Rebel Frequencies

Can You Feel The Vibe?

2009-07-17T18:56:00.017-05:00

No matter what you thought of Vibe magazine--whether you found their coverage insightful or passe, tantalizing or unbearably boring--there is one thing all sides can agree on: as the American economy continues to flounder, Vibe's June 30th demise won't be the last in the world of music press.

It's rather amazing to think that all the commentators who were raving over "green shoots" a few weeks ago are now wearing a sheepish look as they painfully admit that we may be headed "back into the abyss." Actually, it's not that amazing. Ever since last September's great financial panic, these troglodytic talking heads have repeatedly insisted that our "rock bottom" has come, only to be left scratching their heads as the unemployment rate climbs. Won't someone please stop giving these idiots a microphone?

The stock of folks who grabbed the mic at Vibe were definitely a cut above. Writers like Jeff Chang, Dream Hampton, Alan Light. Photographers like Ellen von Unwerth and David LaChapelle. These contributors brought an insight into hip-hop commentary that no publication had ever applied to the genre. What can you expect from a publication founded by the great Quincy Jones?

From its first issue in 1993, Vibe took its milieux seriously. While Rolling Stone and Spin played hip-hop and R&B on the second tier to rock and pop, Vibe placed it at the forefront. It also built on the coverage of other "urban" publications like The Source and XXL, promoting a world-view where hip-hop and rap were a legit part of the world around us.

It was good timing. Hip-hop had struggled with many a journalist unwilling to believe that the music was little more than a flash in the pan during the '80s. By the '90s, it was clear that it was here to stay. More than that, it was becoming the dominant trend in youth culture. Vibe not only covered but rooted the music. Boomshots, the regular column by Rob Kenner covered reggae and Caribbean music, and drew the connections between them and rap.

There was one problem, however. That problem was, simply enough, the market. Like any publication seeking to reach a wide audience, Vibe had to reckon with the reality of investors, advertising, and the shallow notions of "what sells" that dominate the music industry. Ultimately, these are the contradictions that brought the publication down.

One would be right to call out Vibe for the garish Dolce & Gabbana spreads, and the sexism that often graced the covers (including the semi-notorious incident when Ciara's clothes were airbrushed out)--as long as one also notes that these are the same clap-traps that any music rag is liable to fall into.

When Vibe was sold to the Wicks Group in 2006, it was at a time when print media was starting to acknowledge a real crisis. The rise of internet journalism was often crudely grafted to the dip in print's popularity. When it came to the music presses, however, it wasn't just the fact that people could get it for free, it was that they felt they could get better music journalism online.

Surprisingly, Vibe managed to keep pace with its own website. Chang's commentary of the '08 elections was among some of the best anywhere. Jaylah Burrell's column, Hello Babar, went out of its way to find musicians well off the beaten path, further extending Vibe's scope and breadth.

Despite everything it had going for it, the depth of the economic crisis that gained speed late last year is leaving nothing safe. Housing and jobs are on the chopping block, so why should we expect any protection for a hip-hop magazine, even if it is one of the more insightful within the mainstream?

At its height, Vibe had a circulation of over 800,000. By the spring, it had cut its print run down by a quarter, and its staff down to four days a week. When it abruptly and unceremoniously closed its doors two weeks ago, it had many questioning whether print music journalism still had a future.

Fears like this aren't misplaced. While Vibe's coverage may have been exceptional, it's all-too-likely that its end won't be. The Source is currently negotiating bankruptcy. XXL is rumored to be going through financial troubles. Blender shut down last year. The pundits talking about these "green shoots" might want to take a closer look. After all, the fewer magazines are out there, the fewer places these nimrods have to pay them.

And yet, the fall of these publications is proof that music, writing and culture don't exist in a vacuum. The pressure to reduce content to its lowest possible form is great indeed, and it's one that every publication is susceptible to. In the end, that's a pressure firmly rooted in a system that views all culture as disposable.

Was there ever a better reason for a new generation of artists and journalists to break the chains that hold them back?

This article first appeared at The Society of Cinema and Arts.

