“I’m looking for albino musicians”: The band Sly Stone thought could end racial tension in music
Bold ideas and unapologetic originality always typified the career of Sly Stone. After all, he was the progenitor of one of the most innovative and infectious funk-rock outfits of all time, Sly and the Family Stone – that sort of thing doesn’t happen by accident. Although his time here on Earth was punctuated by an endless onslaught of peaks and troughs, he never lost his artistic drive or his appetite for creating something entirely new. Ultimately, though, some of the songwriter’s ideas were more well-thought-out than others.
To call Sly and the Family Stone a revolutionary band would be a gross understatement. Like a life drawing class in 1917 Leningrad, the counterculture era of the 1960s was chock-full of artistic revolutionaries. Musicians, designers, poets, and painters of the era were all attempting to subvert mainstream expectations and forge something entirely new to reflect the vibrancy and rebellion of the era, but nobody pulled it off quite like Sly Stone and his band.
With a backdrop of the civil rights movement, ongoing racial tensions, and an unavoidable divide between the sexes, the simple fact that Sly and the Family Stone were a mixed-race, mixed-gender, mixed-genre band was profoundly revolutionary in its own right. Even before the band had played a note, their mere presence broke down barriers, holding a mirror up to the abhorrent social attitudes that prevailed in mainstream American society at that time (and, incidentally, are rapidly at risk of returning in the modern-day United States).
Their unique blend of funk, soul, rock, and psychedelia further reflected that destruction of barriers, too. Nevertheless, Sly and the Family Stone were still plagued by issues surrounding their mixed-race line-up. Not only did they face criticism resulting from the racist attitudes of middle America at that time, but they also faced pressure from the increasingly militant Black Power Movement.
Reportedly, when the band started to witness more commercial successes during the late 1960s, the Black Panther Party demanded that Stone replace the white musicians in the band with Black ones, rather missing the point of the band’s pioneering mixed-race line-up. Of course, Sly Stone was dealing with his own problems around that time, spurred on by a changing musical direction and an unimaginable quantity of mind-bending drugs. Still, the issue of racial tensions clearly stuck in Stone’s mind for much of his life.
Then, in 2013, he came up with a solution: “I’m looking for albino musicians,” he told The Guardian. Once the dust had settled on that rather bold statement, the songwriter explained, “My feeling about it is that it could neutralise all the different racial problems. To me, albinos are the most legitimate minority group of all. All races have albinos.”
While it is true that albinism can affect people of all different races, ethnicities, and genders without discrimination, it is not exactly clear how Stone thought a band of albino musicians would end racial tensions. After all, albinos face a considerable degree of discrimination in their own right, regardless of their racial background. Nevertheless, Stone’s wishful thinking was certainly rooted in an admirable aim.
“If we all realise that we’ve all got albinos in our families, it’s going to take away from the ridiculous racial tension, if you’re black or you’re white, blah blah blah,” the songwriter continued. “That’s why I’ve been trying to look for albino musicians and organise a group of people that are going to be right…People will see us, all of us together – a real family, an albino family. People will get happy when they see that. People have got to be happy for that.”
Ultimately, Stone’s plans for an all-albino band – presumably excluding himself, who was obviously not an albino – never came to fruition, leaving the hypothesis that albinos could end racial tension unrealised. It is, of course, easy to denounce Stone’s take on albinism and its potential to unite all races as being misguided, impulsive, and bizarre (they are all of those things, after all). However, they do at least reflect the songwriter’s unwavering dedication to breaking down barriers, something which typified his entire career.
