Blair Underwood, Who Do You Think You Are?

We are all the products of a past in which we played no part.  Because of who our ancestors were and what they did, we exist at this time and this place.  Our physical assets and flaws, our personality quirks, our inborn genetic inheritance–our very existences –are determined by millions of people since time immemorial.  No matter how long our traceable lineage may be–whether it ends with our grandparents or stretches back 100 generations–we will only discover the tiniest fraction of our ancestors.  Yet, despite the fact that we will never know them, they are all a part of us, hidden in our DNA; in both the physical and metaphysical sense, they are the essence of us.  Who do you think you are?  You are the sum of your ancestors.

Is it any wonder that we want to think the very best of the people who made us?  That we can feel so intimately involved with their stories even if a minute before we never knew they existed?  Unlike the relatives we grew up with and whom we learn to see as fully formed human beings with both flaws and virtues, our ancestors are mythic figures.  Unless history tells us unequivocally they were evil (e.g., Josef Stalin), it is very easy to shield ourselves from what reality shows.

Looking for the bright side in the face of stark reality was an unintended theme in tonight’s fascinating episode of Who Do You Think You Are.  I am generally unfamiliar with Blair Underwood’s work, save for his brief appearances on Sex and the City (making this season the third with a Sex and the City connection, although Underwood’s connection is tenuous and Kim Cattrall’s episode was filmed for the British series).  Nevertheless, the episode itself was riveting; the best thus far of the season.

When faced with disturbing evidence of his maternal great-great-great-grandfather Sawney Early (demeaningly labeled a “pestiferous darkey” by one newspaper account), Underwood whitewashed the history.  In the 1900 Census, Early resided in a mental hospital for black patients.  Tracing him back through the 1880 and 1870 Censuses (the loss in a fire of the 1890 Census is the great tragedy of American genealogy), Underwood discovered that Early, once a highly skilled blacksmith became a farm laborer.  Digging further, Underwood uncovered news articles about Early’s quarrels with neighbors over cattle and timber which ended violently; between the two incidents, Early was shot four times (including once in the face).  He survived.

Not that Early was an innocent.  He was belligerent, possibly delusional, and prone to violence.  The show’s researcher told Underwood that Early, who was most likely a slave prior to the Civil War, may have been a conjuror, which from the description sounded akin to a shaman or a witch doctor.  Underwood eagerly accepted this explanation and extrapolated that Early (like Underwood) was a performer of sorts; a strong man who thought he could survive anything–and with good reason.

And there is good reason for this interpretation.  The shadow of racism looms large over the story of Sawney Early.  Early, a former slave, depended on the land to survive.  White neighbors moved in next to him and one neighbor’s cattle threatened Early’s crops and by extension Early’s family’s survival.  When he, a black former slave, took action, the law was clearly not on his side (a possible reason Early ended up imprisoned in a mental hospital).  Underwood saw Early’s actions as heroic.

But I also had a different take.  Early’s behavior sounded less like heroism and more like schizophrenia.  Mental illness and mystical, magical, quasi-religious behavior and not mutually exclusive, especially in an era when such illnesses were little understood.  Given that Early ended his days in a mental hospital, schizophrenia or a related mental illness seems an equally plausible option for his behavior–one that (tellingly) neither the show nor Underwood suggested.  Because Underwood so desperately wanted his ancestor to be a hero, the model of the strong black man who Underwood is himself, he failed to explore less heroic explanations.

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Underwood’s quest led him to discover another maternal great-great-great-grandfather Delaware Scott.  Unlike Early, Scott appears up in the 1860 Census, indicating that he was free.  Not only was Scott free, it turned out his parents Samuel and Judith Scott were also free.  Judith, the daughter of Amy Humbles, was (like her son) born free in 1792.

That Samuel and Judith Scott were free in the 1790′s was extremely important.  A law passed in Virginia in 1806 allowed for slave owners to free their slaves, but all subsequently freed slaves had to leave the state lest they be sold back into slavery.  Only those free blacks who could prove they were free before the law’s passage were allowed to stay.  The Scotts were able to provide such evidence, and in 1815, Samuel Scott bought a 200-acre property.  By the late 1830′s, he even owned two slaves.

Because the early censuses never named slaves, it is difficult or, in most cases, impossible to know more about their identities.  It’s the impenetrable wall, and given how recent 1860 is, it makes the idea of an ended search all the more frustrating.  The fact that Underwood was able to trace his family as far back to his 5th great-grandmother Amy Humbles is practically a miracle (and I am jealous; the farthest back I can trace any of my lines is to 4th great-grandparents).

