Page 2 The Skanner April 27, 2016
Challenging People to Shape
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Opinion
Prince: Unreconstructed, Free and Funky Artist
I
liked Prince as a teen but I
grew to really appreciate
him even more for his mu-
sic, fashion, business sense,
and artistic creativity, as I be-
came an adult. He is without
a doubt a heroic role model
of our era. He never stopped
trying new things and chal-
lenging “tradition.” Undaunt-
ed by norms, he was willing
to be a daring, inventive, rad-
ical, free, and unreconstruct-
ed human being.
The year is 1984 and the al-
bum Purple Rain has dropped,
along with the movie of the
same name. I saw it twice
within 24 hours. First I saw
it with my boy Stephen and
again the next day with my
girlfriend. Prince suffered
the misfortune of releasing
the most dynamic album and
film at the same time that Mi-
chael Jackson took the music
world by storm. In the face
of stiff competition from the
King of Pop, Prince developed
an incredible following.
When Prince came to St.
Louis to perform in 1984, my
cousin, who had followed him
for at least three years prior
to Purple Rain, went crazy.
She and my older sister and
their friends packed into her
car and spent the night fol-
lowing leads to “Prince sight-
ings” in downtown St. Louis
after attending the concert.
Thabiti
Lewis, Ph.D.
Guest
Columnist
They got in trouble for stay-
ing out too late, but did not
care because they wanted a
chance to glimpse or meet
Prince. They loved him for
being sassy, sexy, and cool and
wanted to be with this dimin-
utive fellow — enraging and
baffling me because two of
“
Prince exhibited carefree
blackness,” which Dr. Bolden
says, “is funk. In many ways
[Prince] reflected the mean-
ing of the word and the genre.”
As an adult, I witnessed
Prince’s funk live at his 2004
Musicology Concert in Port-
land with my wife and three
other couples. We loved
Prince as teens and as young
adults and his latest album
reflected the dynamic funky
sound that drew us all to
him in our youth. As we en-
tered it shocked me that we
each received a copy of the
album that we already had
sic and who owned it. Tied to a
contract that required him to
release a fixed number of al-
bums, Prince produced them
feverishly to speed up the ex-
ecution of the contract. After
leaving Warner Brothers, he
formed his own music compa-
ny, NPG Records and released
a triple album in 1996 — not
coincidentally titled “Emanci-
pation.”
Always looking forward, he
also was one of the first artists
to utilize the Internet’s poten-
tial. He released his double
album Crystal Ball for $50,
selling 500,000+ copies. He fa-
mously told Larry King
to, “do the math” when
explaining the profit that
he made from this un-
conventional approach.
Who can forget how he
changed his name to a love
symbol — a combination of
the symbol for male and fe-
male — during his epic battle
with Warner Brothers as a
statement against corporate
greed and in support of artis-
tic bodies. This move left War-
ner with no “Prince” to sell,
by abandoning that name and
wresting control of his body
and art. More than a symbolic
gesture, he redefined himself
without words.
‘Prince exhibited carefree blackness,’
which Dr. Bolden says, ‘is funk’
their girlfriends who gushed
over Prince told me I was too
short even though I stood four
inches taller than Prince.
Tony Bolden, professor of
African American Studies at
Kansas University and guest
editor of “The Funk Issue”
in American Studies Jour-
nal (2013) sheds light on the
meaning of funk and Prince.
“Funky,” says Dr. Bolden, “is
honesty of expression at our
deepest emotions. The genre
Funk is hybrid forms. And
Prince is the exemplification
of that. He rejected catego-
ries, opting for Funk’s em-
brace of multiplicity of forms.
purchased. I smiled and ex-
claimed, “Genius! This broth-
er just flipped the script again
on the suits.” By including
the album into the price of a
ticket, he jumped to the top of
the billboard chart during his
concert tour. It was a funky
move.
Throughout his career,
Prince waged battle against
the record executives who
controlled artists economi-
cally and creatively. Prince
famously wrote the word
“Slave” on his cheek during
his battle in the 1990s with
Warner Brothers over how
often he could release his mu-
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Child Watch: Recognizing All of America’s Heroes
E
very day I wear a pair of
medallions around my
neck with portraits of
two of my role models:
Harriet Tubman and Sojourn-
er Truth.
As a child I read books
about Harriet Tubman and
the Underground Railroad.
She and indomitable and elo-
quent slave woman Sojourn-
er Truth represent countless
thousands of anonymous
slave women whose bodies
and minds were abused and
whose voices were muted by
slavery, Jim Crow, segrega-
tion and confining gender
roles throughout our nation’s
history.
Although Harriet Tubman
could not read books, she
could read the stars to find
her way north to freedom.
And she freed not only herself
from slavery, but returned to
slave country again and again
through forests and streams
and across mountains to lead
other slaves to freedom at
great personal danger.
She was tough. She was de-
termined. She was fearless.
She was shrewd and she trust-
ed God completely to deliver
her, and other fleeing slaves,
from pursuing captors who
had placed a bounty on her
life.
“’Twa’nt me. ’Twas the Lord.
I always told Him, I trust You.
I don’t know where to go or
what to do, but I expect You
Marian
Wright
Edelman
Children’s
Defense
Fund
to lead me. And He always
did…On my underground
railroad, I never ran my train
off the track and I never lost
a passenger,” she was quoted
as saying. No train, bus or air-
“
all.
Kudos to the Treasury
Department which has an-
nounced that Harriet Tub-
man’s face will grace the front
of the redesigned $20 bill,
making her the first woman
in more than a century and
first African American ever
to be represented on the face
of an American paper note.
And it’s wonderful that she
will not be alone.
For too long and for too
many, money has been the
most powerful symbol of
nation’s profoundly crippling
birth defects of slavery, Na-
tive American genocide, and
exclusion of all women and
non-propertied men of all
races from our electoral pro-
cess and ensuring full partici-
pation in our nation’s life. It is
so important to make sure all
of our children can see their
ancestors pictured on some-
thing as basic as the money
used every day by countless
millions and this will deepen
the meaning of how we define
success in America.
And to Black
children — who
remain the poor-
est
group
in
America — I hope
Harriet Tubman
and
Sojourner
Truth become anchor re-
minders of their great her-
itage of strength, courage,
faith and belief in the equality
of women and people of every
color. None of us must ever
give up fighting for freedom
and equality and human dig-
nity however tough the road.
I hope all of our children
and all of us will be inspired
anew by our diverse and
rich heritages and cultures
as Americans and renew our
determination to build a level
playing field in our nation for
every child and help our na-
tion shine a brighter beacon
of hope in a world hungering
for moral example.
The new bills also will powerfully remind
all Americans and teach our children
and grandchildren that Black history and
women’s history are American history
line company can match this
former slave woman’s safety
record. And few of us could
match her faithful partner-
ship with God, determination
to be free and willingness to
help others to be free without
thought about self-sacrifice.
Now the entire nation will
pay public homage to Harriet
Tubman’s devotion to free-
dom, and also honor Sojourn-
er Truth and other great
women and Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. who never stopped
demanding and working to
assure that America lives up
to its declared creed of free-
dom, life, liberty, pursuit of
happiness and equality for
what we value as a nation.
Harriet Tubman, Sojourner
Truth, Marian Anderson, El-
eanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Su-
san B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott,
and Martin Luther King, Jr.
— their faces on American
currency will send powerful
messages about what – and
who — we Americans are, val-
ue and strive to become.
The new bills also will pow-
erfully remind all Americans
and teach our children and
grandchildren that Black
history and women’s history
are American history. They
will take us a giant step for-
ward towards healing our