David Dante Troutt

Thank You, Michael

Appreciation by David Dante Troutt

Recently, my daughter turned seven, and a week later I realized I was late with a very specific gift. It had occurred to me that she was ready for the Jackson Five, and I hurried to buy her the perfect CD of her own. For most of the days since, we as a family found ourselves dancing hard and purposefully to a lot of the classics, but especially Maybe Tomorrow. It took me a few times to get it. Then I realized that at a certain point in the song, the melody rises into a late-breaking chorus full of the sweetest soul. You are the book that I read each day, they sing. You are the song of my life. Let me sing it to you. There you hear a pure and uncomplicated Michael singing with his big brothers, leading yet surrounded and protected by them. Just as Id hoped, it became my daughters and mine, her voice like Michael’s, mine like the brothers.

Then suddenly Michael Jackson died. Very quietly, he slipped away forever. I was caught having to explain to my daughter and myself the meaning of a tired soul. It meant revealing the okey doke the world played on the words and deeds that made him a soldier of love. It meant recalling where I was and what I was doing during these last forty years. His work spans at least three musical generations, before and after his own. I am his generation the Obama generation, actually and it means reckoning with the seasons of life someone our age has come to know. I decided to start with his voice. › Continue reading