The absence of personal information about Samuel Scott’s slaves however did mean an absence of information.  In the 1840 Census, Samuel Scott owned one slave, a man who was over 55-years-old.  The other slave had died either that year or the previous one.  In all likelihood, those slaves were Samuel Scott’s parents whom he brought to live with him rather than work for him.  What initially seemed like a perpetuation of cruelty in fact turned out to be filial piety.  Had Samuel Scott’s parents been freed, they would have had to leave Virginia (as it was after 1806); an elderly couple who had been slaves most, if not all, of their lives would have had no chance of survival.  By keeping them as his nominal slaves, Samuel Scott ensured their security.

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Up until now, all of Underwood’s research had been about his mother’s line.  Prior to the show, Underwood’s brother had actually done genealogical research on their father’s side.  Where the show aided Underwood’s paternal search was with his deep ancestry.  Where did Underwood’s family really come from?  More specifically, where in Africa?

Who Do You Think You Are has used DNA testing before; Emmitt Smith also went to Africa on his search.  Ancestry.com, the show’s sponsor, has been trying to gain a foothold in the genetic genealogy business, but has thus far lacked the name and the impact of genetic genealogy-specific companies such as Family Tree DNA and 23andMe.  Ancestry is trying to rectify that, and the final segment of tonight’s episode was a far more effective product placement than the blatant Ancestry plug that came halfway through the episode.

Underwood discovered that he is 26% Caucasian (mainly French, Swiss, and German) and 74% African (primarily from the Bamoun, Brong, Yoruba, and Igbo tribes).  Apparently that is a pretty standard ratio for African-Americans.  I admit those pie charts always make me a little bit skeptical; it’s just too neat.  Underwood discovered a genetic match with a man named Eric Sonjowoh who lives in Cameroon and is apparently a 10th cousin.  The “or so” that should have been attached to that relationship prediction, was not shown.

Thus Blair Underwood and his father went to Cameroon.  The show made a big deal about “going home” yet it is unclear to me that this was home.  Yes, 27% of his DNA matched the Bamoun people of Cameroon, but 47% matched people who are from tribes found primarily in Nigeria and Ghana.  There are likely thousands of genetic matches for Blair Underwood all over Western Africa (and also probably in Cape Verde, Brazil, the West Indies, and other places where the slave trade was rampant), what made Cameroon “home” was that a distantly-related Cameroonian kindly donated his DNA to Ancestry’s registry.

I got that sense that Eric Sonjowoh was a little uncomfortable by the whole experience.  Perhaps it was the cameras.  I can’t related what was in his head, but his body language suggested unease at meeting his new “family” who, for their part, treated him like a long-lost cousin.  There was a celebration with unexplained rituals, and then Underwood father and son went home.

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I am no expert at genetic genealogy.  If you are interested, I would suggest going to one of the websites of one of the companies I mentioned above or better yet, The Genetic Genealogist.  Having tested my DNA, I have been underwhelmed thus far with the results.  It is expensive and overly technical, especially for the novice.  Moreover, the cheaper tests tell you almost nothing, which means to get any kind of definitive information you have to keep spending.  In fairness though, genetic genealogy is a relatively new frontier bound to be full of fits and starts.  As it gets more popular, as more people get tested, and as more companies get involved, I imagine that there will be more benefit.

I bring this up because the show, despite the massive product placement, was actually very skimpy on the details of the testing.  If you are interested in the specifics of how Underwood was tested, start your search here.  It appears that Underwood used Ancestry’s new autosomal DNA test (autosomes are chromosomes that do not determine gender), which Ancestry has not yet released.  Given that Underwood tested himself rather than his father, it is odd that he used an autosomal test; unlike the Y-Chromosome which is inherited only through the father’s direct male line, autosomal DNA is inherited from both parents.  In other words, how did Ancestry distinguish Underwood’s mother’s DNA from his father’s?  Moreover, I was under the impression that beyond 3rd cousins or so it is very difficult to determine relationships using autosomal DNA testing.  Perhaps Ancestry has perfected its testing above what other companies can do, but I got the sense that much vital information was left out for the sake of a sales pitch and a happy ending.  Caveat emptor.

I love Who Do You Think You Are, and the past two weeks have been really strong episodes.  However, this season, and tonight’s episode in particular, have really underscored the reality that we are actually watching a 45-minute advertisement.  As such, harsh truths are smoothed over.  People are not always good, even if they are our ancestors.  DNA tests alone do not establish that a certain city thousands of miles away is home.  Who Do You Think You Are wildly succeeds as intelligent, feel-good television but as good history it leaves much to be desired.  History is often ambiguous, and I wished Ancestry and NBC trusted the show’s audience enough to let them confront that ambiguity.

