OP-ED

By Stanley Crouch

The modOP-ED: Past Can Jolt Us To A Better Futureerate-conservative columnist discusses the evolution of popular music's lessons in American culture: "I became even more convinced of the music's lessons in our culture as I looked at a recent documentary about the making of the forthcoming 'Dreamgirls' movie and two books, 'Cole Porter Selected Lyrics' and 'Motown in Love: Lyrics from the Golden Era.' "Dreamgirls" is a fictionalized story of a group of young black women with allusions to the story of Motown's Diana Ross and the Supremes.

Even if it does not live up to the hype, the film should remind audiences of one thing that they may have forgotten: Once upon a recent time there were black men and women who could sing notes and not merely chant gutter doggerel. The lyrics back then also did not constantly refer to men and women in demeaning and derogatory terms. The movie will also remind audiences that there was a time when women in the music business knew that being successful did not include embracing the looks and manners of hookers or women taking a break at a strip club."He continues: "The book of Cole Porter lyrics and the best of the Motown lyricists might surprise people who spend too much time listening to pop radio, where a good number of words are bleeped. Porter was about as good as one could get at the writing of lyrics, and he consistently showed off great invention, wit and sophistication.

It is unnecessary to compare the songs of Porter with those intended for adolescents, the target audience for many Motown songs. In their gleaming outfits, the Motown singers performed in the community theaters where young men and women went to learn something about how to express the feelings they might have for each other. Because something that strong existed in popular music it is hard to believe that it has largely disappeared and been replaced by the dreck we hear delivered by those from the world of rap. But perhaps we are only in one of the valleys on the roller coaster that this culture can so often be, reaching unprecedented highs and falling to lows so far below the sewer that we cannot believe what we are witnessing."

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