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Your use of the machine generated PDF is subject to all use restrictions contained in The Cengage Learning Subscription and License Agreement and/or the Gale Academic OneFile Select Terms and Conditions and by using the machine generated PDF functionality you agree to forgo any and all claims against Cengage Learning or its licensors for your use of the machine generated PDF functionality and any output derived therefrom. Trouble Man: The Art and Politics of Marvin Gaye Author: MARK ANTHONY NEAL Date: Winter 1998 From: The Western Journal of Black Studies(Vol. 22, Issue 4) Publisher: The Western Journal of Black Studies Document Type: Article Length: 6,341 words Abstract: The black popular music during the 1960s conveyed a sense of urgency as African-Americans' struggle for empowerment and equal rights intensified and migrated to the north. Marvin Gay's music highlighed the pressing issues facing the black population and summarized the hope and despair of an entire generation of freedom fighters. Full Text: Abstract As the organized struggles for African-American empowerment intensified and migrated north, the black popular music tradition began to convey the urgency of its historical moment. No one musical artist was as affected by the volatility of African American life and music during this era as Marvin Gaye, whose What's Going On recording, synthesized the acute issues within black urban life and effectively summarized the hope and despair of an entire generation of African-American freedom fighters. Gaye's work after What's Going On also reflected a radical transformation in the dynamics of the black protest movement as the increased militarization of the nation's law enforcement agencies, as well as covert State sponsored attacks against the black protest movement's most progressive elements, helped undermine the movement's impact. I maintain that Gaye's trilogy of recordings, What's Going On, Trouble Man, and Let's Get It On, aurally document the demise of the black protest movement. Nonviolent protest must now mature to a new level to correspond to heightened black impatience and stiffened white resistance. This higher level is mass civil disobedience. There must be more than a statement to the larger society, there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key point. That interruption must not, however, be clandestine or surreptitious. It must be open and, above all, conducted by large masses without violence ... (King, 1968, p. 57) As the organized struggles for African-American empowerment intensified and subsequently migrated north to urban centers, the black popular music tradition began to convey the urgency of its historical moment. The Chicago Soul of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, the southern-inflected New York produced Soul of Detroit's Aretha Franklin, the rudimentary Philly sound of The Intruders, and of course the syncopated political broadsides of James Brown were early indicators of imminent changes within black popular music. In particular the emergence of San Francisco's Sly Stone and Motown producer Norman Whitfield signaled changes within the genre. Both Stone and Whitfield would help construct new narrative and aesthetic terrain for the Soul Music tradition--a genre that by the late 1960s barely reflected the organic elements that Ray Charles advanced in the early to mid-1950s. While much of this is clearly owed to technological advancements in the production and instrumentation of Soul--the electric bass guitar figured prominently in the music of Stone and Whitfield--Soul also began to reflect the broadly interpreted populist concerns of a largely black, urban-based, working class. Perhaps no one musical artist was as affected by the volatility of African American life and music during this era than Marvin Gaye. Gaye, whose career was re-invigorated in the late 1960s by Whitfield's production on tracks like "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" and "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" emerged from a self-imposed professional hiatus and recorded what is generally regarded as the seminal black protest recording. With What's Going On, Gaye, with the assistance of modern recording technology and a bevy of co-writers, crafted a musical tome which synthesized the acute issues within black urban life, with the prophetic and existential vision of the African American church. In doing so, Gaye effectively summarized the hopes and despair of an entire generation of African American freedom fighters, whose primary icons were common, god-fearing, everyday black folks whose primary revolutionary charge was to transcend absurd and bizarre circumstances immediately and often. Gaye's work after What's Going On reflected a radical transformation, as a corollary to the changing dynamics of the black protest movement. The increased militarization of the nation's law enforcement agencies, as well as calculated and covert State sponsored attacks against the black protest movement's most progressive elements, helped to transfigure the black protest movement into a social movement limited in vision and potency. Furthermore, Motown's (Gaye's recording label) decision to abandon its riot tom black urban constituency in the Midwest, as well as corporate America's annexation of the black popular music industry, dually highlight the