Marvin Gaye was born on April 2nd 1939 in Washington, D.C and was one of the key figures in evolving the musical genres R&B, Soul, Doo-wop and funk. The multi-talented singer, songwriter, composer, producer and instrumentalist was an expert at playing keyboards, drums, percussion, clavinet, synthesizers and piano. He first started his career as a member in the doo-wop group known as The Moonglows and moved on to create a grand solo-career for himself in a label called Tamla, a subsidiary of Motown Records. In the 1960s he was known as “The Prince of Motown” and “The Prince of Soul” because of hits such as “Ain’t that peculiar” and “I heard it through the grapevine”.
What’s Going On; the eleventh album of Marvin Gaye was released on May 21st, 1971. It was an album solely produced and credited to Marvin Gaye and was also the first time the extremely talented session musicians from Motown records known as the Funk Brothers were given credit on a studio album. There was a lot of controversy and politics surrounding the release of this album between Motown records producer-owner Berry Gordy and Marvin Gaye, as Motown would try to heavily control the artistic ideas of their artists. Berry would constantly try to push Marvin towards righting more Rhythm and Blues oriented songs while Marvin refused to compromise, predominantly writing jazz and funk-oriented numbers. Marvin would time and time again prove to Berry and the label that his songs and ideas were nothing but Chart toppers and so was the case with What’s Going On as well. The album was written in the perspective of a war hero returning from the Vietnam War, to find nothing but injustice, suffering and hatred. Following the album release politics between Berry and Marvin, the album topped the Billboard Pop charts for over a year and sold over 2-million copies by the end of 1972. Critics around the world have noted it to be one of the landmarks in Pop Recording history and the album currently occupies itself in the 6th place of Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 greatest albums of all time.
The album content of What’s Going On is heavily surround by politics, poverty, political corruption, environmentalism, drug abuse and the Vietnam War. Critics regarded it during the time as a trendsetter due to the thematic approach to song composition. While most of Motown and Marvin’s material were revolving around themes of love, romanticism, eroticism and sexuality it was surprise for fans and critics as such. It was the first of the soul recordings during its time to present a new topic, which made it stand apart from most recordings in the genre during that time. While most people know Marvin for his Grammy Award-winning hit ‘Sexual healing’ from his album ‘Midnight Love’, it was Marvin’s title song of the album ‘What’s Going On’ that set him apart from most Soul singers during our times.
I have never been a great fan of Marvin Gaye until recent times as it was not material that I reached out to until recently. I do like a lot of the off springs of funk music but the musical writing style within Soul music never appealed to me. I always enjoyed a more anarchist, experimental musical expression that broke a lot of rules behind song structures and composition but I do have to admit that Marvin is a phenomenal classical composer innovating the musical ideas found in the genres of Funk, Soul and R&B. I have learnt that he is quite the “Player” with the ladies and has an amazing 3-Octave voice. I am however now learning a lot from listening to his accolades and learning quite a bit about funk and the culture surrounding it as it didn’t make a large impact in India, where I am originally from.
