Inauguration Special! Songs of Hope & Change Part 2

I started writing this post last night, but really couldn’t find the words. I was in that middle realm, waiting for the end of Bush’s regime and the excited for the something bigger, something brighter. So this playlist is half “We’ve had eight years of crap and I’d really like this to be over with, thankyouverymuch” and half “Things can get better…things WILL get better.” So yeah, it’s probably not as cohesive as Elizabeth’s playlist and I didn’t give thorough descriptions of each song, but I pulled a quote from each song that hammers home why I chose that song.

Crime in Stereo – “I, Stateside”
God please save these troubled states.

Embrace – “No More Pain”
No more petty love/No more petty hate/No more pettiness/No more pain

Against Me! – “From Her Lips To God’s Ears (The Energizer)”
After all this death and destruction/Do you really think your actions advocate freedom?

Black Flag – “Rise Above”
We’re gonna rise above

Comeback Kid – “Wake the Dead”
Don’t lose hope/Don’t let it happen to you/Which side are you gonna choose?/Because I believe, I believe it’s in you.

The Decemberists – “Sons & Daughters”
Here all the bombs fade away

Also, I made an imeem playlist of the songs but couldn’t embed it into the blog. So, yeah, get with the clicky here to listen to the songs: Ryan’s Songs of Change and Hope.
So, what’s on your Inauguration Day playlist?

Inauguration Special! Songs of Hope & Change

For today’s very special event, Ryan and I thought we’d post some songs that would apply to the grand changing of the guard.  Some time ago, when it looked less likely that Obama would make it this far, I posted a list of songs that gave me hope.

Here are the songs I’m feelin’ for this moment:

First, some change (i.e. songs that were not blasted at President Bush as he left the building, but were on my internal playlist):

1. “Hit the Road, Jack,” Ray Charles.  While, overall, it’s about an unfaithful dude, I think it can easily apply to our dear ex-President (Oh, how it warms my heart to write that prefix!).  Regardless of one’s political position in general, it’s impossible to think he left the country in better shape than when he found it.  It’s like he was a louche who was unfaithful to the entire country by ignoring things at home in favor of messing around abroad, and then screwing it up with both ladies.  Er, I mean countries.

2. “Valerie Plame,” The Decemberists.  It’s a great song.  And also a great reminder at just how low the Bush administration stooped during its tenure.  Your husband lets the world know that there was no validity to the claim that Niger was selling uranium cake to Iraq?  Well, kiss your cover goodbye!  And your career!  And perhaps your safety!  Oh, what a class act, that Bush team!  Still, it’s a catchy little tune.

And now for some hope:

1.  “This Land Is Your Land,” the version with Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen at the pre-Inauguration concert on MLK Day.  OK, there’s just something heart-warming about an 89-year-old man in a silly ski cap, jeans, and workshirt singing his heart out in front of the Lincoln Memorial.  There’s something awesome about seeing a man who has given his life to folk music and politics look so darned happy.  He could have been just another Harvard dropout, but instead he dedicated his life to promoting progressive politics, from the 1930s labor movement to the Civil Rights movement to protests against the Vietnam War.  Remember, Pete Seeger loves this country, even if he was blacklisted as a dirty commie pinko in the 1950s.

2. Aretha Franklin, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at the Inauguration.  Soul music was integrally tied to the Civil Rights movement.  Though Aretha sang songs of a more personal nature than, say, James Brown, she and her family were heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement (her father, preacher C.L. Franklin, brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to Detroit).  Aretha’s voice may not be the divine instrument it was 40 years ago, but I love seeing her there, with her giant felt bow on her hat, singing about letting freedom ring.  This song gives me hope that we can look back in 40 more years and see that today is both a culmination of one struggle and a starting point for another push toward equality for all people.

P.S. Oh noes!  Why did John Williams do an arrangement of “Simple Gifts”?  Ain’t that the job of Aaron Copland?  I guess that would be “change,” but JOHN WILLIAMS?  I love Star Wars as much as the next person, but Copland is synonymous with American music.  Sigh.

Stay tuned for Ryan’s additions to this list!

