Ludwig van Beethoven's 250th birthday passed on Thursday, and the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels celebrated the iconic composer's in truly modern fashion: by exhibiting artist Terry Adkins' 2004 work Synapse - a video depicting Beethoven's frumpy visage morphing into that of a young black man with dreadlocks.
The video is part of Adkins' 'Black Beethoven' series, and the transformation is supposed to reflect the artist's "unwillingness to settle the debate on Beethoven's race."
Hang on a minute - there's a debate?
Well, yes and no. Beethoven was not black. Born in Bonn, Germany, to Flemish parents in 1770, the composer was by all accounts as white as the driven snow. However, one 1814 etching of Beethoven depicts him with a dark complexion, and rumors of a Moorish ancestor fueled speculation that if he wasn't outright black, Beethoven may have been a bit less white than previously thought.
By the time civil rights activists in the US caught wind of this, all subtlety went out the window. "Beethoven was as black as you and I," campaigner Stokely Carmichael told a crowd in Seattle in the 1960s, "but they don't tell us that." Rolling Stone magazine even ran a story in 1969 declaring "Beethoven was black and proud!"
It was a rallying cry at a time when African Americans had just won their civil rights, and when racism was an ever-present force in the country. But it wasn't grounded in reality.
Half a century later, it's becoming a fact. Nobody in their right mind would try to claim Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong as white, and Barack Obama is still black, despite his distant Irish roots. So why are we doing the opposite? And why now?
We canonized George Floyd this summer. As his gold-encrusted coffin toured America like the reliquary of a saint, crackers everywhere took a symbolic knee and renounced racism they didn't know they held until the liberal commentariat told them they did. Our corporate masters pledged allegiance and dollars to Black Lives Matter (BLM), and government officials in the US temporarily suspended coronavirus lockdowns to allow marches and riots in Floyd's honor.
But even before that, we took a look through our history books and thought, "Gee, this could really use more black people."
Black model Jodie Turner-Smith was cast by the UK's Channel 5 in October to play 16th-century Queen of England Anne Boleyn - a woman who was definitely white. Likewise, the BBC has cast a black Achilles, while American theatergoers have been treated to a black George Washington in Hamilton, and Brits to a black King Lear, among other posthumous recolorings.
Did you know that Queen Charlotte of England and Jackie Onassis were black? They may have looked white, but the woke crowd has decided to reinterpret the Jim Crow-era "one-drop rule" to claim them as such, and who are we to say otherwise?
After all, in 2020 black is not a color. It's a state of mind. Just ask Shaun 'Talcum X' King, Rachel 'Trans-Black' Dolezal, or any of the BLM activists who pretended to be black to get ahead in the movement.
Who knows? Maybe if Beethoven were alive today he'd be talking up his Moorish roots and penning sonatas for George Floyd. But he's not, so that's entirely the stuff of imagination - just like speculation about his race.
Graham Dockery is an Irish journalist, commentator, and writer at RT. Previously based in Amsterdam, he wrote for DutchNews and a scatter of local and national newspapers.
Reader Comments
How about you pay the world back some reparations for all the harm caused by you and your kind? (Mussolini, Hitler, Napoleon, etc).
And don't think you're going to crawl out of this so easily this time.
No justice, no peace.
Take the knee!!!!
We name the guilty.....
Bill Gates
Jack The Ripper
Mark Zuckerberg
Oprah Winfrey
Napoleon
Barack Obama
Makes me feel a little better. Is that bad?
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama
Mussolini
Napoleon
etc.
Why don't they all go back to Bigotland where they came from?
They stole our history!!!!
wonders iffeels sure that MLK would denounce them with the rest of the racists. It's the content of character, but character is invisible to them and therefore must be the invention of religious people or people suckered by selfish genes.That must explain why I had Beethoven's Emperor playing in my head when I woke up. Thanks guy.
Anyone with eyes can see that Alfred Brendel is a pale skinned black man!!!
LOL.
unsres Lebens Harmonien,
und dem Schรถnheitssinn entschwingen
Blumen sich, die ewig blรผhn.
Fried und Freude gleiten freundlich
wie der Wellen Wechselspiel.
Was sich drรคngte rauh und feindlich,
ordnet sich zu Hochgefรผhl.
Wenn der Tรถne Zauber walten
und des Wortes Weihe spricht,
muss sich Herrliches gestalten,
Nacht und Stรผrme werden Licht.
รuร're Ruhe, inn're Wonne
herrschen fรผr den Glรผcklichen.
Doch der Kรผnste Frรผhlingssonne
lรคsst aus Leiden Licht entstehn.
Groรes, das ins Herz gedrungen,
blรผht dann neu und schรถn empor.
Hat ein Geist sich aufgeschwungen,
hallt ihm stets ein Geisterchor.
Nehmt denn hin, ihr schรถnen Seelen,
froh die Gaben schรถner Kunst
Wenn sich Lieb und Kraft vermรคhlen,
lohnt den Menschen Gรถttergunst.
With grace, charm and sweet sounds
The harmonies of our life,
And the sense of beauty engenders
The flowers which eternally bloom.
Peace and joy advancing in perfect accord,
Like the alternating play of the waves;
All harsh and hostile elements
fall into place in bliss.
When the magic of sound will reign
And the awe of language is spoken,
Something wonderful will engender,
night and tempest transform into light.
Calm without and joy within
will reign for the lucky man.
After all the spring sun of the arts
forms light out of suffering.
Something great, when it's touched the heart,
Blooms anew in all its beauty.
Which spirit taken flight,
And all a choir of spirits resounds in response.
Accept then, oh you gracious souls,
Joyously the gifts of art.
When love and strength are united,
The favour of the Gods rewards Man.....[Link]
Universally acceptable examples of snowy-white whiteys "white as the driven snow" would be... Bojo, or Trump, or Anne of Green Gables...
Its 2020 and we're all so racial. .. and yet, most non-Nordic white people still can't get it into their thick not-quite-all-white skulls that if you don't have blond hair and blue eyes - or are not a bonified ginger - then you's a very, very light sandnigger, at best.
The author is showing himself to be just another white wobbler (probably because he's a very light sandnigger, himself) who's letting the side down and setting us (white-folk) up for future tumbles because he's no better at disseminating who-is-who in racial matters than all those insecure blackies he's criticizin' for attempting to pervert 'whitey-massa' history.
What constitutes an ethnicity, and who decides?
And on one small part of this small island, how different is a Scouser to a Brummie to a Geordie to a Yorkshireman?
I used to know a Scouser who lived in London. He would only hang out with other Scousers who lived in London. If you flipped through his record collection, he only owned records that were made by Scousers: The Beatles, Echo and The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes, Deaf School, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark.
Bizarre.
Me neither .
Where's George L these days?
God knows what happens to them if you give them an mRNA/DNA vaccine.
The horror: An AI Neural Network's attempts to recreate "Yesterday" by The Beatles....[Link]