[PT] Eloma Simpson Barnes
Posted on:: October 23rd, 2004
The political session ended with a performance by Eloma Simpson Barnes. She gave a Martin Luther King speech that had apparently been given to a northern audience while the Voting Rights Bill was still in contention. It sounds like a dumb idea: Her voice emulate’s King’s. Her intonation is pitch perfect. It’s just weird.
…Except, it totally worked on me. I’m old enough to remember King – when I was a young teenager, I was in one of the marches on Washington – and Barnes’ performance brought it all back to me. We were so lucky to have King. Our history might have been much bloodier without him. And we lost so much when he was murdered.
That voice. It made me cry.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
It is so sad that language seems to have been lost as a motivator and as a source for pursuasion. The visual and sound bite has won over substance of thought.
The Lincoln-Douglas debates were three hours long. One candidate would speak for one hour, then the other would rebut for one and a half hours, and the first then had a half hour rebuttal. Could today’s candidates handle this format? Would the television viewer tollerate it?
That was an amazing Pop!Tech moment. I, too, remember MLK’s intonation, enunciation, evocation, and Eloma Simpson Barnes brought it all back vividly. I thought it was a little shoddy for Doug Rushkoff to imply that the emotional response we Boomers had to Eloma’s rendition was anything less than genuine…as if it were simply fatuous emotionalism. How dare he? We were there. He wasn’t. We remember.
Yup, Matt and Tom.
There’s a reason I didn’t blog Rushkoff’s presentation. I think he misgauged his audience.
I was listening to the audio webcast in the background and I didn’t hear the explanation of what was going to happen before she came on. So when the speech was happening I kept wondering wether it was a recording or someone performing, I really couldn’t tell.
Jonathan, there was no explanation. She just came up to the podium. Of course, we could tell that she wasn’t a recording…