*****

MJ and Media Spectacle

2009-07-15T19:46:00.004-05:00

Some readers have taken issue with my coverage of the death of Michael Jackson. One anonymous commenter has asserted, as has Jay Smooth over at Ill Doctrine, that Jackson was one of the biggest spectacles of our age. Keep in mind that he means spectacle in the sense that the Situationists meant it (Situationism being a school of radical thought that came to prominence in the late '60s that has had a great influence in my own work--look them up if you don't know them because I don't have the space to digress).

The first thing to say is that yes, of course Michael Jackson was marketed ad nauseam by an industry whose job it is to take erstwhile rebellious art and shrink-wrap it to make it "safe for consumption." One might even argue, because of the immense influence he wielded in that industry, that he was a part of it. But there needs to be an understanding of his art, how it affected the course of music, and how it was interpreted by ordinary folks.

That is why I posted the video I did. Jackson himself might have been a walking contradiction, but it's undeniable that there was always a part of him that wrestled with the racism that runs through US society. He might have been many-times removed from the daily machinations of such racism, but even the form of his music can't be separated from the trajectory of black culture in the US.

While this needs to be understood on its own terms, it also cannot be quite separated from his role as a media icon. And therein, dear readers, is the contradiction--or one of many, rather. The spectacle of Jackson is undeniably confirmed in his death. In the past three weeks, coverage of MJ in the American mainstream media has trumped the protests in Iran and the coup in Honduras. Though it has dropped off a bit in recent days, it hasn't by much.

A more thorough piece to read on this would definitely be this article by Anthony DiMaggio that recently appeared at the site of our good friends at SleptOn.com.

*****

Download it... please!

2009-07-13T20:50:00.012-05:00

As many have probably heard, the RIAA is back on the warpath. Jammie Thomas, a single mother from Minnesota whose original music piracy case became a symbol of the industry's depraved campaign, was recently ruled against in her second court-case. Only this time, they didn't find her liable for a measly 220 grand. Oh, no, they ruled that she should pay $1.9 million!

Rest assured, I will be writing plenty about this. But in the meantime, let this entertain you.

(I originally was planning to post the official, Bill Plympton-animated music video, but, ironically, it was "embedding disabled by request." Go figure.)

*****

A rethinking of "Disco Sucks!"

2009-07-12T11:38:00.008-05:00

A few folks have responded to my post from Friday (viewable here) disagreeing with the overall thrust of it. I think it's actually an interesting debate worth having here. In particular, Krisna from the Democracy & Hip-Hop Project responded in a comment that makes some worthy points. Also, Jesse from General Your Tank... emailed me an article that was also sent out via Rock & Rap Confidential making a similar argument.

First of all, I will admit that Friday's post was way too glib. After all, it's my blog, and I reserve the right to make mistakes (including typoos and spelling errorrors). The overall thrust I was trying to get at was that the volatility witnessed that night was a result of the embryotic neoliberal economic scheme taking hold in the US (job flight, chipping away at the social safety net, etc). That is, the underlying outrage was based on class, not race or sexual/gender orientation.

On the assertion that Disco Demolition Night was sheerly a white thing, I beg to disagree. As a Cubs fan, I am often derided by my Chicago-based comrades and friends that while the Cubs' fan-base is typically middle class and white, Sox fans are much more of a blue-collar and multiracial, by virtue of the fact that the Sox are located on the South Side (though I withstand the slings and arrows with humor, and still love my Cubbies dammit!). Looking at wide shots of the riot that night in July will show it wasn't just white kids rushing the field.

I think there was a perception of disco that was somewhat valid back then. This was a perception that the music was an exclusive domain of the elite Studio 54 crowd. The shimmery sound and flashy look communicated to a great amount of people (and not just white, straight folks) that the virtues of a decaying middle-class lifestyle were worth celebrating. This was precisely why Kool Lady Blue's "Wheels of Steel" night--which was hosted at a roller-rink called the Roxy in New York's Chelsea neighborhood and brought together all the avant-gardes of punk, hip-hop and pop cultures--was seen as a breath of fresh air when it opened its doors in 1981.