Football News

A few odds and ends that I noticed today and that I wanted to briefly note:

First there is this story; the Iranian football club Sepahan Isfahan has cancelled its match with the Serbian club Partizan Belgrade.  Now there are a lot of good reason that Sepahan Isfahan could have cancelled its match, not the least of which is the violent, racist, and terrifying Serbian ultras, who are arguably the worse in the world.  Partizan’s manager, Avram Grant, has given a different reason though; he said he was told that Iranians cancelled the match because Grant is an Israeli.  At this point, this is just a charge, but I have no doubt it is true.  Hatred of Israel is why Israel plays in UEFA rather than in the AFC.  It’s why Partizan is preparing in Turkey (where the match with Sepahan Isfahan would have taken place) instead of Dubai where Partizan normally prepares during the winter.  It’s why Amr Zaki of Zamalek refused to move to the Premier League.

No doubt, FIFA, driven by its “Say No To Racism” campaign, is gearing up to investigate.  Oh no wait, this is FIFA.  FIFA is like the schoolyard bully; it flexes its muscles against the weak but cowers before the unafraid.  Nations who are either powerless (like tiny Caribbean island) or who have functioning governments (any truly democratic nation in FIFA)  are wary of FIFA sanctions.  Dictatorial regimes like those in North Korea or Iran don’t care one bit, and therefore get free rein.  Sepp Blatter needs them more than they need Sepp.

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In other news, spare a thought for the eloquent, elegant midfielder Yael Averbuch (formerly of WPS champion Western New York Flash) who is going to Rossiyanka Russia to ply her trade.  Averbuch, whom I adore, seems to be eternally on the cusp of playing for the US Women’s National Team, but never quite makes it past the final cut.  I wish her success at Rossiyanka, although I wish more that there were a top-level American league for her to play in.  Perhaps this is what she needs to finally break through and play regularly for the national team.  I hope so.  Good luck, Yael!

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The third story is more is far more well-known: the continuing decline of Arsenal who are virtually certain to finish yet another year without a trophy of any kind.  For most clubs, a seven-year absence of silverware is not such a big deal; for a major superclub like Arsenal this is a disaster.  In fact, Arsenal is on the verge of no longer being a superclub and instead just being a large but mediocre club with delusions of grandeur (like Newcastle United).  It was bad enough for the Gunners when Chelsea, who are suffering their own decline, passed them by; now they have to suffer the indignity of being surpassed by bitter North London rivals Tottenham Hotspur.  Jonathan Wilson does a very good job of deconstructing Arsenal’s woes and explaining what is obvious to even Arsenal fans: Arsene Wenger is at the root of the rot and his continued reign will bring only more failure.

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Speaking of Tottenham, the British press continues to drum up the candidacy of Harry Redknapp as England manager.  All I can wonder is why?  What has he actually done?  At the top-level he led Portsmouth to the FA Cup and Tottenham to the Champions League once (probably twice after this season ends).  There is no sustained success, no Premier League titles, certainly no Champions League titles.  So as I see it, in nearly three full decades of team management, he’s won exactly one important trophy and had two good seasons at a top club. If you want to be generous, he also won three lower league titles and led Tottenham to second place in the 2009 Carling Cup.

What exactly makes Harry Rednapp special?  He’s English.  It definitely fair to say that he is the best English manager in the country and arguably the world (only Steve McClaren could quibble and his time as national team manager was a disaster).  On the other hand, being the best English manager in the world is akin to being the tallest midget.  He’s also shown incredible disdain for non-Champions League, European competition, although I am not sure if that is a plus or a minus for the press.  It’s not like there are so many English managers at the highest levels and few are being groomed, but it speaks volumes of both the expectations and the delusion of the English press and fans that Harry Redknapp is being continually touted as the perfect choice.  (One could argue he is the only choice.)  Redknapp for England smacks of incredible nativism and blindness to the obvious fact that the Premier League has destroyed the English game at all levels.

I Cracked

So I joined Twitter.  If you want to hear my shorter musings, I am @SolitaryMuser.  (I need the impetus to stay; right now I’m finding this thing really boring.)

Rangers FC, What Is Going On?

Possibly the biggest story out of British football this young year is that Rangers have gone into administration, which sounds to me like bankruptcy, although I know practically nothing about UK.  I’ve been reading British media to try to understand what exactly is going on, but there seems to be a prerequisite level of understanding that I don’t have about the law and about Rangers in general.  So if anyone out there can help, what is going on and are Rangers going to fold?

 

 

[Programming note:  Due to the Image Awards, there was no Who Do You Think You Are review this week, which I deeply resent.  It also seems like bad television practice.  The show's rating are, from what I understand, not as good as in previous seasons and taking any kind of hiatus seems like a bad idea.  Absence makes people forget.  I am beginning to fear this may be the last season of the show.]

