DETROIT - Forget about
Bush vs Kerry - at least for the moment. The real deal
is Motown against Tinseltown - or The Temptations
against the Terminator. Most Americans thought the
National Basketball Association (NBA) finals would be a
slam-d-unk for the Los Angeles Lakers. But then the
Detroit Pistons - deep, tough, gritty, resilient, the
antithesis of superstardom - got into the groove. Now
Motown is in a trance - or deep house - mixed by
legendary DJ Jeff Mills. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick even
ordered his staff to cut through mountains of red tape
and logistics and drape a Pistons jersey over the drab
Spirit of Detroit downtown statue. Meteor Inc of
Troy, which does graphic work for the Palace of Auburn
Hills, where the Pistons may clinch their NBA title this
Tuesday, will oblige.
Detroit Industry,
the Diego Rivera mural, celebrates the auto workers who
built Detroit's wheels. The Spirit of Detroit,
the Meteor Inc version, will celebrate basketball
workers. As for the kryptonite - as the banners at
Auburn Hills say it - it's been supplied by the two
Wallaces, Ben and Rasheed, and by Richard Hamilton and
Chauncey Billups, who have seriously annoyed Kobe Bryant
and Shaquille O'Neal, the Man of Steel, and kept
torturing them with their defense of ... steel. The
1960s Motown generation is now saying this is as good as
the Temptations doing "Get Ready".
As with most
things musical, Detroit hit the groove much ahead of the
rest of the nation. Of the 15,000-plus who answered a
pistons.com poll, 65% thought the Pistons would beat the
Lakers - now derided as the LA Fakers. But only 2% bet
it could come down to Pistons in five. Lakers.com didn't
run a similar poll. "Cool," says Jerry at American Coney
Island in downtown Detroit. "Look what happened the last
time they let Californians vote."
Wheel of
fortune Good news in Motown usually rides on
wheels. Like the Detroit Free Press ("On Guard for 173
Years") gleefully announcing that even with gasoline at
more than US$2 a gallon, Americans are far from ditching
their pickups, sport-utility vehicles and vans: sales of
light trucks were up by 4.7% in May, while car sales
were up by only 1.9%. The secret: cash-back rebates and
very low-interest financing.
But make no
mistake: since 2000 Michigan has been living in a
Danteesque ninth circle of economic hell. It remains a
key swing state in the November presidential election.
Detroit is a succession of spectacular urban debris
dotting no-man's-land streets. What to do with all those
decrepit buildings? Mayor Kilpatrick wants to set up a
plan by autumn designed to help people buy abandoned
property for restoration. But for the moment his main
problem is the falling demolition budget - and
environmental concerns that demolition en masse would
release asbestos into whole Detroit neighborhoods.
The city is in dire straits - having to deal
with a structural deficit that may lead to 2,000 more
jobs being lost. The backup plan is to approve the
construction of three permanent hotel-casinos.
More than 30% of young adults roaming around
Detroit's no-man's lands are school dropouts. Almost 20%
of unemployed teenagers aged 16-19 are not in school. On
the bright side, the rate of teen deaths by accident,
homicide or suicide dropped by 22% from 1996 to 2001,
according to the Kids Count 2004 organization. No wonder
Marine Corps recruiters approaching teenagers outside
malls to enlist them have their hands full.
Corporate Motown loves it, but popular Motown
harbors extreme mixed feelings about outsourcing.
Anthony Bradley of the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids
says that according to Forrester Research Inc, of more
than 2.7 million jobs lost in the United States in the
past three years, only 300,000 can be attributed to
outsourcing. Today General Motors is using more than
25,000 robots in its factories. Bradley says that
"blaming foreign workers as scapegoats for the fallout
from technological change sabotages America's
preparedness for such change". He adds that "outsourcing
outmoded jobs opens the door for Americans to land
better jobs and improve their well-being". That's not
exactly the view of the hordes of down-and-out in
downtown Detroit.
Sonic
revolution Berry Gordy once got a small house on
West Grand Boulevard that he baptized Hitsville USA and
an $800 loan to produce his first hit record. Still
today, when we enter the legendary Motown Studio A, kept
exactly as it was in the mid-1960s, it's possible to
hear The Temptations do their dance routine on "My Girl"
and The Supremes lay down those heavenly harmonies in
"You Can't Hurry Love". Where would we find the
contemporary Detroit symmetry to this fabulous
combination of vision, talent, creativity, enterprise
and extreme hard work?
Motown was based on 2468
West Grand Boulevard, in the two-story Hitsville.
Underground Resistance is based on 3000 East Grand
Boulevard, its headquarters at the three-story Laundry
Workers Local 129. Michael Anthony Banks, or Mad Mike,
is the contemporary equivalent of Berry Gordy.
Underground Resistance (UR) describes itself as "a label
for a movement which wants to create change by a sonic
revolution". UR spins techno, "the music of the future
of the universe". Not just any techno, but the Detroit
Pistons of techno: deep, tough, gritty and resilient.
Its key message is to "transmit these tones and wreak
havoc on the programmers".
UR has "allies" in
the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland, Australia and
Japan. Its techno genius is Jeff Mills ("The Man from
Tomorrow"). "Soldiers" include Agent Chaos, The Suburban
Knight, Abdul Qadim Haqq and The Aztec Mystic. This is
music as guerrilla warfare, rebels with a cause - unlike
the myriad corporations making easy money off the yurban
- young and urban - African-American demographic.
Bryan Mattox at Burrell Communications Group -
the largest black-owned advertising agency in the US -
may be milking the cow. But as far as good jobs for
black people are concerned, at least he is consulting
instead of consuming, exploring marketing opportunities
for hip-hop culture, or "young black folks", in his own
words. Brian Bullock, manager of business operations of
the National Basketball Development League, the
minor-league NBA, and Gregory Reed, writer, playwright
and even producer of a TV documentary on The
Temptations, and the first black lawyer to be awarded
Michigan's highest honor for entertainment lawyers, also
managed to position themselves in the midst of a sea of
downsizing and outsourcing. But they are islands, not
continents.
When Detroit needs to escape from
stress, it can always seek refuge in the Tara ("star") -
the key female deity in Buddhism (Tara in India, Dolma
in Tibet, Kwan Yin in China, Kannon in Japan). Tara
protects us from the eight fears that cause suffering:
pride, ignorance, anger, jealousy, delusion, stinginess,
desire and doubt. Gehlek Rimpoche, a Tibetan monk who
became a US citizen after the Chinese killed his mother
in Tibet and today directs a Buddhist center in Ann
Arbor, half an hour away from Detroit, says: "There's a
special need for Tara now. America is dominated by
feelings of fear, from the war in Iraq to crime in the
streets and violence in the media. Tara is a metaphor, a
way for us to find the joy within ourselves so that we
can end the suffering of others around us."
Without ever having heard of Tara, Mr E ("call
me E, for energy"), officiating in front of Motown's
Hitsville on West Grand, couldn't be more connected to
the joy within ourselves. He describes his job as
"guardian to the gates of Mecca" - that is, Motown. A
long conversation unfolds like a Buddhist mandala
- from Detroit urban violence to Iraq, from racism to
courtyard fountains, from soul music to eastern wisdom.
Mr E says he's a nomad: he may not even be there next
week. Now you see him, now you don't. Call it a
satori in front of the house that Gordy built. Or
call it the power of the spirit of Detroit.
No
superstars. No special effects. Just underground
resistance. The spirit of Detroit. Somehow the Pistons
beating the Lakers fits a larger cosmic pattern, and may
embody poetic justice after all.
The spirit of
Detroit