Disco also needs to be viewed in its specific context within how the music business was using it at the time. American industry in general was reorganizing itself during this era: specifically seeking to restabilize itself in the wake of the recessions of the early and mid '70s and, in doing so, chipping away at the gains of the previous decade hand in hand with working-class living standards. In the case of the music industry, disco used very consciously and concertedly as a way for them to regain control from the musical upheavals of rock, soul and R&B, and after 1977, punk. In short, disco became the musico-ideological counterpart to the onslaught against working people.

Is this the whole story of disco? No. Krisna rightly points out that there were a great amount of working-class people of color and LGBT working-class people that appropriated disco culture for themselves as a forum for breaking down boundaries. My musical point, however, was that the aesthetics of the genre were leading to a dead-end. Its upscale aesthetics and increasing orientation toward exclusivity and '70s club culture meant a disconnect from reality and struggle.

There is no doubt that there would be no hip-hop without disco, whose recordings were prominently sampled by DJs in the former's early years. This, in and of itself, however, does not lend credence to disco. Music--especially music under capitalism--is in a constant state of innovation and revolution; as Simon Reynolds puts it "rip it up and start again." The musical vanguard of any era is likely to appropriate not just the creative high-points of eras past, but also the artistic chum floating at the bottom of the record industry cesspool to make something new and innovative.

Though hip-hop was the most obvious genre to do just this with disco, there were other alternate musical avenues that took disco's sound and made it more vital and subversive, most notably the short-lived "mutant disco" subgenre within the post-punk movement in early '80s New York. Mutant disco managed to both pay homage to disco and skewer it at the same time.

There is, however, an element of disco-hatred that I considered mentioning on Friday, but didn't for sake of brevity. This was a gross mis-step on my part. That was the homophobia that was peppered into it. This article in The Guardian quotes Steve Knopper, a participant in the riot, as saying "to make it with a lady a guy had to learn how to dance. And wear a fancy suit!"

I feel the piece doesn't lend enough attention to the class dynamic that was part of the anti-disco sentiment. However, I did not pay enough attention to the heterosexism of it. In other words, while the Guardian focuses on the "learn to dance" part, I focus mostly on the "wear a fancy suit" part.

This kind of adherence to repressive gender roles (I would love to know how to dance, and don't see anything effeminate about it--this is thirty years later) is not to be discounted. After all, Disco Demolition Night took place less than a year after the assassination of Harvey Milk in San Francisco and the movement for LGBT rights had been reignited across the country, finding itself in opposition to anti-gay initiatives like Proposition 6 in California, which would have made it illegal for anyone of non-straight orientation to teach in public schools.

Prop 6 was defeated in 1978, but there was no doubt that views on gays, lesbians, bisexual and trans folk was volatile indeed. (On a tangent, I wonder what kind of music Milk and Cleve Jones listened to. Milk was a well-known opera fan, but he had to listen to more than just that. And sure, there were probably disco fans among the vast LGBT movement, but in the heavily working-class Castro district, there were probably myriad musical tastes.)

There were a lot of different, mixed emotions running high when thousands of kids rushed the diamond at Comiskey Park, some of them progressive, some of them not. What I asserted in my post was that the biggest ingredient was the feeling of dispossession and frustration rooted in the new assault on a working-class whose memories were still under the sway of a short-lived militancy that had taken hold in the early '70s.

On a personal level, I find disco to be turgid. However, I have also been known to get down in cringe-worthy white boy fashion to "The Hustle" and "I Will Survive" and have respect for the artists who undeniably influenced the path of music well past the genre's hey-day; perhaps this is the kind of subtlety I should have brought to my post a couple days ago.

*****

And stay dead!

2009-07-10T16:05:00.008-05:00

This week's Chicago Reader has a great cover story on a little piece of Chi-town history not widely known: "The day disco died." Sweet!

"It's July 12th, 1979, and the White Sox, ten games behind the California Angels in the American League West, are playing the Detroit Tigers in a twilight doubleheader. It's not just Teen Night at Comiskey Park--it's also Disco Demolition Night."

Disco Demolition Night was the kind of idea that emanates from the brain of sports more--how shall we say?--"colorful" owners, and the Sox's Bill Veeck was certainly that. Done in conjunction with WLUP "the Loop," the local rock station, the concept originated from Veeck's son Mike, a former musician, and was intended to be little more than your typical ballgame gimmick--you know, like "free bat night," or "whiskey and revolver night," or "Flag Day."

