The Reach of Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson left Neverland DOA. Millions of fans around the world mourned his promotion to the next world with flowers deposited before US embassies. My younger friends in New York reported that on the night of his death club-goers were dancing to a frenzied cascade of Michael Jackson hits from the Motown years on into the 21st Century. Thriller was his Mount Everest with the hit-spawning monster selling over 100 million albums. This epic success earned him worldwide recognition, although I never understood how far his influence had penetrated the masses, until I was crossing Lake Poso in 1992. The evening passage across the 500-meter high lake required a stop at a small shoreside village to avoid the danger of the nightly winds coming off the mountains.

This village had no electricity. The locals cooked food in wooden shacks and a young boy played Indonesian love songs by the fire. The only other foreigner on the boat was a German. Somehow our conversation turned to Michael Jackson. The German may have been a rave fan.

"Michael Jackon is #1."

"For dance music, yes, but there's not one song of his that you could play around a campfire."

I was immediately proven wrong by the young guitarist playing BEN, Michael Jackson's first solo #1 hit from a movie about killer rats. Halfway around the world without a radio or TV, this song had come to Lake Poso. And the guitarist knew all the words. That was the strength of his reach.

And few people can beat that.