Michael Jackson – An ode to a Maverick

MJ as he was fondly called is a true reminiscence of my childhood. As I grew up in the early 80’s and 90’s, the only thought of western music would always be MJ, the album thriller or his poster with BAD written on it. Be it for my generation or the previous or the one immediately after me, he was next to god (Not taking it away from the other generations). He revolutionised music from the western world. We had no Google to understand the different genres of music or torrent to download. We never grew up with trance, lounge or remixes. All said POP was the in thing and we were often reprimanded verbally from the elder members of the family for listening to them, as they were bad western influences. (Today majority of the things we do, wear or talk is western. For e.g. you are reading a blog, my blog, A blog is a western idea, the internet is a western technology, I can go on …)

Un-till the mid 90’s, till MTV came in through cable television, atleast I had no clue of what was POP, Metal, Heavy Metal was or even the other bands, singers, musician etc. MJ was my king of that world called English music. English music meant the music from the movie the ‘The Sound of Music’. No exposure at all till the King arrived. I still remember trying my best to save 30 rupees to by the BAD album. It was an era where you had to listen to MJ to be socially – the happening kid. Listening to Illayaraja or RD Burman, you were termed too Indian and not acclimatising to the western culture and you would be left out – peer pressure.

Who can forget the man who created break dance for us, I can call him “the father of Break Dance” as I saw him first doing those inordinate dance steps. Can you forget the man who caught his crotch, so often, publically, that you would be embarrassed to the hilt and that’s not all, would then shriek his lungs out holding on to them as if he was committing hara-kiri. Man!!!, he created a cult – don’t know what, but a culture that changed the world. Can we forget him doing his famous moonwalk – the smooth movement of his body backwards that stunned viewers globally and we were all in awe of something stupendous. Men and women would cry out loud at every instance of spotting him, he was god to him.

Haven’t the world copied many a dance step from him. The Indians too did it and we did not miss even this opportunity to copy and wasn’t an era where we had to copy the western side of this globe to most of what we wanted to do in life. Don’t we remember Javed Jaffrey, Anand Babu (The Tamil movie dancer, son of actor Nagesh who had returned from the USA and created ripples with his dance) and the so called ‘The dancer of Indian Cinema’ Prabhu Deva – who was slated as India’s answer to MJ and break dance. WOW what nostalgia this man’s demise has brought forth to me – my childhood.

Am not going to write the negatives or the so called scandals, because we have read this in the past and will read it again and again in the present and the future. But we got to give this man the due respect of being a genius, a maverick and creator of a genre of music and dance that is distinct to MJ, that the world revelled on it and will never let it die.

He ‘thrill(er)’ed us with his music, he ‘beat it’, he wanted the to ‘heal the world’, wanted the ‘Bad’ and ‘Dangerous’ things to end, no ‘blood anywhere not even on the Dance floor’. He did not want any ‘Smooth Criminal’ or even a ‘Stranger in Moscow’ and all he wanted was one world – ‘We are the World’.He and his music and his life will be penned in ‘Black and White’ into the books of ‘History’. Let his soul Rest in Peace. We will miss you MJ and we will “Remember the time”.