The thousands of working-class teens who flocked to Comiskey that night were allowed in for the bargain price of 98 cents and a disco record, which was to be placed in a giant box on the field in between the two games. After Loop DJ Steve Dahl--who had been sacked from another local station after they switched formats to disco--lead his "anti-disco army" in a chant of "disco sucks," the box containing the thousands of records was to be ceremonially blown up.

Comiskey got a lot more than they bargained for, though. Photographer Diane Alexander White, who was present that evening (and has an exhibit this weekend of photos she snapped there), says "I didn't think it would be quite like what happened. It sounded like it was going to be a great time."

So what actually happened? Well, after the four by six by five box is blown up, sending vinyl rocketing 200 feet up into the air, the young crowd went absolutely ballistic:

"Burning vinyl litters the outfield, and over the chants of Disco Sucks! kids begin trickling onto the field. No--they're coming by the hundreds... the thousands. They're running the bases, literally stealing the bases, stealing bats, toppling batting cages, and dancing in circles around the flaming vinyl shards."

In short, it was a full-on riot on the baseball diamond--one that would last for almost an hour, result in 39 arrests and 6 injuries, and prevent the Sox from taking the field for the second game.

No legitimate history of disco can be told without mentioning the Demolition Night Riot. What happened took many a sports commentator by surprise. But the youthful chaos that unexpectedly took hold of the stadium that night was about a lot more than just a hatred of sequins.

White alludes to it in the Reader article, "To me, it wasn't about the disco records being blown up... [it was] blue collar kids, kids whose parents were Sox fans. We were still churning out products in this town. You could still get a job at the steel mill."

By '79, those were just the types of jobs that were starting to dwindle. The end of the post-war boom had provoked most employers to chip away at wages, benefits, pensions, unions, and ultimately the industries themselves. And though this shift was still in its infancy, working kids had already started to feel the pinch.

Disco's decadent sound and glitzy clothes were the antithesis to the hard edge of rock 'n' roll--an affirmation of affluence, and a soundtrack to the full-on assault on the gains of the '60s. When those records went up in smoke, it was like a starter pistol had been fired, a primal invitation for these kids to take the night for their own--if only temporarily.

This little bit of (mostly) forgotten history serves as a humorous reminder of a few things. First, that in times when our livelihoods are under attack, you can never quite tell how the youth are going to express themselves. Second, that while music itself is little more than sounds, it ends up being an art-form that millions take very seriously and even hang their hopes on. And third, that disco does indeed suck.

*****

Revolutionary Party Jams

2009-07-08T08:30:00.006-05:00

If this bad-ass photo didn't clue you in, Street Sweeper Social Club are the shit! Principally comprised of Tom Morello and Boots Riley, SSSC's sound has these two revolutionary artists' fingerprints all over it, but the collision of the two creates something that is definitely its own. Though Morello's searing guitar work and Boots' trademark humor are both still intact, the funk is much more prominent here, lending itself to the description of "revolutionary party jams."

Their first album (self-titled) was released last month, and the group have been touring with Nine Inch Nails since (I swear, Reznor's becoming more of a red as time goes on). Given the current economic crisis that is pushing folks toward all sorts of new ideas, and the draw that Riley and Morello bring, there is reason to believe that SSSC could definitely become a big act (though it also bears mentioning that neither the Coup nor Rage Against the Machine should plan on going anywhere).

A recent interview with Okayplayer.com, Riley dives into some of the reasons behind the formation of the group and the role of music in politics, as well as what struggles may be on the horizon. It's a pretty good interview, well worth checking out.

And if you are still a bit skeptical that this group are the shit--and I mean the shit--then bathe your eyes and ears in this:

(and yes, that is Breckin Meyer playing the rich prick)

*****

With Arms Closed: Why We Should Hate Creed

2009-07-06T21:37:00.008-05:00

WARNING: the following sentence may cause you to vomit a little bit in your mouth.

Creed have reunited and are releasing a new album.

When these four "good Christian lads" rocketed to the top in the late '90s, it was because there was damn little happening in rock 'n' roll. Grunge, which had shaken the very foundations of popular music earlier in the decade, had receded. Rock returned remarkably fast to a plain, unassuming status quo.