Songs To Make You Cry

I recently had the very good fortune to see the Israeli singer Yasmin Levy in concert.  Levy is a singer/songwriter of Ladino songs.  Ladino, for those who don’t know, is the Yiddish of Sephardic Jewry.  Like Yiddish, Ladino is heavily influenced by other languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic.  Yiddish, spoken by the descendants of German-Jewish exiles who settled in Eastern Europe, is a variation of High Middle German heavily influenced by Slavic languages.  Ladino, spoken by the descendants of the Spanish Jews who were expelled in 1492 and who settled to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, is a variation of Old Spanish heavily influenced by various Mediterranean and Balkan languages.

Like Yiddish, the future of Ladino is precarious; the number of Ladino speakers may not even be 100,000, and they are old.  The loss of Ladino is heartbreaking and tragic.  There is a modern revival of sorts, although nothing on the scale of Yiddish.  I have no definitive insight on to why so few seem to care about the future of Ladino, but I do have some theories.  (1)  The descendants of Ladino-speakers are more likely to live in Israel where the ultimate mother-tongue, Hebrew, has won out over all other Jewish languages.  (2)  In contrast, many Yiddish-speakers went to the United States and their descendants (like me) see Yiddish as the mother-tongue rather than Hebrew.  Because there is not the same stigma associated with non-Hebrew Jewish languages in the United States (and in part because there was at one point such a vibrant Yiddish culture in the United States), younger Jews feel no stigma about studying Yiddish culture.  This is great for Yiddish because most American Jews are of Ashkenazic descent, but not so great for Ladino, as Sephardic Jews in the United States are much fewer in number.  (Sephardic Jews communities may be fewer, but they have also existed in the United States for far longer than Ashkenazic ones.)  (3)  Various ultra-Orthodox groups, both in and out of Israel, will only use Yiddish at home (even if they speak the local language when dealing with the outside world).  This even goes for Hebrew, which they consider too holy for daily use.  Sephardic Jews, even the fanatically religious Sephardim, have no qualms with speaking Hebrew as a daily language.  (4)  Although the Nazis did destroy Sephardic communities in the Balkans and Greece, the Holocaust predominantly affected Ashkenazic Jews and virtually annihilated an entire culture.  For that reason, perhaps there is more of a sense of urgency to protect Yiddish.  (5) The Yiddish world is much smaller than the Ladino world in terms of both physical and cultural distance.  Yiddish speakers from say Hungary and Lithuania could communicate with one another far more easily than Ladino speakers from (for example) Algeria and Turkey.  There is not one Ladino language to save per se but many different dialects that are near unintelligible.

The Ladino music tradition is quite beautiful.  The folk songs are absolutely stunning.  The language itself is also quite melodious, a far cry from the German-drenched guttural tonality of Yiddish (which, don’t get me wrong, I have deep affection for).  Ladino songs are heart-wrenching and full of pathos.  Or, at least they can be.  The songs that Yasmin Levy sings certainly are.

Yasmin Levy is making a name for herself not just by singing Ladino songs, but also for trying to modernize Ladino, mostly by fusing it with Flamenco.  Therefore, despite the sometimes overwhelming sadness of her music, there is also a Flamenco-like energy which also appears in her presentation.  At time she sings like a Flamenco singer and hold herself the way they do.  Nevertheless, that is not always the case.  There are times when she stands so still she seems more like a fadista, as though she were standing on a mountain top singing headlong into the winds of fate.  It’s a tremendous emotional effect.  I speak no Ladino, yet there were times when I felt moved almost to the point of tears.

The closest I came to crying during her concert was when she sang the song “Una Pastora” (A Shepherdess).  Here is a video of her singing the song the way she does on her album Sentir:

The translation to the song’s lyrics (found here on another version of the song) are as follows:

A shepherdess I loved
A beautiful child.
Still so young I adored her,
More than her I loved no other.
One day when we were
Sitting in the garden
I said to her: “For you, my flower
I will die of love”
In her arms she hugged me
Lovingly she kissed me
She answered me sweetly:
“You are too young for love”
I grew up and looked for her
She took another and I lost her
She has forgotten me,
But I shall always love.

Sad, right?  But on this night, the lyrics and the melody were only a part of the sadness, and not the main part.

The male voice you heard in the video is a recording of Levy’s father Yitzhak Levy, a cantor and composer.  Yitzhak Levy was also something of the Alan Lomax of the Ladino world.  He recorded and wrote down as many Ladino folk songs as he could in an attempt to preserve the heritage.  He died when his daughter Yasmin was only a year old, and she has no memory of him.  Yasmin Levy had always wanted to do a duet with her father (a la Natalie Cole and Nat King Cole), and “Una Pastora” is the song she chose.

