Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show

On February 9th, 127.7 million viewers unable to attend the game watched the Philadelphia Eagles defeat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. According to Rolling Stone, the halftime show featuring Kendrick Lamar was the most watched in history, with over 133 million tuning in. Truth be told, I enjoyed the over-the-top, well-produced show that Mr. Lamar presented to the world that evening and preferred it to the phoned-in performance by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were blown off the stage by Bruno Mars in 2014. The folks at Fox News were not pleased with Lamar’s performance, and their news segment discussing the performance was titled Worst Halftime Show Ever. One of my former Columbia classmates, a Black American with progressive political views, posted a meme that featured sixteen white Americans, some wearing red MAGA hats, with the same title used in the Fox News feature on social media. In his juvenile view, individuals had a right not to like Kendrick Lamar’s performance, but if you hated it and felt compelled to say it, racism or prejudice had to be the reason why. Many of my black musician friends utterly hated Lamar’s performance, and I know why. In their opinion (and mine), the real tragedy is that many Americans, regardless of race, are oblivious to the stellar achievements of Black Americans in the music industry. To prove my point, I have crafted a questionnaire designed to get to the heart of the problem. The answers to the questions are all Black Americans. 

1. Name the pianist, trumpet, and saxophone player who defined the sound and substance of bebop jazz.
2. Name three band leaders who led orchestras, were consummate arrangers, and recorded with Frank Sinatra.
3. Who is the trumpet player who won a Grammy Award in both jazz and classical categories in the same year?
4. Name two female jazz vocalists from the period between 1930 and 1950.
5. Who is Louis Armstrong, and why is he important?
6. Who is most responsible for the advent of modal jazz in the 1950s and 1960s? How is it different from the bebop language that preceded it?
7. Sheets of Sound was a term coined by a music critic to describe a style of jazz improvisation hitherto unknown. Who is the jazz musician who pioneered this style of playing?
8. Who were Jo Jones, Philly Joe Jones, and Tony Williams? How did they differ stylistically?

If you know the answers to these questions, congratulations. If you did not (and this goes out to my Columbia University classmate), I suggest you get busy learning about these individuals who were the musical giants whose shoulders musicians of all races stand upon. The musicians in my questionnaire will still be talked about one hundred years from now, while Mr. Lamar and the trite controversy surrounding his performance will be largely forgotten. While it might be true (and unforgivable) that some people didn’t like Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance because of the color of his skin, many others would have preferred to see a prominent jazz or classical musician perform. Speaking for myself, I would have liked to see Eric B. and Rakim perform at halftime.