Christopher’s Songbook – “It’s a New Day” by Will.i.am

Songbook features a week’s worth of songs analyzed by a single writer. You can expect a new song, lyrics and a brief essay each day by a changing roster of writers. If you’d like to submit seven songs for Songbook, please contact me at cspencer@ozarksunbound.com.

LYRICS

Politics bedamned.

When Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States, the choice felt forward to me. It meant the first black president in our history.

That’s not a little thing. It’s huge and this song released within days of the election pays tribute to that moment in time. It’s a video that transcends the temporal policy and politics of the election and recognizes the social leap made by that vote.

If you are in your 20s or your 30s, I promise you’ll be asked by your grandkids where you were, how you voted and what you thought on that November 2008 night.

Growing up in south Arkansas in the 1980s – El Dorado to be exact - with its pockets of Third World poverty, racially stratified society and general absence of a substantial black middle-class, Obama’s election almost didn’t seem possible to me until it actually happened.

In Arkansas, which trended more Republican than in the previous two elections, something was afoot that pushed us so out of step with the rest of the nation. I know my state. It was guns. It was race.

It was The Other.

I remember reading the unsparing and accurate Washington Post article written by Anne Hull after the election. Her story felt like a harsh mirror held up to my beloved state with the prowess of a cultural anthropologist.

Make no mistake, this isn’t a review of the Obama presidency, but the moment when the nation elected its first black president.

Forever and for always, Will.i.am’s song will serve as the soundtrack for me of that rare and wonderful day when the Declaration of Independence’s revolutionary phrase that “all men are created equal” inched forward a bit more.

It’s a New Day.

SIMILAR POSTS

• Fear of a Black President | Clipped Fresh at 1:05 pm on September 18, 2009
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• Christopher’s Songbook – “Stand” by REM at 9:49 pm on June 20, 2009
• Wade’s Songbook – “An American Trilogy” by Elvis Presley at 12:00 am on October 13, 2009
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