GUEST COLUMN by Michellyne Mancini
The very first time Itzhak Perlman's wife heard him play the violin, the two of them did not know each other; indeed, they had never met. Toby happened to be backstage at a concert Perlman was giving, and after the concert was over, she walked straight over to him and promptly asked him to marry her. They began dating, and the rest is history. (Toby, a classically trained violinist herself, married the renowned virtuoso. They have five children and still live very happily ever after.)
Michael Jackson, the great King of Pop, who passed away on June 25th at the age of 50, was unfortunately not as lucky in love. A shy person off-stage, he struggled all his life in attempting to find an appropriate partner, eventually, at age 38, deciding to have children on his own, with the help of a friend who had agreed to marry him and bare children for him as part of an arrangement. And it seems that in the end, those things that Michael Jackson really had were his children and his fans.
But Michael Jackson was not simply the Itzhak Perlman of his time. No: he was the Bach, the Mozart, the Beethoven. He changed--and improved--the face and the course of pop music and pop culture in such a way that it would not be recognizable today had it not been for his influence.
Among his colossal accomplishments, Michael managed to bridge black and white music in a way that no other artist has been able to do; indeed he fused the two, so that we no longer kept track of whether we were listening to black soul or white pop, and we didn't care. For those like me, who were born around the time of the Thriller album release in 1982, we never even knew any different: by the time we were listening to music, he had sufficiently affected the pop genre so that the music of our youth was colour blind.
In a world obssessed with all things cool, Michael Jackson epitomised the very essence of it, inspiring an entire generation the world over with his songs, his voice, his dancing, his videos, and his fashion. This was a cool not of superficiality, but a cool of substance.
For among the sequins and the shades, Michael Jackson was not a typical pop superstar: Michael Jackson was different.
His idols included Fred Astaire, Gene Kelley, and James Brown, and he studied their moves until he had perfected them and innovated beyond them, incorporating the highest level of dancing into his own performances and videos. His work ethic was legendary. He was soft spoken and disliked profanity. On his own time, he listened primarily to classical music. And while he cared deeply about his image, there were a great many parts of himself that he refused to conceal: even at the height of his sex appeal in the 1980s, he never allowed himself to be boxed in to a "tough guy" image off-stage--he wore his heart on his sleeve, and he was never too immodest to accept a hug from a loving fan, much to the ire of his bodyguards.
This love that Michael exuded for his fans was probably in a symbiotic relationship with the love they had for him: after giving so much of himself to his music from the early days of his childhood, he needed them as much as they needed him. On June 25th, 2009 and in the days since then, spontaneous outpourings of grief and commemoration have broken out on every continent of the world, mourning the music genius who wore a single, sequined glove. Perhaps Michael Jackson wasn't so unlucky in love after all.
Michellyne Mancini is a freelance writer based in Windsor, Ontario, and the president of Mancini Communications. She can be reached at michellyne@mancinicommunications.com.
