(SEE SWA(Y)S POST REGARDING BLUES SCALES AND AFRICA)

You are dead wrong, Africans had EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE BLUES! The crazy scales, fingerings, chord changes, and even open tunings came from AFRICA! West Africans in particular, around the late 19th and early 20th century, had access to the caribean via the british, and these brought to the Americas the crazy and uniquely African styles of GUITAR PLAYING which DIRECTLY AND HEAVILY INFLUENCED the blues.

Further the blues scales were already african to begin with.. and lets not forget that for over 200 YEARS it carried the DEATH PENALTY for a BLACK PERSON to even PLAY an instrument during slavery... :(

blacks contributions to american music are truly beyond belief considerings the cirumstance, and this why I big up Michael Jackson's legacy as the world's most succesful, popular and wide-reaching black musician.. after all lets not forget this is an MJ memorial thread and not just a discussion on the evolution of music :)

don't stop till you get enough guys.

black is back baby

Either I didn't make myself clear or you've misunderstood me. Africans absolutely had a TON to do with the blues. My first point was that there was also European influence in the blues, and the reason I brought that up was to say that it's ridiculous and pointless to try to link any cultural institution to a single 'race.'

My second point (the one I believe that caused you confusion due to my own wording or you just having misread it) was that even if we ignored the first point and said that the blues were invented by 'black' people alone with no outside influence, even that is a false statement as it was specific to a section of American blacks and black people from Africa (aside from being an influence), the Caribbean, South America, or any other location didn't have a hand in it.

If any of this is unclear, blame it on the fact that I am presently drinking Maker's Mark straight from the bottle.

NIGGER

bell end

This Thread Is Now About Unwound

The more I think about it the more I think the molestation allegations were brought on by people looking to embezzle millions from MJ. While I believe he did little to help his public persona with his eccentricities and odd behavior I feel that he made himself a target for such allegations. I think he really made people start to question it. However I think ultimately you had greedy families who started out taking advantage of his genorosity and fame only to end up using it against him. Cause seriously if I had a kid who was honest to goodness molested no amount of money is going to shut me up and I'd do all I can to see that the person who did that to my kid went to jail. Of course I suppose most would say that. What's more important multi-millon dollar hush money or seeing that the person who victimized your kid never saw the outside of a jail cell again?

I was drinking it AT work. We put all of our tip money right into our whiskey fund. We used to share whiskey, but now it's just more convenient to have our own personal bottles.

I don't usually watch Tavis Smiley but I like Dr Cornel West and their conversation sounded good from the first few words which caught my attention. They had a brilliant discussion about Michael Jackson and his cultural impact worldwide, and talked in detail about many of things from this thread. I watched the whole thing because it was so good. I especially thought Dr Dyson's points on the significance of the symbol and achievements of Michael Jackson essentially arguing that Michael Jackson was an important figure in black and world history to elevate black people and culture in general from the lowered state to a level of universal equality, in part because of his great success and exposure worldwide and in america. Y'all should check it out, it was a very thought provoking discussion.

I used to listen to tavis Smiley's show on the Texas Southern University radio station on the way into work. he always had good discussions.

i just listened to it and while i don't really know either of the guys speaking I was far more convinced by Dyson's argument than i was West's, although i think they were both pretty ludicrous in some of their claims regarding Jackson-the-artist. To talk about a song like Man in the Mirror (which I do like) as though it were some kind of existentialist tract is to ultimately deflect from Michael Jackson's true worth as an artist. He wasn't great because he was comparable to Dostoevsky or Beethoven (as at one point Cornell suggests). He was one of the greatest and most influential pop stars of our time largely because he probably did more to popularise black music with a mass white audience than anyone before him. Why that shouldn't be enough I don't know.

plus he asked, "annie are you OK?"

smooooooth criminal.....

why does meg white hate michael jackson?
because she can't beat it

I don't get all this ...stuff.

Music is music. Beethoven and Dostoevsky created music. So did MJ. So does SY. Some started to create music early in life, some other later on. And so forth. Music is music. Why the prejudice? "Oh no, pop / rock can't compare to classics"?

It makes me wonder.

You've been hit by, you've been struck by, a failed ventricle.

it's a messageboard, centred around music. it's the kind of thing that tends to get discussed.

correct me if I am wrong but Dostoyevsky wrote no music.