Nickelback. Three Doors Down. Limp Bizkit. This was the company Creed was in (and I apologize if I just made you upchuck for the second time in this article). All of a sudden it seemed as if making it in rock required little more than meat-headed guitars, a vague machismo, and a garbled, throaty singing voice that sounded like you had a dead ferret stuck in your throat.

These were strange years--the transition between Clintonian pseudo-liberalism and Dubya-style conservatism. And even before Bush geared up to steal the 2000 election, Slick Willy managed to find a place at the table for the Christian Right.

And Creed were the kind of group that could only find such a wide audience in a country where these knuckle-draggers still held social and political sway. Sure, Creed were never officially a "Christian rock" band; they were never signed to an Evangelical label or played at Christian venues. But singer Scott Stapp, the son of a Florida preacher, has been open about the band's message of "faith," and their own brand of fundamentalism was barely veiled within their lyrics.

If you haven't noticed this Bible tapping (it's not quite overt enough to call "thumping"), then go back and listen again. It's there. The imagery invoked in songs like "Torn" and "Higher" is taken directly from the rhetoric of the "born again" crew. The lyrics of "My Own Prison" directly "cry out to God, seeking only his decision."

All of this might be harmless enough. Atheist though I might be, I hold nothing against anyone's personal faith. Their songs take on a more insidious form, however, especially when viewed in a bigger context.

The band's 1997 hit "One," went out of its way to lambast affirmative action, calling it "discrimination now on both sides." This kind of reverse racism rhetoric dominated political debate on both sides of the aisle during that year, opening the door for Bush and company to come out on the side of white applicants to the University of Michigan who felt "discriminated against" in 2003.

Then, of course, there was Creed's most recognized single: "With Arms Wide Open." Far be it from any family-hating lefty to begrudge Stapp's elation at his impending fatherhood, but "Arms" is once again laced with Christian references. Not a problem, until one thinks about how those images are applied to the topic of pregnancy:

"I close my eyes, begin to pray
Then tears of joy stream down my face...

"I'll take a breath, take her by my side
We stand in awe, we've created life."

Ugh.

Aside from the sickeningly sappy-sweet words, there is something seriously alarming about this song being so popular. Stapp is free to write the songs he wants to, but it's worth noting that not once does he mention what his wife thinks about being pregnant (she is, after all, the one actually having the baby--maybe this is why she divorced him a few years later?).

In the visual sense, "Arms" was a bit more overt. The cover art for the single--a baby's hand reaching for an adult's--looks like it was taken straight from a billboard for one of those fake "pregnancy counseling centers" that the anti-choice crowd use as a front for their cause.

That this song didn't cause outrage--or at least a few raised eyebrows--from the pro-choice movement speaks to how much ground they had given to the right in recent years. Nobody seemed offended that the music industry was cramming a man's take on pregnancy down countless teenage throats several times a day on the radio.

By the time Bush was to take office (about eighteen months after the release of "Arms"), almost 90 percent of counties in America would have no abortion provider. Even nominally pro-choice politicians would talk about decreasing the number of abortions each year. It's certainly impossible to measure the effect that songs like this had on teenage opinions on a woman's right to choose, but in this climate, to say there wasn't one would be simply naive.

It might have been hard for the industry to market this kind of otherwise controversial material if Creed's music hadn't been what it was: safe, slick, bereft of any kind of jagged edge or artistic risk. In short, it was the perfect formula for marketing to privileged frat-boys (you know, the kind that are everywhere at modern music festivals), sheltered high school students and suburban parents looking for ways to bond with their kids. And like a test patient who's had the placebo switched with the real meds, these demographics swallowed the pill without any argument.

Never underestimate the ability for good frames to save bad paintings. After all, the music industry has made an art-form out of it.

When Creed announced their break-up five years ago, thousands of real music fans most likely shrugged and then went to the kitchen to make themselves a sandwich. Now, they have inexplicably decided that 2009 is the perfect time to make a comeback. And any notion that this new Creed might be any better was dashed from the get-go. Stapp couldn't wait to lay the Christianity on as thick as possible, calling the reunion "a rebirth."