Although it seems odd to talk about stagecraft in a concert such as this, the way that she staged the song was designed to wring the maximum amount of pathos.  The center of the stage was lit by the spotlight and she stepped back so that the illuminated area was empty.  Alone on stage (her band, which had been with her all night, left), the recording of her father singing began and she remained motionless with her head down.  Whenever she sang, she stepped into the spotlight, and when she finished, she stepped back out until the end when they sang together.  There were tears in my eyes, and the man next broke down and cried.

Yasmin Levy is a true talent.  She reminds me a bit of the late Ofra Haza, although her voice does not have the same timbre.  Just as Ofra Haza brought Yemenite Jewish music into a spotlight that it didn’t have but so richly deserved.  I hope that Yasmin Levy can do the same for Ladino music.  Ladino is so beautiful; it would be devastating for it to just fade away.

More Gays

Matt Bomer, the star of the show White Collar, came out.  Like Zachary Quinto, he lived in a glass closet; Bomer lived life as an openly gay man, had a partner and children, but refused to publicly acknowledge his sexuality.  Until now.  One of the reasons for this refusal is because as he saw it, his show’s existence depended on his remaining closeted.  He was afraid people would no longer watch if they knew the truth.  Also like Quinto, he came in completely unspectacular and not at all dramatic fashion.

Magda Szubanski also came out.  If you are American, you probably know her (if you do at all) as Esme Hoggett the farmer’s wife in Babe (one of my favorite movies) and its sequel.  If you like comedies from other countries, you may have also seen her in Kath & Kim, a very popular sitcom from Australia.  (There was an American remake, but it didn’t find an audience.)  If you a sci-fi fan, she was Furlow on Farscape.  This is big news in Australia, even if it was apparently one of the nation’s worst kept secrets.

I’m not a part of the gay police.  With the exceptions of those who (like politicians and preachers) seek to do the LGBT community harm in public and then hypocritically want to enjoy the community’s hard-won benefits in private, I am not in favor of outing.  That’s why I would never out any celebrity on my blog.  It’s why I never wrote anything about Quinto or Bomer before they came out even though it was pretty widely known.  (I didn’t know about Szubansk; I am not Australian.)

Having said that I am very glad that both Bomer and Szubanski feel comfortable enough to come out.  It’s a sign that being gay is no longer considered a career killer.  And that is a really nice thought.

Team of Destiny

Zambia won the African Cup of Nations.  By all accounts, this is one of the best AfCoN tournaments in recent years in terms of quality, and it had an absolute fairy tale ending–even for cold-hearted cynics like myself.  Zambia’s new golden generation has done what even the previous one (the one tragically killed in the plane crash) did not–win the AfCoN.  It’s a beautiful story, and following on the heels of the heels of Japan’s victory at the Women’s World Cup last year, one can only assume that from now on only teams that have overcome tragedy will win international football tournaments.

Well played to Zambia.  I was rooting for them as was most everyone around the world.  From their very first match against Senegal they proved they were something to behold and they never let up.  Their victory was well-deserved, and they did it with a team that had almost no European-based players.  Hopefully they will be able to maintain this success and get to the next World Cup in Brazil, but AfCoN success is not guarantee of qualification.  Look at Egypt.

From the beginning the pundits were saying this would be a Ghana/Ivory Coast final.  Given the way both teams played throughout the tournament, I suspected at least one would not make it.  Ghana, who played the worse of the two throughout, turned out to be the goat.

Spare a thought for Ivory Coast though.  So much has been expected from this team, and each time they have come up short.  They didn’t lose the match against Zambia, they were edged out in penalty kicks (after squandering a chance to win).  This is the second time that this happened to Ivory Coast (Egypt beat them out in penalty kicks in 2006).  They have one more chance next year in South Africa when AfCoN (mercifully) moves to odd-numbered years, but really this was it.  The Ivorian Golden Generation will probably fade into history trophy-less.  One of the greatest also-rans of African history.

Let me also promote Jonathan Wilson’s coverage of the tournament which has been excellent.

Whitney Houston 1963-2012

Whitney Houston died two days ago.  I feel very sad about this although I was not the biggest of Whitney Houston fans.  I didn’t dislike her music, but I was too young to truly appreciate her work during her 1980′s peak.  In the 1990′s when I was old enough, she was already something of a joke because (1) she was tabloid fodder due to the troubled marriage to Bobby Brown and the rumors of drug use; (2) most of her best work was so quintessentially 80′s that by the mid-1990′s it was passe and retrograde; and (3) a new crop of the Whitney-inspired pop princesses–foremost among them Mariah Carey–ruining singing.  The ensuing competition between Whitney and Mariah for chart dominance spawned a generation of singers (the apex being Christina Aguilera) whose idea of “interpretation” is to over sing everything by letting no syllable pass without melisma whether the song needs it or not.  We are still witnessing the fallout.

