WHAT’S GOING ON? MARVIN’S 1971 LYRICS OF POLICE BRUTALITY AND SENSELESS VIOLENCE STILL RING TRUE 52 YEARS LATER!

BY AJ WOODSON

This was inspired by the docu-series, 1971 The Year That Music Changed Everything, I watched last night on Apple TV. What’s Going On was the eleventh studio album by soul singer, songwriter, and producer Marvin Gaye. It was released on May 21, 1971, by the Motown Records subsidiary label Tamla. At the time Black artists weren’t typically creating classic album-length artistic statements on par with The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde,” then along came Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” a 1971 game-changer that turned 52 on May 21st.

The song “What’s Going On?” by Marvin Gaye is unique among the diverse field of anti-war songs. The message it sends is not overtly critical of war, nor does it display any amount of contempt for those that wage violence in war. Instead it exudes an air of confusion; confusion about why the Vietnam War is being waged at all, and confusion about why there is such open hostility between war protestors and those who attempt to subdue them. Throughout the song, language such as “Picket lines and picket signs/Don’t punish me with brutality”, “Father, father, everybody thinks we’re wrong/Oh, but who are they to judge us/Simply because our hair is long”, “There’s far too many of you dying/You know we’ve got to find a way” stand out, sending a message that is centered very much at home in America. This song is certainly anti-war, as evidenced by the lines, “We don’t need to escalate/You see, war is not the answer/for only love can conquer hate”, which is a direct statement that war is not the way to solve out problems.

52 years later the very words Marvin uttered in 1971 can apply to 2023. He sang about too many people dying in the Vietnam War but can be applied to all the lives we are losing today in the streets of Urban America to senseless gun violence. While his lyrics exuded an air of confusion; confusion about why the Vietnam War is being waged at all, they can as easily exude an air of confusion or why so many Brothers and Sisters are dying in the streets today.

Mother, mother

There’s too many of you crying Brother, brother, brother

There’s far too many of you dying

You know we’ve got to find a way

To bring some lovin’ here today – Ya

50 years later, we are not talking about a war being fought 8,703 miles away in Vietnam, but on Urban Streets all across America. The sad thing is the enemy looks like us and is us, WE ARE KILLING OURSELVES!!! There’s a war going on outside nobody’s safe from. Marvin Gaye’s brother Frankie had returned to the US totally traumatized by his three-year tour of duty while his cousin (also called Marvin) had died in service. Now the violence plaguing our streets is traumatizing our youth who are living with PTSD like the soldiers who came back from war.

Which makes Marvin’s 1971 lyrics so prophetic 52 years later. Like Marvin said on Save The Children, Children today really suffer tomorrow. To end the senseless gun violence we must first understand its effects and make sure to put programs in place to help those who are affected by it. You cannot arrest the problem away, it is important for our youth and everyone affected to get the help that they need, so they can heal. So we can all heal. Then and only then can we truly and fully tackle the problem and affects of senseless gun violence. Like Marvin the situation has me scratching my head asking What’s Going On? So I couldn’t just do a traditional celebration of the 50th Anniversary of this monumental musical offering from Marvin without attempting to address What’s Going On today as he did 50 years ago. That’s the only way I could see in truly celebrating our brother Marvin. While we get outraged about Black and Brown people being killed at the hands on law enforcement, we have to be equally if not more outraged when they die at the hands of those who look like them in our communities.

But let’s not forget our brothers and sisters being murdered by law enforcement. Marvin’s lyrics also exude confusion about why there is such open hostility between war protestors and those who attempt to subdue them. In 1971 the were mass protests over the war, and 49 years later there were the same size crowds protesting the killing of Black people at the hands of law enforcement. Black Lives Matter protestors were met with hostility by those who attempted to subdue them. In 1971 Richard Nixon, who escaped impeachment by resigning was in the White House and despised the protestors, in 2020, Donald Trump – the first president to be impeached twice – shared

Nixon’s despisement of the protestors and expressed the same hostility toward them.