Stapp and company may not find today's audience as "reborn" as they are, however. The political and musical landscape have shifted drastically over the past few years. Falwell is dead. The Christian Right, whose "morality platform" has held a stranglehold over politics for the past thirty years, was dealt a powerful blow in the 2008 elections, and ordinary Americans' views have swung to the left.

Hand in hand with this is the way in which popular music has changed. By now, Creed's "post-grunge" sound is yesterday's news, thankfully dethroned by the sounds of indie and garage rock. Hip-hop is also the most influential it has ever been. And in all genres, a spirit of experimentation and pushing the boundaries is beginning to take form, from the unexpected popularity of of acts like M.I.A. to the ever-presence of the White Stripes.

Whether Creed manages to sell out stadiums and go platinum with their next release isn't really the issue--because they very well may. The point, though, is that the times, they do a-change, and the ones that have taken place in recent years have not only re-focused the way folks look at music, but have made the possibility of substantial, even fundamental change very real.

When that change comes, it will make our music a lot more rewarding--and our gag reflexes can finally relax.

This article first appeared at The Society of Cinema and Arts.

*****

Just a reminder...

2009-07-04T21:04:00.003-05:00

Okay, this is the last Jackson post, I promise. There have been a few readers who have contacted me wondering why I've been drawn in by the "hype." One commenter has said the while "he wrote some catchy tunes," but his contribution wasn't really that great.

Yeah, right. Tell me, dear reader, how do you manage to breathe if you live in a vacuum?

First of all, saying that Jackson wrote some catchy tunes is like saying Einstein solved a few math problems. This man changed popular music's entire trajectory. It's easy to think of him in broad strokes strongly colored by the almost constant controversy that surrounded him. But looking at his work, piece by piece, in context, reveals a contribution of real substance.

Case in point:

This is the video for the 1996 single "They Don't Care About Us." The song was surrounded by its own controversy, when the lyrics "Jew me, sue me, everybody do me/Kick me, kike me, don't you black or white me" came to public attention. Jackson insisted that the lyrics were meant to criticize any kind of discrimination, but the fact that they backfired may speak to how out of touch he had become, no matter how much he might have cared.

Still, the song and video are quite stunning in their relevancy. Jackson references police brutality, hate crimes, and myriad other injustices suffered by young Americans, especially those of color. Though it's debatable whether Jackson's own personal barometer of these crimes, that he took them up is admirable and poignant. The clip was directed by none other than Spike Lee, in the heart of Rio de Janeiro's shantytowns.

There's an almost militant simplicity to this song. It's a straightforward hip-hop beat, driven by the up front, pounding drums. Little else is included instrumentally other than piano and guitar. Jackson's voice is at its most snarly and grunting. Despite the disconnect he may have had a result of his position as part of the pop aristocracy, there is a shocking degree of outrage in this song. That's impressive.

This wasn't the first Michael Jackson video that attempted to take up an anti-racist message. The video for "Black or White" was originally slated to include Black Panther imagery, as well as footage of hate crimes. Jackson knew his role well, but it was a multi-faceted role. Though years of being lavished by the music industry no doubt cut him off from the real world, he was also aware that, as one of the most famous African-Americans ever, there were countless like him who had never really gotten that chance.

Hype? Watch the video again. Then say that with a straight face.

*****

A few thoughts one week on...

2009-07-02T12:08:00.006-05:00

Michael Jackson's death has overtaken every news story in the world right now. It speaks to the vast contradictions and inequities in our society that the passing of a pop star (great though he may have been) is more "news-worthy" than a democratic uprising in Iran or a coup in Honduras.

And so, it bears saying that though three our of this blog's last four posts have been related to the King of Pop, I recognize the irony and inequity at play here.

That being said, the way in which the mainstream media have dedicated themselves to the story of MJ's death have done something truly rare: they have turned a mirror on American society. The slick talking heads of corporate news normally thrive on a cool separation in American society. Criminals, terrorists and drug addicts are presented as "others," those who have eschewed the normalities of society and should be viewed as anomalies--in short, less than human.

But the story of Jackson's death has forced the media to present his own demons not as perversions but as human contradictions profoundly rooted in the world around him. Stories on MSN have speculated that the abuse at the hands of his father may explain his own reclusiveness and eccentricities--something that was never done when Michael was called into court for sexual abuse. His addiction to pain killers has become the subject of debate on nightly talk shows.

