*“My identify is Ken, and I like males.” That’s the primary line from “Ken,” a tune about Barbie’s Without end Man written and carried out by singer/songwriter/educator/playwright Stew Stewart.
In 1999, when “Barbie” star Margo Robbie was simply 9 years previous, manner earlier than the “Barbie” blockbuster film earned greater than a billion {dollars} globally and jettisoned a cultural phenomenon into the stratosphere, and earlier than Stewart added the title of playwright to his enterprise card—“Passing Unusual,” his semi-biographical Broadway rock musical gained the Tony Award for Finest E-book in 2008—Stewart, with longtime collaborator and bassist Heidi Rodewald, helmed the eccentric art-rock Los Angeles-based indy band The Negro Drawback.
And on 1999’s Joys And Issues, the band’s second album appeared as a ditty about Barbie’s foremost squeeze.
Written and sung by Stewart within the sardonic, introspective first-person voice of Ken over a unusual, mid-tempo reggae-tinged beat, the world’s most well-known male doll sings that he’s keenly conscious of the dilemma his sexuality lays on the toes of his company god:
“The folks at Mattel, the house that I name hell/are considerably bothered by my queer proclivities. It’s protected to say that they’re actually pissed at me.”
And Ken is simply getting began.
“They at all times stick me with Barbie,” he complains. “However I need them to know/I want G.I. Joe/however any able-bodied man-doll will certainly do/simply somebody to like since I’m not set as much as screw.”
For a tune penned greater than 20 years in the past, at the moment Stewart’s “Ken” stands smack dab within the intersection of Twenty first-century LGBTQ politics and the surreal resurgence of an iconic American toy. Outstanding, contemplating that when Stewart wrote it, ethical/societal heaviness was the very last thing on his thoughts.
“There was nothing political about it in any way,” Stewart says. “It was simply this foolish factor that got here to me whereas I used to be sitting on my daughter’s mattress tuning my guitar, ready for her to seek out her socks. She’s grown now, which tells you the way way back that was. It took her longer to seek out these socks than it took me to put in writing the tune. I went and recorded it so quick that I didn’t even want to put in writing down the phrases. I simply sang them as I recorded it.”
Not {that a} “homosexual” Ken was out of the query. The early ‘90s, a watershed decade for the LGBTQ motion, noticed Mattel introduce “Earring Magic Ken.” The legendary toy firm by no means mentioned as a lot, however to many the doll’s aptitude for looser, hipper trend kinds and penchant for lavender inferred that Mr. Magic could possibly be homosexual.
Stewart’s “Ken” doesn’t peddle such ambiguity. “Sometime quickly I’ll be in your baby’s room,” the doll laments. “And I’ll be pressured to kiss Barbie’s plastic tits/And I’ll hate myself however what’s extra, I’ll hate you/For not permitting me to like as I want to.”
“The response to the tune has at all times been twofold,” says the now Brooklyn-based Stewart, 62. “Some folks hear ‘Ken’ as humorous and others say it’s so unhappy that he can’t discover love. Throughout dwell reveals, after I’d carry out it with simply my acoustic guitar, the tune would tackle a extra poignant nature.”
Both manner, be warned: “Ken” is a licensed earworm, as infectious and mind-imprinting as Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 catchphrase-as-pop anthem, “Don’t Fear Be Pleased” or Pharrell’s contagious 2013 smash, “Pleased.”
“I admire those that just like the tune for no matter motive,” says Stewart. “I hadn’t considered it in years.”
That’s as a result of he’s busy. The ever-prolific Stew balances a rock and roll profession that has produced seven Negro Drawback, 5 solo “Stew” albums, and a group of songs beneath the moniker Baba Bibi, together with his submit as Professor of the Apply of Musical Theater Writing at Harvard College.
At the moment, Stewart is creating music for Chris Rock’s Broadway-bound “Good Hair,” and he and Rodewald composed songs for Spike Lee’s film musical in pre-production about Viagra.
On March twenty second and twenty third at Higher Manhattan’s esteemed Harlem Stage in Harlem, Stewart premieres Excessive Substitute For The Head Lecturer, his musical reflection on the affect iconic author/Black Arts Motion founder Amiri Baraka (beforehand generally known as Leroi Jones) has on his life and work. It’s the second Harlem Stage presentation in Stewart’s formidable sequence of “Black super-hero free-constructions,” the primary being his critically acclaimed Notes of a Native Track, the musical meditation on James Baldwin.
Because the success of “Barbie,” Stewart’s “Ken” has turn into an underground confection amongst Negro Drawback/Stew devotees, who dangle the tune earlier than all-things-Barbie followers as if to say, ‘Yeah, however you didn’t learn about this.’
“When “Barbie” hit the theatres, folks began calling me with, ‘Man, you gotta get ‘Ken’ again on the market,’” says Stewart. “Really, it’s been on the market for years, simply ready for folks to seek out it.”
Steven Ivory, veteran journalist, essayist and writer, writes about well-liked tradition for magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, and the Web. Reply to him through [email protected]
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