Despite Carey’s caricature of black stylistics and her mixed racial background, the skin-color difference between her and Houston managed to bring out America’s racism. Houston was subject to the singer’s version of the black athlete’s curse: as the daughter of the gospel great Cissy Houston and a cousin of Dionne, Whitney was regarded as all instinct and natural gifts, whereas Mariah, arranger and songwriter, had a brain. These were habits that Houston-having been shaped by traditional gospel and its conservative nature, and by her cousin Dionne Warwick’s elegantly restrained performance style-largely eschewed. The first challenge to Houston’s legacy arrived in the early nineties, in the form of Mariah Carey, who, from the very beginning of her career, with her constant vocal runs and obsessive flurry of hands, took certain “black” singing habits to extremes. And the woman who was once the most famous singer in the world was an incomparable artist. Brown’s book may threaten Houston’s legacy as a mother or as a friend, but the “Star Trek”-style hologram threatens her legacy as an artist. What’s remarkable is how seamlessly (almost invisibly) each gesture is built into the performance. There is a video of Houston performing a medley of her hits in which nearly every rhythmic gesture has a meaning: a subtle nod of the head signals the start of the song a purposeful strut upstage and a drop of the arms alerts the band to proceed to the next number yet another drop of the arms tells the band how long to hold a note a slow undulation of her left hand tells it to quiet down. But no non-dancer moved among the four corners of a performance stage with more elegance or musical intent than Whitney Houston did. With their mostly rhythmless gaits, their barely there two-steps, rappers have nothing to fear from herky-jerky virtual projections of themselves synched to a vocal track. So far, the digital smoke and mirrors has been used primarily to summon rappers back from the dead. But it’s the spectre of a hologram that is more unsettling. If half of what has been rumored about Houston’s more unpleasant behavior is true, Brown’s revelations will no doubt be shocking (if anyone is still capable of being shocked by celebrities). & B. bad boy Bobby Brown, is due out sometime in June, and a hologram performance of Houston singing her greatest hits has been promised by a billionaire financier from Greece. Photograph by George Rose / Gettyįans and admirers of the late singer Whitney Houston are in for a difficult year. A memoir by her ex-husband, the R. Whitney Houston performs the national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl.
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