diana ross
Yesterday on Soundcheck we heard about opera singer Marian Anderson’s landmark concert at the Lincoln Memorial — an incident that raised national awareness of America’s racial divide after Anderson’s original concert venue banned her because she was black. But Marian Anderson is not a name with much currency in the wider culture, because she was not a crusader. Plus, she was working in the field of opera and classical music, which isn’t exactly the first thing most Americans — even then — talked about around the water cooler.
But Diana Ross & The Supremes? Now THAT’s cultural currency. They were not crusaders for racial equality, either — according to Mark Ribowsky’s dishy new book, Diana Ross crusaded for one thing only, and that was Diana Ross. But what an impact the Supremes had on race relations in America — in a way that would perhaps take years to become evident. As a little kid, I heard Motown records on the same radio stations that played the Beatles and the Stones. And seeing the Supremes on TV was a completely natural, expected occurrence. It’s only much later, as an adult, that I’ve realized what a big step that was. The real crusaders — Martin Luther King Jr and the Freedom Riders and the rest — had done much of the heavy lifting. They appealed to Americans’ sense of reason and fairness to get people thinking about the inequality in race relations. But the sounds of Motown, with the Supremes at the vanguard, offered a kind of “post-race” music — though, of course no one would have used a term like that 40 years before Barack Obama became president. My generation grew up thinking nothing of listening to music by black and white artists together, seeing them on the same TV shows, etc.
Ironically, though, I wonder if the Supremes could have achieved their crossover success today, when the media, especially radio, has devolved into a series of ever tighter formats, where we are once again finding black artists on one channel or radio station and white artists on another.
Anyway, there is much to dislike in the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes, but there is also something underneath it all, a subtext about the power of music to bridge even the most troubling divides.
Yesterday on Soundcheck we heard about opera singer Marian Anderson’s landmark concert at the Lincoln Memorial — an incident that raised national awareness of America’s racial divide after Anderson’s original concert venue banned her because she was black. But Marian Anderson is not a name with much currency in the wider culture, because she was not a crusader. Plus, she was working in the field of opera and classical music, which isn’t exactly the first thing most Americans — even then — talked about around the water cooler.
But Diana Ross & The Supremes? Now THAT’s cultural currency. They were not crusaders for racial equality, either — according to Mark Ribowsky’s dishy new book, Diana Ross crusaded for one thing only, and that was Diana Ross. But what an impact the Supremes had on race relations in America — in a way that would perhaps take years to become evident. As a little kid, I heard Motown records on the same radio stations that played the Beatles and the Stones. And seeing the Supremes on TV was a completely natural, expected occurrence. It’s only much later, as an adult, that I’ve realized what a big step that was. The real crusaders — Martin Luther King Jr and the Freedom Riders and the rest — had done much of the heavy lifting. They appealed to Americans’ sense of reason and fairness to get people thinking about the inequality in race relations. But the sounds of Motown, with the Supremes at the vanguard, offered a kind of “post-race” music — though, of course no one would have used a term like that 40 years before Barack Obama became president. My generation grew up thinking nothing of listening to music by black and white artists together, seeing them on the same TV shows, etc.
Ironically, though, I wonder if the Supremes could have achieved their crossover success today, when the media, especially radio, has devolved into a series of ever tighter formats, where we are once again finding black artists on one channel or radio station and white artists on another.
Anyway, there is much to dislike in the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes, but there is also something underneath it all, a subtext about the power of music to bridge even the most troubling divides.
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