Bach-Turner Overdrive

Tina Turner passed away this week at age 83, but she did so as a citizen of Switzerland. In fact, if you type her name into Google, it generates a personal line with her photograph and the description “Tina Turner, Swiss Singer.” That she married a Swiss gentleman named Bach was a partial cause for this switch of nationalities for an American icon, not enough to send her into overdrive and to renounce American citizenship.

Her actual motive, as expressed to the late Larry King in an interview, was to acknowledge that Europe “treated her better” than we did. Her passing seems like an appropriate moment for national reflection. Why is it that so many African American performers have done so well in England, France and Switzerland, to the point where many of them decided that their bread was better buttered on the other side?

The most famous of all was probably Josephine Baker (1906-1975) née Macdonald, who was a bit of a star in America before she went to tour Europe and never came back. There she was, a star of music, dance and even film. Whatever she did on a stage, they could never get enough.

She had a degree of confidence in her stardom there, to the point where she was helping orphans during World War Two resettle safely in Europe. Clearly, she found a home there that she never quite achieved back in the United States of America. The first question is “Why?”, but the questions which follow tend to wonder if somehow racism had become more entrenched here than elsewhere, an awful thought indeed.

There are no doubt several reasons for this, and the question becomes how much weight to ascribe to each. One factor is math. Blacks are 13 percent of the population of the United States, more than one in eight. In Europe, England has the highest percentage of blacks, somewhere about 3 1/2%. Other countries have considerably less.

A second, perhaps related, factor is novelty. Somehow the white culture in Europe is so prevalent that it is seen as boring.

In any case, there is a kind of irony in the fact that American Blacks are more successful in Europe than African performers who jump on a boat. So it is not only a success story for African American performers; it bespeaks the unique success of American music rendered in Europe by African-American performers. As Tina told Larry King, “I get bigger crowds in Europe than Madonna!”

Putting aside this not fully solved mystery, we may posit with assurance that Tina deserved to succeed everywhere. She brought great energy and taught real wisdom for life. She had learned a lot herself, often through real personal suffering. But at the end of the day, she is our national hero more than anyone else’s.

She came from poverty, through misery, crawling and scratching and finally marching to majesty. She sang “What’s love got to do with it?” with such a poignant blend of irony and passion until there could only be one answer.

What’s love got to do with it? Everything.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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