Editorial
The passing of Michael Jackson
He gave music an electric dimension
THE death of Michael Jackson brings to an end a life lived in sheer electric excitement and in the full glare of adoring and sometimes critical publicity. For more than three decades, Jackson went about giving the world of music that panache which was not only to make him famous across the globe but also give a new dimension to matters lyrical. One has only to recall his nine solo albums to understand the diversity and versatility that Jackson epitomized in his career. In the simplest of terms, Jackson transformed music in a way never conceived of before. It can also be argued that after Elvis Presley, it was Michael Jackson who took music a great many miles forward in terms of thematic evolution and global acceptability.
Jackson's music was characterized by incredible speed of movement, both in a lipsing of the lyrics and the bodily gyrations that accompanied it. Soon, as it became obvious, the young man who had started off on his journey to the world of songs as a five-year-old, was developing his own rhythm, beat and dance, ideas that would mark him out from everyone else on the landscape of modern symphony. Jackson's influence would spill over, move outside America and in quick time come to encompass broad swathes of the globe. Whether it was Bangladesh or some country in Europe or a struggling nation in Africa, Jackson's music swept everyone off his feet with its tenor, indeed with its unique form of presentation. He gave dance a new form, through subjecting his body to exercises never imagined earlier. As he sang to the beat and to the deafening cries of his fans, his feet carried him backward and then forward, conveying the impression of the artiste floating in the air or in zero gravity. And then came surreal images of him singing amidst a rising wind and emerging skeletal forms of the dead. It was almost doomsday music, but the lyrics belied that impression. Jackson sang in defence of life. At the end of the day, Michael Jackson changed the whole nature of entertainment. Those who came after him, crowd pullers like Madonna, for instance, owed a whole lot to him.
Indeed, the world owes Michael Jackson, despite the travails he went through later in his life, a whole lot. That much becomes clear from the plenitude of tributes pouring in since news of his death went out to all corners of the globe. We join everyone else in praying for Michael Jackson. May his soul rest in peace.
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