You’ll probably never forget where you were or what you were doing when you heard the news. I was sneaking a little time on Facebook enjoying a conversation with a fellow musician who was gigging in Switzerland. We were enjoying a nice chat when she suddenly typed “They’re saying Michael Jackson’s dead?” Of course, active consumer of American media that I am, I immediately thought it was half-true and that Michael was probably sick. Too young to die! No way. We haven’t seen each other in a while, but we’re growing old together. However, once I logged on to my trusted news sources, the suspect declaration became an awful echo, a scratch on my favorite record stumbling on the same words over and over again – “Michael dead”, “Michael dead”. It was true and in a moment I was forced back through time to a part of my life I’d long neglected to visit - my own childhood and young Michael’s place in it. Picture Haiti, 1970s, I’m getting ready for elementary school, picking my hair into an Afro, J-5 style as my mother struggles desperately to convince me that my hair looks nicer the way she’s always done it – the flat pancake style. I’m sure I didn’t have enough hair to do what I thought I was accomplishing that morning but the older men in my family had perfect afros, coiffed in the Jackson style and young Michael was my excuse to join the fraternity. Of course, at this time, I lacked a serious appreciation for Michael’s amazing achievements as lead vocalist of the Jackson 5. His genius shone on songs like: “Ben”, “I Want You Back”, “Where You Are”, “People make the world go round”, “Maria”, “Got to be there”, “With a child’s heart”, “If N I was God” and many others. Then there were the hits! The songs – astoundingly well-performed by a child who had received no professional vocal training – demonstrated Michael’s amazing ability to sing just about anything from the American Jazz, Blues or Pop repertoire. I lost interest in Michael and the Jacksons until the late 1970s. Having lost the Afro war with mom, I prepared for the next big thing - Gerry curls! Once again Michael was leading the way in “coiffure”. Michael’s “Off the Wall” took the dance world by storm and Haiti could not resist Disco’s definitive album. “Off the Wall” was my initiation into the world of black dance and rhythm. Unfortunately, nothing on that album could have prepared anyone’s feet or body for the one that was to follow. The release of the album “Thriller” made Michael an international pop icon and cemented his genius. While he no longer had the powerful chops and range of earlier years, he devised a new vocal technique that was less lavish, sharp and percussive in the manner of James Brown. A master Disco dancer throughout the 1970s, by the time Thriller came around, Michael had devised a distinct set of moves uniquely suited to his physique and his brand of Pop music. His choreography for the songs, “Billie Jean”, “Beat It” and “Thriller” revolutionized dance for a decade while catapulting the role of professional dancers in music videos. Oh, and incidentally, he practically devised the blueprint for the modern music video. He graced the best album cover ever released to world audiences. Michael’s outfit for the Thriller cover foreshadowed the casual mood that would beset the traditional suit throughout the 1980s. His video outfits for a time influenced street fashion all over America and the free world. While we all shared in most of the fashions he helped popularize, no one could wear or use his main prop – the white diamond encrusted glove – with his unique flair. After all it wasn’t quite the glove but the hand or rather the man in the glove. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, all that glitters is not gold. Like the Biblical David, Michael’s first Goliath was the monumental pressure he had to meet to help sustain a large family as the face and voice of the Jackson 5. Maybe the other brothers could take a day off or go home early from the studio, but not Michael or his father Joseph for that matter. And what of his relationship to Joseph? This part of Michael’s life also mirrors the complications the Biblical David faced with his beloved spiritual father, Saul. He suffered with a skin disorder and was isolated from everyday reality by his own fame and popularity. His attempts to join the rest of the world in establishing his own private comforts through family were publicized and unfairly ridiculed by the American press. Michael’s fateful personal decision to only partially grow up is perhaps the act that will most define his life. It is in my mind a most selfless act of sacrifice. He realized early on which version of Michael the public wanted. They preferred the innocent pug nose 10 year old with the powerfully high pitched voice – not the pimpled, broad nosed adult. He did everything he could to remain that particular person and if it meant a few nose jobs to maintain the voice and a personality fed on one hand by the sharp business sense of his father and on the other hand the fanciful dreams of Walt Disney, then so be it. I lost interest in Michael after the “Thriller” album. I had been chasing adulthood all my life and couldn’t wait to join the club of the knowledgeable and sophisticated. It was a time for me to be a part of the Jungle Brothers, Run DMC and Public Enemy – man’s work! Michael was still “Bad” but not bad enough to help me through an adulterated ghetto. We changed! Michael remained Michael, the 10 year-old who never left his Eden for the trappings of our version of adulthood. A tale was once told of a man who walked the earth performing magic and spreading good news of a kind of “Never Land”. He excited humanity with talk of a wonderful place away from this earth and its worries. His good deeds were many and his ways blameless but he was falsely accused and eventually abandoned to die nailed to a cross on a lonely hill. After his passing, humanity, realizing its mistake asked for another chance. Down came young Michael Joseph Jackson, a man unlike anything we’d ever heard or seen who filled our lives with his music and magic and even built a “Never Land”. “Wacko Jacko” and “Freak” he was eventually called! We, who knew him best, welcomed his exile to a foreign land and in the hour of his greatest need joined the mob and left him to suffer the pains of his many sacrifices alone. May you rise in an undisturbed peace little Michael son of Joseph! It is we who should want to be where you are.