In high school, I remember when we read Shakespeare or Twain or one of those European literature anthologies, we’d always start with learning about the historical context of the time. I always was a bit annoyed by that, like” can we just get to the book”, but as I went through college and later, I came to really understand the importance of learning that information before really diving into the work. Hearing what was going on at the time, how the culture of the time grew itself or how it evolved into what it came to be was a really important aspect of understanding and appreciating the work that came from it.
Got to be Something Here : The Rise of the Minneapolis Sound by Andrea Swensson is an important work, because it gives that context of where Prince and the Minneapolis Sound came from and also how Black music struggled and thrived and survived in the mostly lilly-white environment of the Twin Cites. A lot of the the narrative around Prince kind of paints the picture of a singular musical genius who overcame all odds to make it out and become this worldwide sensation…which 100% is a thing, but books like this really provide a lot of foundational answers in regard “why” and “how” he was able to do this so successfully…and provides more of the stories around the community support structures that helped him get there.
What was especially striking to me was how familiar the musical traditions were from the sweaty dance parties held at local clubs and community centers to the creation of Paisley Park as a musical utopia. As much as we hear that P didn’t look back and was always moving forward, he most certainly carried those traditions forward with everything he did. Some of the pictures of people dancing their hearts out with the musicians right alongside them reminded me of when P would invite fams on stage to dance by him in the same way, or stories of parties at Paisley where he’d be part of “the house band” and say things like “turn off the lights nothing to see up here” and urging people to dance, or aftershows in small clubs….all honestly re-creating those dance parties from back in the day. Even Paisley Park as a place where EVERYONE could go and create and jam out…a sort of utopia that HE created because other similar performance venues had always been shut down due to racial tensions in the city he grew up in…maybe even as recently as his own forays with Glam Slam….
It’s all sort of remarkable…this perfect storm of culture, talent, tenacity, struggle, hard work, all part of the musical tradition that predated him…the tradition that shaped him, the tradition that he studied closely and embodied in all that he did, a tradition full of people that mentored him…combined with the business/marketing acumen he brought to this tradition to FORCE people to pay attention to that talent more than his race, something he saw his local heroes struggle with immensely as people saw only their Blackness and dismissed, ignored, or put them in a box…
More than him, this book is about THAT TRADITION, and it’s an important one to know and to learn to understand someone who maybe is not so much of an enigma after all…
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