Music Monday

This song and I go back a long way.  When What's Going On debuted in January 1971, I was in seventh grade.  I'm not sure when I heard the song for the first time, but it is forever in my mind united with U of  I basketball.

Growing up in central Illinois, there was only one college basketball team to follow, only one college basketball team worthy of our loyalty, the Fighting Illini of the University of Illinois.  My dad was a dedicated, maybe even rabid, U of I fan and we watched all of the games that were broadcast on Saturday afternoons.  While I enjoyed the games (unless the team played poorly and my dad yelled at the TV) what I really looked forward to was the program that came on after the game.

I can't even tell you the name of the program.  What I do remember was the theme song that played at the beginning of the show -- Marvin Gaye singing What's Going On.  If I was really lucky, I would be able to hear most of the song before my dad yelled at someone to change the channel.  This was back in the dark ages before the invention of the television remote control.  It's hard to believe that someone actually had to physically go to the TV and turn a knob to change to a different station.  Needless to say, that someone was usually me or my brother, not my dad.

I do recall this particular program was a production of WILL, the PBS television station operated by the University, and the show dealt with black issues (although at that time we would have said Negro or colored).  I can only imagine that the topic of the program was the reason my father had no interest in watching the show.

I chose this YouTube video because the images (some of them disturbing) accurately reflect the turmoil in the United States at the time the song was introduced and that turmoil was also the impetus for Marvin Gaye, Renaldo "Obie" Benson, and Al Cleveland as they wrote the lyrics.  What's Going On was destined to become one of the great Vietnam protest songs of the 70's in the same vein as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Ohio and Edwin Starr's War.

At the time, I didn't get the bigger picture; I just liked the song.  Now, the sentiments the song express are all too familiar and, sadly, are still appropriate for the world today.