What Is Up with Damon Albarn? The New David Byrne or Just a World-Music Lovin,’ Appropriatin’ Jerk?

Once upon a time, Damon Albarn had a little English band called Blur.  This band made its fame in the 1990s through an keenly timed synthesis of British pop history, from the Beatles and the Kinks to the Jam to the Smiths.  When Blur chose to imitate a style, it wasn’t because they weren’t original, but because they had a thorough mastery of each of the styles: sharp, biting, Ray Davies-esque lyrics in “Country House” or “Ballad of a Charmless Man;” the Beatles in the heroin-slow-yet-completely-apropos “Beatlebum;” Johnny Marr-inspired guitar licks…well, in a lot of places.

In image, too, the band explored and exploited the visual stylings of British subcultures past: check out the rolled-up skinhead pants and slightly dirty mod jackets (No mod would be dressed in a dirty jacket, mind you) in the band’s infamous “British Image #1″ promo shot:

Blur, pimping out subcultures British

I won’t get into what Blur, and Britpop more generally, did for reinvigorating a sense of “Cool Britannia,” or setting up a path to make it OK to wear the English flag across your boobies a la Geri Halliwell, or how they were middle-class kids slumming it and made it OK for middle-class kids to be slumming it until Oasis came along, or anything like that.  Really, that’s not the point of this post.  The example to the left serves just to remind us that Damon Albarn was willing to use his own people before he got to the present day, when he generally likes to collaborate with world music stars and force them into his own stylistic world.

In recent years, Albarn has worked with hip-hop fiends on his Gorillaz albums, wherein Jamie Hewlitt’s simian cartoon characters problematically replace real people; recorded musicians in Mali on a project called Mali Music (2002); added superawesome Nigerian funky drummer Tony Allen to The Good, the Bad, and the Queen (2007); and collaborated with Hewlitt again on the Chinese opera, Monkey: Journey to the West (2008), based on a 16th-century folktale; and produced Amadou and Mariam’s well regarded single, “Sambali” (2008).

As a fan of Blur, I kind of want to say, “Well, as long as the music is good…” and dismiss my hesitation about these projects.   As a fan of music more generally, I tend to think that collaboration is a good thing, and that exposing audiences to really great music from other cultures is a definite plus.  As an ethnomusicologist, though, something about these collaborations really bugs me.  In the courses I’ve taken on world music, I’ve read articles that have gone over the problems of appropriation, inequality in production, and difficulties in collaboration in these kinds of projects.  I’ve read David Byrne talk about how he “hates world music” as a term for good reasons and then contradict himself in his practices.  I’ve read numerous ethnomusicologists take on Paul Simon’s rather inappropriate appropriation of various musical styles on Graceland, where he gets sole songwriting credit on songs that clearly are much more the product of other people’s labor.

And so, listening to Damon Albarn’s post-Blur work certainly troubles me.  Below, a list of a few of those things and why they bug me:

1. Mali Music (2002).  Albarn went to Mali, hung out with good musicians, recorded them, edited it down, and came up with an album that many people called “authentic.”  Aside from the strange issue of some English pop musician determining authenticity in Malian music, I have heard that his own collaborators thought he was a bit of a joke.  That, at least, makes me feel better.

I haven’t really listened to this album that much, but I will say this: the thing that bugs me the most is the sticker on the cover.  Among other quotes, Paul Weller extolls, “Brilliant… a perfect way in to the music of Mali.”  OK, so I love Paul Weller, but I don’t really care if he thinks its a great intro to the music of Mali because I doubt he knows anything about said music.  It reminds me of a quote in John Harris’s Britpop Bible, The Last Party, regarding Weller’s involvement in Labour Party politics via the Red Wedge: “You would have Paul Weller waxing lyrical about Labour’s employment policy.  Well, franky, who cares what Paul Weller thinks?”

2. The Good, the Bad, and the Queen (2007).  Aside from being the most boring album I purchased in 2007, the entire project seemed a waste of Tony Allen’s talents.  A paean to London, it once again called on the musical styles of Albarn’s native land.  As a collaboration, though, it had a lot of promise, pulling in Paul Simonon and Simon Tong, as well as the aforementioned Tony Allen.  The other two worked quite well in the English milieu, but Allen became a regular, dull four-on-the-floor kind of drummer.  So, you go and recruit the best Nigerian funk drummer ever, and you make him play really boring beats?  What is the point of that?

