Everyday People

I went back to The Whitworth last week to revisit the Beneath The Great Wave exhibition, a selection of surviving prints from Edo period Japan by Katsushika Hokusai and Utogara Hiroshiga. I loved it when I went in March, its free, I'm off work- what's not to love? 

The Whitworth is a beautiful building, stepping in through the front into the modernist interior and recent re- modelling is in itself a joy. The woodblock prints of Japan's floating world are visionary- the colours, the lines, the perspectives- and seem to be both old and modern at the same time. There are drawing of nature- the great wave of the exhibition's name and numerous prints of Mount Fuji.

The scenes portrayed in some of the prints, show Japanese people going about their daily business- farmers, travellers, actors, Geisha, merchants, urban dwellers and rural peasants, Samurai. The floating world (Ukiyo) became a phrase used to describe the growing urban world, where Edo (future Tokyo) became a place for hedonism and urban lifestyles. It and the prints also brought Japan into contact with the West. 

As I walked into the gallery last Tuesday a primary school was in the large open room that overlooks Whitworth Park and as I started to make my way round the prints the children started singing Sly and The Family Stone's Everyday People.

I poked my head round the corner to have a look and the children's choir were singing for parents and carers, a teacher conducting this group of multi cultural and diverse ten and eleven year olds singing...

'There is a blue one who can't accept the green one for living with a fat one trying to be a skinny one, different strokes for different folks, and so on and so on and scooby- dooby- doo one... I I I I am everyday people'

It was quite a moment, completely unexpected and a little overwhelming. 

In 1992 Arrested Development borrowed Sly Stone's hit for their own song, a tale of respect (and the lack of it) and a warning about the dangers of violence. Arrested Development were a big thing for a while in 1992-3, an alternative voice in the rap world. 

People Everyday