This world dream can't be deferred

A little over a week is not too late to bow one's head to American voters for making the impossible possible. By doing so, they have burdened Barack Obama with a bigger task. He was already carrying the burden of history, especially more than 300 years of slavery, but now he cannot afford to fail to make a greater dream come true.

He has to live up to the notes of Huddie Ledbelly's 12-string guitar, rise to the baritone voice of Paul Robeson and the operatic brilliance of Marion Anderson. He will have to measure up to the songs of Josh White, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Odetta, Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba (she spent long years in the US as an exile from South Africa, and died four days ago in the land of her birth). The immortal music of Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis will seek justification, too. And of course, he has to honor crusaders on the folk trail such as Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Guthrie brings us to the Great Depression. Much has changed, especially in the US, since the 1930s. That's why the world may not see another Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Claude McKay or Marcus Garvey - or even a Richard Wright, James Baldwin or Ralph Ellis. Perhaps, it may not see a Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison either.