3. Monkey: Journey to the East (2008).  Albarn went to China, recorded the sounds of the streets, and then had an instrument built that he calls a “klaxophone,” which reproduces said sounds.  He uses pentatonic scales.  And this, my friends, is China.  (I say sarcastically.)  At first, when I listened to it, I thought, “This isn’t as bad as it could be.”  And some of it is, in fact, great pop music.  It’s when Albarn tries to ape (sorry for the pun) the Chinese musical styles that it becomes a sigh-worthy production.

4. “Sambali,” Amadou and Mariam (2008).  When I first heard this song, I thought, “How does anyone who’s heard ‘Monkey Bee’ not recognize that this is the same thing?” OK, that’s a little facile.  Here’s what I mean: both songs employ Victrola-esque female vocals somewhat divorced from any other musical context.  Each song then employs a variety of synthesized sounds recalling the minimalist stylings of Philip Glass, as well as string sections that are inserted into the song to greater or lesser degree.  The only thing separating them is that “Sambali” features a sparser texture and no interacting male voice.  It’s as though Mariam Doumbia’s voice is an isolated, disembodied departure point, rather than a source of collaboration.

And, that, I think is what bothers me the most.  Collaboration implies equal footing, and that simply isn’t here in any of this music.  It’s especially galling to hear Mariam Doumbia as a heavily electronified, distant voice, essentially unengaged with the musical setting below, since this is the extreme version of the way that many women are presented in “world music”: disembodied voices, signifying the “Other.”

Anger Is an Energy, but Sometimes I Have Hope

I have not been so angry at any time in recent memory as I am right now after Sarah Palin’s speech last night.  But I’m in no mood to be articulate about that anger, and I don’t even think that if I were in the mood I could, at this point, be articulate.  And I am tired–so tired–of being this angry about politics, of listening to angry political music to abate my angry political disappointments.

So, I am reminding myself not only of the deep connection between popular music and politics, but also of the great songs that are not jingoistic or knee-jerk political and that are about what makes this country great.  Here are five classics of hope.  And I do not mean “hope” in an instant gratification kind of way, but in a long-term, someday-this-will-be-fixed kind of way.

1. “A Change is Gonna Come.”  Sam Cooke (but I also like the Otis Redding cover… certainly not a bad cover version!).  One of the most beautiful songs of the Civil Rights era, supposedly inspired by #4 in this list.  Prior to this song, Cooke wrote ballads and pop songs; after, he turned towards Civil Rights activism.

2.  “People Get Ready.”  The Impressions.  Uses religious imagery in a way that does not make me automatically shout, “Separation of church & state!”  Mostly because it’s not saying, “God is going to smite you!” but rather, “We will be delivered from this suffering.”

3. “We Shall Overcome.” Traditional, but popularized by Pete Seeger, who credits Guy Carawan (my SF roommate Heather’s dad!) with the nice little rhythmic twist in the song.  Seeger also added a verse to the song.

4. “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Bob Dylan (but performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary).  Sure, it might rip off the African-American spiritual “No More Auction Block for Me,” but it’s one of those songs that presents Bob Dylan at his best, writing in poetic, yet understandable language.  It’s at once depressing–because the answer seems to be “forever,” but also suggestive that it’s obvious to fix the problems at hand.

5. “Free Your Mind (And Your Ass Will Follow).” Funkadelic.  Yes, it’s basically a very long, very high song with no clear political message.  But, you know, freeing your mind is pretty damned important.

Notably, all these songs are from no later than the 1960s.  I tried very hard to include more recent music, but most of the political stuff from my lifetime seems too damned angry, not as hopeful.  And I was really hoping (ha!) that this election could be about hope, and not a bunch of dishonest mud-slinging.  And so I try to think of last week, rather than this one, and think, “A Change is Gonna Come.”  Someday.

P.S.  My favorite jingoistic American song?  “Round & Round Hitler’s Grave,” the Almanac Singers.