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Funky President?

10:32 AM GMT 03/02/2009

Funky President?

What did the music at his inauguration tell us about Obama? By MOJO’s Mick Farren…

AN ANCIENT PETE SEEGER, accompanied by Bruce Springsteen, helped close Obama’s Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial with Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land, and he sung it in full, including every last one of Woody’s politically charged but rarely heard verses. The song was apt for a country scared witless about another Great Depression, and investing monumental FDR hope in their new president. Seeger, Springsteen, and U2 joining the marching military and the politicians in black overcoats, amid the epic architecture of Washington, also made clear that people with electric guitars are now, under Obama, fully part of American pomp and circumstance.

Springsteen also opened the Lincoln Memorial show, setting the tone for this newly bestowed rocker gravitas, and doing it in minus-zero temperatures. A frozen Bruce, with his guitar, his own overcoat, and a hundred-plus gospel choir, treated the Inaugural Celebration as if it was US-Aid – America throwing a giant benefit concert to make itself feel better.

Freezing but with a sense of history, Jon Bon Jovi joined the awesome Bettye LaVette and turned puce in his hoodie, Mary J. Blige performed professionally in snakeskin boots and a $5000 pea coat, James Taylor entered like a Cossack with a Stratocaster, Sheryl Crow did the biker girl, while Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder simply looked frozen. Usher resembled a hip banker facing a cold day on Wall Street, but Will.i.am apparently didn’t feel the chill. Garth Brooks’ cowboy hat kept him warm, but his cover of American Pie failed to impress the president. Obama also wasn’t amused by Bono’s overacting during Pride (In The Name Of Love) and his histrionic reference to the bloodshed in Gaza.

But what of the star of this show, Barack Obama himself? Where Jack Kennedy hung with Sinatra, and Bill Clinton was all-Elvis-all-the-time, Barack is tough to define. He was on his feet and swaying for Stevie Wonder, but he’s no rocker. At each of the many inaugural balls, Obama danced with his wife Michelle “old skool” to the slow torch song At Last. Facing a crowd, Barack is cool, ultra-controlled, and hard to assess. It took Jamie Foxx’s spot-on impression of his victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night fully to reveal his vocal dynamic.

Barack Obama delivers his carefully crafted words in short precise bursts, three, five or seven at a clip. He lifts the crowd with rising crescendos, but afterwards drops away to let the listener think about what he’s said. If anything his style is measured, articulate be-bop, and a jazz connection may not be as odd as it sounds. When I first saw Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston, I noted the sharpness of his suits, and was reminded of the young, pre-Afrocentric Miles Davis.

Obama’s inauguration speeches have been darker, without the utopian optimism of the campaign. Now he’s asking for sacrifices from his audience and that’s not easy for an entertainer. Barack Obama, however, isn’t an entertainer. He’s the president who must save America’s sorry and damaged Union, and, charm and charisma not withstanding, that dire responsibility made him the star above even Bruce and Bono.

Mick Farren also blogs at Doc40.blogspot.com

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 10:32 AM GMT 03/02/2009

Related MOJO content:

Barack Obama , Bettye LaVette , Bruce Springsteen , Jamie Foxx , Jon Bon Jovi , Mary J Blige , Pete Seeger , Sheryl Crow , Stevie Wonder , U2

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