Music Break: Prince, live at the 36th NAACP Image Awards (2005)
Generosity, security, mastery, and joy...it's all here.
A busy teaching season has me able to offer very little in regards to this weekly newsletter. Fortunately, Prince is able to fill in for me. So let’s take a music break.
Earlier this month, the NAACP Image Awards YouTube channel posted this incredible performance from twenty years ago. Prince remains one of the greatest performers in American history. This one has it all: his ability to mix, change, rearrange his original music with covers, plus his rich confidence in his own mastery of nearly every instrument combined with his curation of just amazing players…all in 12 minutes on live TV.
Prince was notoriously strange and often difficult to work with, but nearly everyone who has a story about him (and there are LOTS of amazing Prince stories—a wonderful YouTube deep dive, if you’re open to a rabbit hole) tells of his kindness and generosity (one of the best is the NBA Center Carlos Boozer talking about renting Prince’s house). I think this shows up in this performances as he yields the stage to a few dynamic singers and musicians and, finally, at the end, allowing the great Sheila E. to shut it down on drums. Also: there’s a great crowd in this video that includes a young Barack Obama is the first few minutes. Imagine how his life changed after this show.
Enjoy this! Or enjoy other great performances from Black artists as Black History Month closes…the contributions are immense and numerous (maybe James Brown’s historic TAMI performance in 1961, or Sister Rosetta Tharpe in 1960, or Aretha at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in 1974, or Sly Stone on Midnight Special in 1974, or the Fugees live at the Apollo in 1996, or Charles Bradley at KEXP Seattle in 2001, or T-Pain’s Tiny Desk in 2014, or Melvin Crispell’s incredible Hymn “No Failure” from 2023, or Doechii on the Late Show a few months back). Music is awesome.
Here’s Prince for a music break: