I attended this musical production http://www.memphisthemusical.com/ last week at the Toronto Center for the Arts. I was knocked off my seat with the first act, and tried to get back into it the rest of the show. This 2011 Tony Award winning play is worth every cent, not only because it is based on a true story, but also because of the talent of the actors and actresses that perform this blues musical live with so much energy and passion. Each song is live, and could easily make it as high quality blues vocalists in any club.
Few people know the challenges that breaking the colour boundaries cost to certain individuals. The risks that some artists took to follow their passion for music, that broke down the boundaries between whites and blacks of the south. The story of Memphis is about a young man who's sense of marketing and personality takes a stoggy white radio station and starts promoting black "race" music to the pleasure of the young white audience. I guess it takes young people to break down the fences and old ways of thinking that their parents created. The story touches on the racist white with the beating of the black singer, for enticing this white boy. Eventually, she has to leave Memphis to seek the safety of the north in New York, where black people already had established greater equality.
In fact the egalitarian and openness of the north, led and entire migration of music from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago, where it resides today. The American Civil war was actually initially based on the North's freeing of the black slaves, and how the south wanted to keep them as slaves. Isn't it fascinating that music was the medium to create the platform on which to create the equality. Isn't that what art does, challenge societal norms? I suppose that is why we must all support the arts.
For an evening of art, history and blues music, check out Memphis.
You won't be dissappointed.
The Adventure Guy
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