Hegel says, “Each man hopes and believes he is better than the world which is his, but the man who is better merely expresses this same world better than the others.” Mahalia Jackson sings as if it is the last thing she intends to do. Perhaps that is the definition of genius. Perhaps Mahalia, like Paul Celan, has already lived all our lives for us. It is as if her voice has always been dormant within us, waiting to be awakened, even though “it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, (and) through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech.” Her clarity of vision crosses thirty years to address intimately each of us. In the auditorium a room full of strangers listened to Mahalia Jackson sing “Let There Be Peace on Earth” and stood up and gave a standing ovation to a movie screen. We have just seen George Wein’s documentary, Louis Armstrong at Newport, 1971. I am not sure how to respond to all this. Mahalia Jackson never finished the eighth grade, or Mahalia’s genius is based on the collision of her voice with her spirituality. I am uncomfortable with his need to make this distinction because his inquiry begins to approach subtle shades of racism, classism, or sexism. The man I am with is trying to make a distinction.
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