American Embassy turns a young generation of Panamanians on to soul music

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The mostly young and Panamanian --- but also older and American --- crowd that showed up for the US Embassy's soul music presentation at the University of Panama. Photo by Eric Jackson

American Embassy turns a new generation on to soul music

Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!

Stevie Wonder

Sometimes you've got to let everything go --- purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything ... whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.

Tina Turner

We did not set out to make black music. We set out to make quality music that everyone could enjoy and listen to.

Smokey Robinson

On April 7 at the University of Panama's Curundu campus, the US Embassy's Information and Cultural Section held a session on soul music, much of which was taken up by showing excerpts from Only the Strong Survive: a celebration of soul, a 2001 documentary mostly focusing on the "southern soul" part of the phenomenon that revolved mainly around Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee. (The other major record label that concentrated on and was identified with soul music was Motown Records, in Detroit, Michigan.)

American retirees and soul-influenced Afro-Panamanians of the same generation were represented, but there was a need to get more chairs for the large turnout of enthusiastic young students, most but not all of them musicians.

That video? It's part of the collection at the Amador-Washington Library, which has moved out to Clayton.