Lovers In A Dangerous Time

One of my favorite songs by the late, great Lucky Dube is about a couple in South Africa during apartheid. The man is black and the woman is white, and Dube sings about them being "lovers in a dangerous time".

Unfortunately, Dube was murdered around this time last year, but his powerful lyrics will always remain.

Few of us living now remember a time that loving someone outside of your race could result in the deaths of one or both of you. But I am aware of several interracial pairings that were considered scandalous--and even resulted in tragedy for their participants.

For one, Swedish American actress Inger Stevens who was found dead in her home in 1970 of an overdose was secretly married to an African American actor named Ike Jones. Their marriage was a secret because Stevens had a Hollywood career and was well known for the TV show, The Farmer's Daughter, that she starred in through 1966. Whether the overdose was intentional was never made clear, but one can imagine the stress of having to keep a relationship as intimate as marriage under cover.

Another famous name was Sammy Davis, Jr., a very talented performer who happened to be "colored" as we were called back then. Davis married a Swede named May Britt in 1960. Their marriage was considered so taboo that Davis was dis-invited from the White House where he was supposed to have performed for John Kennedy. Apparently, he was so upset that he befriended Kennedy's Republican opponent, Richard Nixon. A lot of so-called liberal people were appalled to see Davis hanging out with Nixon, but who could blame him when they learned the story behind his decision? Davis and Britt ended up divorcing, and Davis later married an African American dancer. Who knows how much racism influenced his decision to split from his white wife and marry a black woman.

Then, there was the beautifully sensitive Jean Seberg, another actress of Swedish ancestry. During the height of her career, she openly supported the Black Panther Party which set off FBI head J. Edgar Hoover. He went after her with a vengeance, tapping her phone and spreading a rumor that she was pregnant with a half black child fathered by a Panther Party member. Seberg was seven months along at the time--1970. She claimed to have become so traumatized that she went into premature labor and two days after her daughter was born, the baby died. Although Seberg married mostly Caucasian men and an Algerian, she died in 1979 at age 41 of suicide. How much did the pain and drama caused by intertwining her life with people of color play in her killing herself?

As you see, some of us have lived through some dangerous times. If you're free to love whomever you want to these days, count yourself fortunate and thank those who came before you who took the full brunt of having an interracial relationship.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Sha Na Na Na Na Na Na

Strolling through the local health food store today, I noticed the music that was playing over the loudspeaker. The tune was catchy, the lyrics thought-provoking, and the singers quite talented. Stopping in the tea section, I sang along--under my breath, that is. You don't want to hear me singing out loud unless you're wearing earplugs--thick ones.

Anyway, listening closely to the song released a multitude of memories. The record, Get A Job, was a big hit when I was a kid. I'd heard it hundreds of times before, of course, but today the words struck me deeply. Perhaps I was reading more into it than what was initially intended, but I got the distinct sense that the songwriter was saying he wanted a job, but couldn't find one and because he was a black man he was out of luck, i.e. "Is there any work for me?"

Later at home, I googled searched the singers, The Silhouettes, and learned that their song had been released late in 1957 and went on to become a Billboard smash early in 1958. The songwriter, Richard Lewis, was a former serviceman who had moved back to his mother's home after being discharged--unable to find a job. Even though he wrote the lyrics to make it seem as if he was just sluffin' and not really seriously looking for work, I got the feeling that like with a lot of black servicemen, there just weren't any options made available to him once he came home. I know that's what kept my father in the Army until retirement. Where else was he going to go?

As I checked out the video, what struck me right away was the audience. Here, four grown black men are onstage rockin' and rollin' away to a song that laments how they can't even participate in the system. Yet the entire audience is made up of white teenagers. As they clap their hands and sway to the beat, the Caucasian kids look totally oblivious. Didn't they even think about how ridiculous it was that they were bouncing in their seats to a song filled with socio-economic angst, and that the very singers of said song wouldn't even be allowed in that auditorium with them had it not been for the need to have them on stage singing? But why would you even think anything if you've never been taught to examine anything? The beauty of a system that oppresses an entire race of people is that the oppressors aren't allowed to think, especially about their privileged place in the hierarchy.

Damn. This is a crazy planet. When I consider how outraged Americans were to discover the system of apartheid that was once South Africa, I am thrown for a loop about the way they allowed racial segregation to continue for so long in the U.S.

Back to music. We had so much of it in our house that my sister and I were singing and dancing at an early age. There was always a radio on playing the Billboard top 100, and we quickly learned the lyrics to most of the popular tunes--morbid tunes, like Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley. There was a lot of music on TV, too, and I remember watching shows like American Bandstand, The Lloyd Thaxton Show, Upbeat, Hullabaloo, Shindig and, later, Soul Train. I remember when Nat King Cole hosted his own weekly series, and when Leslie Uggams was a regular on Sing Along with Mitch (Miller). So much of American music is black music yet so many black musicians were never given the credit nor the royalties they deserved. But neither were black Americans in other fields.

You know, I keep harping on hope, and the larger possibilities that lie in front of us. Let's HOPE I'm right.

Namaste.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

http://one-hitwonders.blogspot.com/2008/02/silhouettes-get-job.html