I don’t have a lot of memories, especially from when I was young, but most that I do have involved music. And many of them relate to Quincy Jones, who has died aged 91. His music was woven through my childhood.
Michael Jackson was ever-present, especially the music on his stratospheric three albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad, all produced by Jones. Jackson cut through racial divides, but there was also something very Black about the way he was celebrated in my household. In that simpler time, before the controversies that dogged his later life and legacy, “Michael Jackson is just incredible” was a constant refrain. At family parties in the 90s and 00s, aunts and uncles would claim that he “invented” the moonwalk and was the “highest-selling musician ever”. I never thought to factcheck any of this, because mixed with pride back then was an unmoving, objective certainty that held Jackson up as a reason why we were proud to be Black. He seemed not just African American, but a borderless kind of Black.
