with a particular voice and from a particular place, but he invites you into the party rather than confronting you as an opponent.

Author Isabel Wilkerson, in her study of The Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns, prefers to use the term “caste” instead of “race.” She discusses how the caste system of the Jim Crow South exerted a distorting effect on the personalities of all involved. Those at the bottom of the caste system lived in anxiety that some minor misstep might lead to disaster. Those on the higher rungs of privilege within that system, though, also lost their ability to be fully themselves. They were not fully free because they were obliged to maintain the false and damaging structure of white supremacy.

Isabel Wilkerson (publicity still)

Wilkerson does not suggest that those burdens were close to equal.  I can not imagine that Gaye would either, and I certainly don’t mean to suggest so here.  Nevertheless, both burdens are real. The rhetorical genius of using “caste” is to remove the implication that race is a real thing. This doesn’t mean being colorblind, or ignoring the history and enduring effects of racism. Instead, it makes plain that race is an invention created for the purpose of exercising power. As Ta-Nehisi Coates has argued, “race is the child of racism, not the father.”

While the Jim Crow system has largely disappeared from its overt and legally-enforced manifestations, vestiges of this caste system persist. In many respects, these vestiges formed the domestic landscape that Gaye sings about. If Wilkerson’s thesis is correct, then even this weakened caste system is something everyone has both selfless and selfish motives to eradicate.

Wilkerson doesn’t dignify the invented concept of “race” by giving it status as a real thing. Neither does Gaye give it any credence by discussing his concerns explicitly as an African American phenomenon. As a result, one of its lessons is that all that is happening in his world, just as all that is happening in mine, is happening in our community, not somebody else’s. Those people in safer spaces don’t suffer nearly as much, or in the same ways, but the violence contributes to everybody’s suffering and expresses a limitation on everyone’s full humanity. What’s Going On is therefore “available” to me. It is art that unfolds my connection to the world around me.

Pat and I had a college professor, the late Ira G. Zepp, who used to say “what you can separate, you can violate.” Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On reminds me in art just as Ira did in teaching that that separation is an illusion, and a harmful one. The path to peace lies in recognizing our intrinsic connection to one another.

Live life for the children: “What’s Happening…Now”

Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis explain on Sound Opinions how What’s Going On made possible an entire new trajectory in record albums. It opened up doors and windows for Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Parliament Funkadelic and others. Its legacy pervades a wide variety of musical genres, and informs many trajectories of rap, soul, and R&B.

Doing even partial justice to the legacy of What’s Going On would probably take at least a couple more posts. Several artists have covered parts of the album with successful versions and updates. Aretha Franklin created her own version of “Wholy Holy” in 1972. It was a natural fit to her gospel background. Cyndi Lauper produced a version of “What’s Going On” in collaboration with Chuck D. in the late 1980s.

What I’d like to close with, however, is how the song has been taken up in a kind of folk process through “What’s Going On...Now.” The Kennedy Center launched this collaborative program to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Gaye’s performance of the full album there in 1972. The project promoted original creative works inviting people to express what’s going on now. In addition to the link above, you can explore a playlist of related performance on the WGON YouTube channel here.

Here is one example of young people continuing Gaye’s legacy, with clear inspiration from What’s Going On.

Poet Sonia Sanchez tells an interviewer for “What’s Going On…Now” that What’s Going On is Gaye’s love song for America. Every Gaye song is a love song, even if it’s saying that his beloved isn’t doing right by him. Again, Gaye is forging a reconciliation with the world, not an acceptance of it as it is. It’s a tribute to his artistic achievement and his spirit that so many others can join him in singing it.

Wrapping up

This is likely to be our last substantive post for 2016. Thanks to all of our bloggers for their contributions this year. Thanks especially to Pat for his help with managing and editing throughout the year. Finally, thanks to all of you for reading, listening, and commenting.