But that was not Whitney.  Whitney was the scion of pop music royalty.   She was daughter of Cissy Houston of the Drinkard Singers, who was also possibly the world’s most famous backup singer, the originator of Midnight Train to Georgia, and the aunt of Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick.  If you’ve ever heard Cissy Houston sing, it’s uncanny how alike mother and daughter sound.  Despite the heritage though, Whitney’ style was completely different from her mother, as well as from Dionne’s sophisticated pop and Dee Dee’s grittier R&B sound.  Whitney was instead a fusion of the big voice of her godmother Aretha Franklin and the pop sensibilities of Diana Ross.  Whitney, like Ross, sang songs that appealed to widest possible audience, but like Aretha blew away her listeners away with her sound.  Add in the fact the fact that Whitney was ravishingly gorgeous and completely fit into the zeitgeist of the 80′s and it is no surprise that was she was one of the decades biggest stars–easily the equal of Michael Jackson and Madonna.  Unlike her two peers, Whitney was uncontroversial, and that only added to her appeal.  Who didn’t like Whitney Houston at least a little?

There is no question about Whitney’s talent, but there is about her artistry.  The same songs that allowed her to develop a massive following also caged her in.  Whitney sang bubblegum pop.  It was good bubblegum pop, but her song selection was far inferior to her talent.  In this way, the song never outshone the singer.  Even her one truly interesting song, her mega-hit cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” was typical Whitney.  Dolly’s original is a breakup song written to her former business partner and mentor Porter Wagoner, the man who introduced her to the world.  It’s not romantic at all; it’s a platonic love letter to a dear friend whom she knows she is going to hurt but doesn’t want to.  The vocal and the instrumentation are soft, subtle, and plaintive.

Now compare that to Whitney’s version, the centerpiece of her movie The Bodyguard.  This is no melancholy breakup song.  I’m not even sure that this is a breakup song.  The defining part of the song, is about the final 90 seconds or so when the song pauses and Whitney changes keys to belt out: “And IIIIIIIIIIIII-EEEE-IIIIIIIIIIII will always love YOOOOOOOOOU!  IIIIIIII will AAAAAAlways love YOOOOOUUUU!  (Rinse, wash, repeat a few times.)  The notes are more or less the same ones Dolly sang (albeit lower and softer), and no one can belt it like Whitney.  It’s straight out of gospel.  Those 90 second sweep aside everything that came before them.  It’s what everyone remembers.

As a performance Whitney’s cover clearly tops Dolly’s original, but as a song it falls way short.  In the cover it is all about the performance instead of about the words.  More to the point, it is all about Whitney’s performance.  As with her 80′s bubblegum, Whitney outshone the song rather than working in tandem with it.  Nevertheless, it worked for her.  Because Whitney’s cover is so striking, most of the younger generation doesn’t know that this was and is Dolly Parton’s song.  “I Will Always Love You” has become the new “Over the Rainbow”; no other version will supersede Whitney’s and only the most foolish of singers will take her on.

Other writers have written about how Whitney was a symbol of empowerment, especially to other black women.  This is true.  She was the trailblazer for black women that Michael Jackson was for black singers in breaking down the MTV color barrier.  There is something to that.  Because her audience was so large, MTV couldn’t keep her out if they had wanted to.  Maintaining that popularity was probably a part of the reason why Whitney stuck to what she was comfortable doing rather than trying to branch out as an artist.  It also allowed her to keep the focus on herself (how many of them about “I” or “Me”?).

Yet she was so much the full package: talent, personality, and beauty, that it was impossible not to be impressed by her.  One of my saddest musical moments was watching her sing one of the songs from her comeback album in 2010.  It was painful, and I turned to my boyfriend and said, “There’s no voice anymore; it’s just technique.”  If you ever listened to Billie Holiday’s penultimate album “Lady in Satin” then you know what her voice was like.  The difference was that because Holiday spent her career interpreting songs rather than merely singing them (even at her best she did not have anything close to Whitney’s instrument), she could use her shredded voice to great emotional effect.  Whitney did not have that ability.

I realize that the reason I was so deeply affected a couple of years ago and why I am now is because somewhere between the 1990′s and 2010, I understood her appeal.  I get why she was Whitney Houston and what made her so special.  It was all about the voice: the rich, perfect, pure, refined voice.  It didn’t matter what she sang, only that she was singing.  It really was all about Whitney but only because Whitney was so enormously gifted.  In an age when most of the top names in pop music rely on melisma, Auto-Tune, audial illusions, or performance art, it is important to remember why Whitney was different and better.  She relied solely on the power and tone of her voice and nothing else.  There will never be another Whitney.

