Music, Materialism, Mali

Last night I heard Orchestra Baobab for the first time. I am a relative novice when it comes to African pop music. I don't have the record name, but this Senegalese band (big in the 1970's and 80's and then reunited in 2001) has the strangest version of "La Bamba" you are likely to hear.

Anyway. It was the excessive reverb and poor recording quality that reminded me of some of the finest music I have come across in the past year, from Mali (Senegal's neighbor to the east---and yes I had to consult a map). The Salif Keita record (The Best of the Early Years) I picked up in South Africa last summer has been in heavy rotation on my CD player since. The music is extraordinary. Both the Orchestra Baobab and the Salif Keita records feature a variety of Afro-beat much more laid back and lilting than the overtly political (and wonderful) music of Fela Kuti, who is more well known (and always on fire).

Perhaps there is a tendency to see the low production quality of these recordings as somehow quaint. Not for me. The music shines through, perhaps because with these recordings the music and its messages come first; studio gear and equipment come a distant second. There is bombardment from all sides in all areas of life to keep up to date with one's gadgets, products, accessories, clothes, food, medicine, all that shit. Frequently there is a conviction that a new piece of eequipment, or software, or a better recording, or whatever, will solve a musician's problems. Jazz pioneer Charlie Parker once showed up for a concert without an instrument and ended up performing on a plastic saxophone.

And why not? Some of the greatest music I have ever heard was on the street in Grahamstown, South Africa; a poor family of four busking, with the father playing a worn-out guitar and one of his sons playing a drumset made of rusty oil cans. When I told the kid I liked his drumset he blushed and his friends laughed, as though I was trying to humiliate him. They didn't realize, and I couldn't explain, that here in post modern Europe I can actually find work as a musician utilizing similar equipment (along with cheap microphones and a shitty mixer). Here, playing music on tin cans might seem to be an affectation while for that kid on the street it was a necessity. I play on my cheap equipment because I don't want consumerism to get in the way of my music making, because I don't need fancy equipment, but mostly because the sound I want is the sound I hear.

So. Salif Keita. He's from Mali. And just here on my shelf is a phenomenal book I read a few years ago by Malian author Yambo Ouologuem. Totally unrelated otherwise. Here is my favorite passage from the book (Bound to Violence, 1968)

...the connecting link, they call it. They capture two birds and tie them together. Not too close. The cord is thin, strong, and fairly long. When the birds are released they take flight, they think they are free and rejoice in the wideness of the sky. But suddenly: crack! The cord is stretched taut. They flutter and whirl in all directions, blood drips from their bruised wings [...] Sometimes the cord gets tangled in a branch or twines around the birds, and they struggle as though caught in a trap, peck at each other's eyes beaks, and wings, and if Providence doesn't impale them on a branch, one of them dies before the game is over. Alone. Or with the other. Both of them. Together. Strangled; blinded.

Mankind is such a bird. We are all victims of the game; separate, but tied together. All of us, without exception.

Quite a pessimistic view of humankind. But then, I just heard that the asshole who donated thousands of dollars to put the Perfect Example of all That is Wrong with the World (Dick Cheney) in office has apologized for the trouble he caused Cheney by being shot in the face by him!

News

In addition to the pretty new colors, I have revamped the links list. Do explore. And below, to the right, I placed a list of books. Good ones.

To add a little substance to this post, check out this and this.

Danish Cartoons: Amusing Ourselves to Death?

Wait. Stop. Hold it. You thought you were going to read here about the by-now worldwide instability generated by a series of cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammed that were printed in Denmark last September.

That's a laugh.

Thousands are protesting in the streets of Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere against these insensitive, antagonizing, and in some cases downright racist images. Embassies are blockaded, diplomats called home, the very question of freedom of speech and self-censorship is invoked, insults are hurled left and right.

This is funny.

Your corporate news agency of choice, the one with the left-wing or right-wing bias (you decide!) has conveniently carved up "The Muslim World" for you, once again, into the radical fundamentalists (bad), the justifiably angry (also bad), and the moderate Muslims who support "press freedom" (good, but still Muslim, so eyed with suspicion).

What a good joke!

Now. While various advocacy and ideological groups were busy formulating a strategy, while news organizations were busy formulating a story, and while you were busy formulating an opinion, innocent people were murdered. For profit!

How convenient, ladies and gentlemen! What a wonderful sideshow! And I'm lovin' it! Racist, imperialist, corporatist, murderous invasion of sovereign nations disguised as a benevolent attempt to spread democracy to savages but almost universally recognized as criminal? What racist, imperialist, corporatist, murderous invasion of sovereign nations disguised as a benevolent attempt to spread democracy to savages but almost universally recognized as criminal would that be? I have no idea what you're talking about. This is about press freedom and self-censorship in the mighty and magnanimous West.

Well I see it pretty simply. Freedom of speech is not an invitation to be an asshole, which is exactly how I would characterize the racist Westerners with the nerve to create and publish such (obviously) insensitive material at a goddamn time like this. Not that it justifies the reaction. But. Denmark (I know it’s not the whole country...) might be seen to be a bit more objective if its government would cut off all ties---ALL TIES---with the US and UK and associated invading nations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s the only stand up thing to do: kick ambassadors out, stop doing business. Full fucking stop. Short of that, it’s just straight up disgusting to draw a bomb on the head of the founder of your enemy’s religion and publish it when you know it’s antagonizing. I mean, they know it’s antagonization.

Anybody remember when Europe raised its voice against the relatively recent rise to power of a certain Nazi-friendly politician by the name of Jorg Haider? Not only is there such a thing as society, but it's international, and it can do positive things by standing up to injustice and the intolerable...which is to say, Denmark and other nations do not have to do business with the governments actively engaging in destroying the world.

And those of us openly criticizing the destruction of the planet do not need to be sucked into trivialities. Instead of reporting on the quaint anger of various Muslim groups, perhaps news organizations should be reminding protestors that they might want to save their energy to resist the very real crusade to corporatize and Christianize and kleptofy their sacred lands.

So I made up "kleptofy". Let it go.

To review: murderous, bloodthirsty, ecocidal corporate cowards force economically-drafted and otherwise misinformed young people to invade oil-rich nations and indescriminately kill anyone who resists and/or prays to Allah. Daily newspaper from a semi-peaceful nation in general economic and occassional military partnership with the Imperium makes error of judgement and prints offensive but really really insignificant (and unfunny) (and third-rate) political cartoons depicting the main prophet of the main religion of the colonized population. Adherents of that religion stage worldwide protests of varying ferocity. Giant propoganda-dispensing news organizations of the Imperium laugh all the way to the bank. Young people from Kentucky and elsewhere continue to shoot young people from Kirkuk and elsewhere in the face. The white men with the dark suits continue to consolidate the power to perpetuate this shit.

And so on and so forth. Listen, here's a passage from a somewhat relevant book:

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.

The book is Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. My sister lent it to me. I recommend you find a copy and read it.

Postman has more to say in his book.

Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us...But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements. To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?

I love that passage. Want to know more about the kids in Kirkuk and elsewhere? Look here. Want to see the Danish cartoons and some illuminating historical images? Check this out. Want to make me happy? Comment.

Note: please see the comments section for why the link to the cartoons and other images was removed.