Three Things: Marvin Gaye - Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
The Divine Testimony of St. Marvin
What’s Going On is a perfect thing. Inner City Blues is a fitting, inspired way to complete a meditation on poverty, civil unrest, drug abuse, war, police brutality, and violence. This is not simply urban reporting. It is the foremost expression of grief and desire for harmony ever committed to record. It would have been tremendously easy for Mr. Gaye to rage both into a microphone and toward the heavens, but that is not how one prays. Make no mistake, the album is a prayer. Mr. Gaye says these inner-city blues make him want to holler. That he doesn’t is his greatest vindication.
There is sacred power in women’s hands. Know that’s true. That’s Bobbye Hall laying hands on the bongos. She carved out a damn fine reputation as an associate of Motown’s own Funk Brothers, the Wrecking Crew, and a host of other members of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. What she manages here is transformative - leaping off this track while somehow, miraculously, being subdued AND lyrical. She rises up out of that profound intro to serve as a kind of guardian angel for this final reconciliation. Bobbye is going to navigate us and protect us from the damage of our own egos and the bend of men toward self-destruction. We will not get out of pocket on her watch. She takes us all the way through, beyond the end of the vocal. It’s her hands on the drums we hear most prominently as the song concludes. Lay your hands on me.
The coda recalls the storied opening track. We end at the beginning. While each of us must fall apart with time - time being undefeated - Inner City Blues gets better with age. There is a grim gravity to the entire album, but as the inexorable march of time and humankind’s willingness to hurt each other progressed, the messages of the album deepened. Mr. Gaye's articulations are within reach of his players, so everyone can perform the weighty effects. The vision coalesced into a warm, luminous line. There are no cracks. We are, however, left with the brutal reality that all of us might not be brothers and sisters. We can still dream, and failing that, we can holler.