“Once upon a time” both opens the film Under the Cherry Moon as well as the song, “Mountains.” Given that the video for “Mountains” also closes the film, we might consider “Mountains” to be the defining song of the film (and the soundtrack)–it contains both the first word and final song of the film, and the song’s theme of love conquering all obstacles is arguably what drives the film’s narrative arc. “Mountains” does something else though: against the film’s real but mostly imagined geography of France, the visual and sonic callbacks to the 1920s and 30s, and an album that is very much about Prince’s almost hermetically sealed made world, “Mountains” uniquely pierces the land(scape) of fantasy with a stark and stand out reminder of the racial politics of 1980s America and the world. The song’s line, “Africa divided, hijack in the air,” may be the most explicit worldly concern expressed in the album, and by extension the film. This presentation examines the video’s contextualization of that verse in America’s racial politics and the global anti-apartheid struggle, and invites us to an even more pronounced reading of Prince’s racecraft. Finally, taking up the cues of both mountains and Prince’s signifying on Harlem Renaissance-era Black expatriate artists in France, we will bring into the conversation Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” to further scale Prince’s “Mountains.”

Zaheer Ali is an educator and oral historian with more than two decades of experience directing nationally recognized public history and cultural heritage initiatives. His work lies at the intersection of oral history, historic preservation, and narrative change, utilizing multiple media formats and platforms including websites, podcasts, social media, live streams, interactive audio, film, archival curation, exhibitions, and public programming. He is currently the inaugural executive director of the Hutchins Center for Civics at The Lawrenceville School, an innovative secondary school initiative advancing civic education through scholarship, programming, and experiential learning. As an adjunct lecturer at New York University, he taught a Spring 2017 course titled, “Prince: Sign of the Times,” an examination of Prince’s life and legacy in American history and culture. He’s presented his scholarship on Prince at conferences at Yale, Salford University in Manchester, England, and the University of Minnesota; and has participated in every polished solid Prince convening since 2017. He is currently developing the Prince Syllabus, exploring the life and work of Prince as a catalyst for social change.