The Wiz Live: More than a Musical, It was a Reprieve for Black America
Reprieve is the cancellation or postponement of the punishment of someone, especially someone condemned to death. Black America has been under fire, more so now than some of us who grew up singing along to the original motion picture The Wiz (1978) have ever felt. In the past three years turning on our televisions has become an all out assault on our psyche. At times we cannot handle it. At times we ask for no bad news.
The Wiz Live, NBC Thursday December 3rd 2015
On Thursday night, NBC put on a live musical for the holidays during prime time and this year’s choice was The Wiz. An Urban rendition of the Wizard of Oz (1939) which after years of successful stage presence made it to America’s televisions, into America’s living rooms, and won over many American hearts. Yet it was always in many Black American hearts and no amount of dismissing it as “reverse racist” on social media could remove the feeling in our hearts of home as we watched Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tinman and Cowardly Lion easing on down the road.
Throughout America, watching NBC, a most accessible channel, watching live, a Black cast without editing, Black smiles, laughs, claps and voices created a noise that was joyful and sounded like home. The home that Glinda the good witch reminded Dorothy she had found in Kansas. Do we not find home wherever we go? Do we not make greatness out of nothing? We do.
I read a review of The Wiz Live stating it needed an audience to give response at the call throughout the show. Yet as an audience member myself, in my own home, I gave my response when it was called upon. To have an audience in the studio, would the show have truly been for all of America? Or once again would it have been a guided show with a sign on cue for “Applause?” Let me ask you, did you not sit up and rejoice?
For two hours and forty-five minutes home was my living room. There was no place like The Wiz Live.
It was a reprieve from the hate speech condoned by America as freedom of speech. A reprieve from the gun violence and its hypocrisies. A reprieve from ignorance and the dismissal of learning the truth. A reprieve from what America wants us to believe is Black entertainment. A reprieve from assault that begins as we step outside our doors. A reprieve from seeing Black people degraded but paid. A reprieve by definition: the postponement of condemnation to death.
At that moment did you not sing the following and truly feel it for that two hours and forty-five minutes?:
When I wake up in the afternoon
Which it pleases me to do
Don't nobody bring me no bad news
'Cause I wake up already negative
And I’ve wired up my fuse
So don't nobody bring me no bad news
Everybody be glad
Because the sun is shining just for us
Everybody wake up into the morning into happiness
Hello world
It's like a different way of living now
Thank you, world
We always knew that we'd be free somehow
In harmony let's show the world that we've got
Liberty
It's such a change for us to live so independently
Freedom you see
Has got our hearts singing so joyfully
Just look about
You owe it to yourself to check it out
Can you feel a brand new day?
Can you feel a brand new day?
Hailing from Charlottesville, Va, LaToya Brackett, PhD is an adjunct professor of History at Whitworth University in Spokane Washington and is the Founder of Perception Consulting, an intercultural and diversity consulting venture.