MJ

I’m watching MJ’s funerals in L.A. Streets are calm, it seems like the entire city is watching it too.

Michael Jackson from my french countryside point of view.

He was so all over the medias in the 80s, even in my little village in the middle of France. I forgot about that.

The big memory is of course the 1982’s first broadcast of his video clip of Thriller in Champs-Elysées, a french famous tv show at that time. It was scary as hell for my little age but the dance part was so amazing I couldn’t stop watching and listen to this grawl synth and thick bass sound with claps and percussions.

More than just an amazing blend of groove, horror and dance, watching this man was something very special for me: I had no brothers, no black people around me, all I had was Diff’rent Strokes, Sydney on TF1 –a black dude introducing african american music in France, especially hip-hop- and Michael Jackson. The last one was so above everybody, he couldn’t be no more than a reference to me.

It was awkward because I was feeling that either you’re black and invisible in a village or you’re black and you’re the most known person on earth, ever. No real in-between.

Either you’re the supreme or you’re nothing. Either you entertain or you don’t. it gave me infinite hope and fear at the same time.

Now that I do music and play his songs regularly, now that he has passed away I can feel how influential he has been on me. I mean if I look at my 80s tapes, there’s MJ and MJ. BAD has been the soundtrack of my ten-ish years. Everytime I was starting to walk her street I would synchronize my walkman on Man In The Mirror intro and smile while throwing her some croissant at her window. Her father was kind of racist. Maybe the first materialization of that feeling I didn’t know about. I was ahead of that.

Al Sharpton MJ’s funerals speech was right, MJ did a lot to make me feel that I could be at the top of the world even if the world was totally different from me, physically. Giving and sharing love has no such barrier. It was kind of The 80s message. And the messenger, with his glove and his famous moves was Michael Jackson. RIP.