Marisa Tomei, Who Do You Think You Are?

Able was I, ere I saw Elba

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On Who Do You Think You Are, there are two basic kinds of episodes; for the sake of ease let’s call them the general and the specific.  In the general episode, the celebrity in question knows practically nothing about his or her family, and the episode centers around getting as much information as possible (a la Brooke Shields).  In the specific episode (Kim Cattrall’s being the quintessential example), the celebrity usually has some knowledge about his or her genealogy and tries to unravel a family mystery or prove (or disprove) a story.  To some extent, each episode by necessity is a mixture of the general and the specific, but usually they skew one way–sometimes heavily so.

This week’s episode leaned specific.  Marisa Tomei went to Italy to solve the mystery surrounding the death of her maternal great-grandfather Francesco Leopoldo Bianchi who died when her own grandfather–Leopoldo’s son–was a toddler.  The family legend was that he was murdered for being a philanderer and a reprobate.  Tomei also wanted to learn about the family of her maternal great-grandmother Adelaide Canovaro who was from the island of Elba.

A full confession before I recap the episode: I am a big fan of Marisa Tomei and have been since her days playing of Maggie Lauten on “A Different World.”  In as much as one puts faith in the Oscars–and longtime readers know that I hate awards shows–Tomei absolutely deserved hers.  Every scene in “My Cousin Vinny” with Mona Lisa Vito is worth watching solely because of Tomei.  The fact that her deserved Oscar win became something of punchline only underscores Hollywood’s hypocrisy; on one hand the Hollywood press moan and wail that comedy is never taken seriously by the Academy, but then when a truly gifted comedienne wins for a luminous comedic performance, they trash her–all the more so because she bested four (admittedly brilliant) British actresses.  The reaction to Tomei’s win spoke volumes about the secret distaste Hollywood has for comedy and the insecurity about American actors (not named Meryl Streep) when compared to British actors.  Coincidentally, this season of Who Do You Think You Are features Helen Hunt, who also won on Oscar for a comedic role by besting four brilliant British actresses and whose accomplishment was also subsequently trashed.

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The season premier featuring Martin Sheen was something of a dip in form for Who Do You Think You Are, but this week the show was back up to full strength.  Unlike previous celebrities who went to Italy, Tomei seemed at home there rather than a visitor.  I think it was because of the language.  I could not figure out Tomei’s level of fluency, but if she did not speak or understand Italian, she faked it very well–possibly with the help of the camera crew.

Tomei’s first stop was Cecina, where her great-grandfather Leopoldo was born.  She found his grave (as well as Adelaide’s, who was buried with him) and learned his date of death, but nothing about any murder.  Quite the contrary in fact; Leopoldo’s family claimed that he died of illness.  A disappointed but relieved Tomei set off to Elba, the island of her great-grandmother’s birth and of Napoleon’s first exile.  In Elba, she discovered her great-grandmother’s ancestry, which extended back to Tomei’s eighth great-grandfather.  Also in Elba she learned from a newspaper report that the illness story was hokum; her great-grandfather was murdered by gunshot.  Leopoldo was killed because of a business relationship that went sour: the man who managed the Bianchi family’s kiln business fired Leopoldo’s brother for disloyalty thereby impugning the family’s honor.  Vendetta!  In true Italian style, this resulted in the manager killing Leopoldo in cold blood.  Because he was wealthy, the murderer bought his own justice (top-quality attorneys and an acquittal), and then disappeared forever.  One wonders if he disappeared or “disappeared,” but that was never addressed.  Tomei then received a letter from her grandfather’s cousin who filled Tomei in about Adelaide’s life following Leopoldo’s murder.  Adelaide remarried a decent man who help raise her sons, and even assisted Tomei’s grandfather’s in escaping to the United States.  Tomei then returned home to share the news with her relieved mother than Leopoldo was a decent man and not a scoundrel.

Last week, I compared the NBC show to the BBC original and hypothesized that any quality gap was probably due to the time constraints of commercial television.  (Again, Ancestry.com’s in-show plug for itself was completely not subtle.)  While this week’s story was arresting, the missing time again took a toll.  Continuity was not a problem, but the extra time could have allowed for Tomei to reflect more.  For example, why did the Bianchi family claimed that Leopoldo died of illness when that was clearly not the case?  Likewise, it seemed odd to me that neither Tomei nor her mother knew about Adelaide’s second husband despite the fact that (1) he raised Tomei’s grandfather; (2) was a good man; and (3) helped Tomei’s grandfather immigrate.  Maybe this would have been addressed had there been more time, but this is NBC not PBS, HBO, or the BBC.

