[For this year’s
Valentine’s
Day series, I wanted to share and briefly discuss a handful of my favorite
songs, leading up to a special weekend post on a legendary singer/songwriter on
whom my perspective has significantly and happily evolved. I’d love to hear
about your favorite songs or artists in comments!]
On two more
reasons I have come to love my long-time favorite song.
I’ve written on at
least two prior occasions in
this space, as well as at length in the opening of my second book, about
Bruce Springsteen’s “American
Skin (41 Shots)” (2000; I still prefer that live version to any subsequent
one, although this post-Trayvon
Martin performance from 2012 comes very close for sure). But I don’t think
I’ve ever mentioned in this space a very cool complement to my own love for the
song: my younger son’s early and continuing affection for it as well. Of course
that began with my playing it for the boys, but I’ve played plenty of songs for
them, and it was “American Skin” that really grabbed my son and has endured
across many years and many other shifts in musical taste. To hear him sing
along to my favorite lines—“We’re baptized in these waters/And in each other’s
blood”—has been one of those singularly moving moments that parenting can
offer.
So that’s one
way I’ve come to love Springsteen’s song even more fully. But another is the
reason I’m highlighting it today: this afternoon I’ll be giving Fitchburg
State University’s biannual Harrod Lecture, focusing on the topic of my
book in progress, Exclusion &
Inclusion: The Battle to Define America. I’ve been thinking about those
themes pretty much nonstop for the last couple years, and I’m not sure I’ve
encountered a cultural work that more succinctly and powerfully highlights both
of them than does “American Skin.” Even the title alone features both ends of
the spectrum: Amadou
Diallo was killed because of the color of his skin and what it meant to certain
other Americans; but by calling it his “American skin,” Springsteen reminds us
that those racist and exclusionary attitudes do not and cannot deny Diallo his
full participation in an American community and identity. That we still so desperately
need to hear that message is just one more reason to keep listening to “American
Skin (41 Shots).”
Next favorite
song tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Favorite songs or artists you’d share?
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