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One of the great things about Who Do You Think You Are is that it represents a different and more personal way to look at history.  Reading a history book or watching a Ken Burns documentary can be great, but that is not all there is.  Any number of sources can tell you that the Irish Potato Famine was massive in scope, scale, and toll, but learning about the fate of a family that fled Ireland because of the Famine gives a personal, dare I saw human, context to the tragedy.  It brings it closer to your own understanding when you realize it is your family who suffered.

This episode was oddly different though because it was so focused on the personal history that there was never any attempt to fit that story into the larger historical picture.  Again, I wonder if this had to do with the missing 15-20 of commercial time.  One can argue that perhaps Leopoldo’s story was too personal for a larger context approach, but it was jarring to realize that narrator Mocean Melvin’s only historical explanation was a reminder that Napoleon was exiled to Elba.

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What I appreciate most about Who Do You Think You Are is the way we as the audience watch the journey.  It’s what for me makes the show superior to “Faces of America,” Henry Louis Gates’s show from PBS.  On that show, the guests were handed their personal history by Gates, who did all the traveling himself.  On Who Do You Think You Are, the celebrities make the trip and hear the story for themselves firsthand, even if often they are just handed the research.

This is the only real complaint genealogists have about Who Do You Think You Are; it gives a false sense of how difficult genealogy is.  Tomei went to Elba and had ten generations or so of her family’s genealogy handed to her.  For those of us who do not have the show’s budget or team of researchers, it takes months or even years to trace generation by generation.  I’m not complaining exactly (maybe a little professional jealousy), but to the viewer who has not done genealogy before and is thinking of starting after watching the show, you have to know that this kind of information simply doesn’t get handed to you.

As I understand it, once a celebrity gets involved with the show, they hear nothing more for months as a team of professional genealogists, researchers, and historians (including for this week’s episode, an “Italian Duel Expert”) finds as much as can be found.  Money is no object, language is no barrier.  All that matters is that the story be interesting, and nothing interesting (by television standards) is found, then the celebrity is given the research, and no episode is made.  That is something that very hard for me to contemplate.  Coming from tailors, junk dealers, and the occasional pulpit-less rabbi, it is very hard to me to imagine that anyone’s story is uninteresting.

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I want to conclude this review by saying that this week’s show was extremely personal for me.  I have no family from Italy, and I am in no way related to Tomei, but her mother came to a realization tonight, a realization that I think she hesitated with and couldn’t say out loud because the implications: we are all where we are because somewhere along the line some horrible tragedy happened to an ancestor that changed his or her descendants’ destinies.  Because Leopoldo was killed, his wife remarried and his sons were raised by a different man, which led to Tomei’s grandfather’s immigration.  I too have something like that, which I wrote about before, and I thought about my own great-grandmother’s life while watching Tomei and her mother reflected.

That is though what Who Do You Think You Are does at its best; it makes you realize how much we owe to the inevitable force of history.  Even the most seemingly unrelated events, the murder of a solitary man over 100 years ago on another continent, can create an Oscar winner.

The England Manager

Fabio Capello is out, and the British media anointed Harry Redknapp as his successor a long time ago.  If I were Redknapp though (if fact, if I were any manager) I would be asking myself “Why would I want this job?”  If ever there was a poisoned chalice, it is the job of English manager.  The England National Team is doomed to perpetual failure, but unlike almost every other nation doomed to perpetual failure (including the United States), the English fans and the English media expect success.  Oh sure, they hide behind a veneer of cynicism and resignation, but that doesn’t fool anyone, especially as the tournaments start.

England fans see themselves as preordained winners, all evidence to the contrary, and react very badly when the inevitable happens.  In fact, they react badly before the inevitable happens.  Prior to the World Cup, England had a near perfect qualification record, but after qualification was assured and the team’s performance dipped slightly in the meaningless qualifiers that remained, the knives came out–particularly from the media–and the brief honeymoon Capello had enjoyed ended spectacularly.  Not that Capello did himself many favors, mind you, but the media, he was instantly transformed into an ignorant, talentless boob.

Capello, one of the most successful coaches of the past few decades, flamed out spectacularly.  It’s pretty obvious that he had been looking for an out for the past few months at least, and the (latest) John Terry flap gave him the excuse he needed.  Sven-Goren Eriksson and Steve McClaren were well-respected coaches before they took the England job, and now they are national punch lines (especially Eriksson–my God, did Special 1 TV do a good parody of him).  England fans even have ambivalence toward Alf Ramsey.

There is no other country where being named national manager is more punishment than reward save for Brazil, but Brazil fans have reason to expect that they will win every tournament they enter.  So I wonder, why would Redknapp even want this job, and if he gets it, what sins has he committed to deserve such a fate?