It would be naive to think that the investigation of Jackson's life and death might lead to more widespread public debates over addiction, abuse, and alienation. That surely won't be happening. The circumstances and point in time of Jackson's demise, however, may make him more of a symbol--maybe even a martyr--than he would have been otherwise.

During the '80s, Jackson became the music industry's demi-godhead. While the singer blazed trails that had never been before, he without a doubt got caught up in all of that. He was, and I've said before, a contradiction. He brought a legitimacy to pop music the way few had before, but he also provided a cool, flashy cover for the industry big-wigs looking to restabilize their position in the wake of punk.

This was the decade where, as Gordon Gekko quipped, greed became good. More than that, it became cool. And so, the man who changed pop music did so by embodying the decadence and money worship that dominated in his act.

Jackson dies in debt at a time when most Americans are strapped themselves. The notion that getting ahead means earning as much money as possible has been exposed as hollow. Jackson hadn't known the kind of strife that most Americans deal with for almost four decades, but the current state of his finances proves that even the biggest pop star isn't immune to the ups and downs of big money (and at least he didn't bring down thousands of people's livelihoods with his irresponsibility).

Ultimately, though, the real legacy he is leaving behind is illustrated by the fact that nine out of the top ten Billboard spots are taken by Jackson's albums--some of which are more than twenty years old. That is influence that simply can't be bought, no matter how much money surrounds it.

*****

How Michael Jackson's Music Changed the World

2009-06-29T22:35:00.003-05:00

The last fifteen years of Michael Jackson's life are almost enough to obscure the true greatness of this artist. During those last fifteen years we saw the handsome, charming Pop star go through myriad plastic surgeries that made him look more like a latter-day Peter Pan. We saw the trappings of unprecedented fame manifested in beyond bizarre behavior--the kind for which "eccentric" seems a mild term. And then, there are the child molestation scandals. Media were ready to somehow link his strange persona with his alleged sexual abuse of minors--few were willing to draw the same link to his own father's abuse.

It's almost enough to overshadow his legacy. Almost, but not quite.

None of these are what Jackson is being remembered for as millions mourn his sudden passing the world over. They aren't the reasons that we see footage of people breaking down in sobs of grief at news of his death. We are hearing condolences coming not just from musical icons like Madonna and Paul McCartney, but world leaders like Nelson Mandela and Hugo Chavez. Influence like that can't be rubbed out.

Over forty years, Michael Jackson's voice and performance style reached a level of universality that nobody--and I mean nobody--has ever reached in music. One would be hard pressed to find a single soul who hasn't been touched by his recordings. That a video of Filipino prisoners performing the "Thriller" dance can become a web phenomena is but one small testament to this. Thirteen number one singles, 750 million albums sold worldwide. And if you're still skeptical, still searching for proof of Jackson's greatness, let me ask you: is there anyone out there who hasn't attempted the moonwalk? I rest my case.

Soul, Disco, Rock, Pop, R&B, even Hip-Hop--Jackson left his mark on all of them. As his four decade career progressed and evolved, Jackson frequently found himself setting the tone for popular music--even as he embodied its worst contradictions.

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In 1970, Motown Records was on top. The Jackson 5's first four singles cemented that status; all would reach number one on the Billboard Pop singles. Though the African-American group's massive success among listeners of all races revealed the growing maturity of a country under the sway of a vibrant Black Power movement (and label CEO Berry Gordy's cutthroat marketing), it was Jackson 5's youthful, almost bubblegum-innocence that attracted throngs of listeners.

At the center of that sound was young Michael. Barely eleven years old, the label nonetheless stated his age as eight in an attempt to up the cuteness factor. Michael was recognized as a prodigy early on, his shining, scampish voice still somehow able to convey the depths of emotion that made songs like "I Want You Back" and "I'll Be There" more than dime-a-dozen love songs.

As the Jackson 5 rocketed up the charts and exposed the young quintet to overnight fame, Michael was being exposed to the first traumatic swipes of music industry tailoring. In 1993, he spoke frankly about his father Joe's emotional and physical abuse. Joe, himself a former musician, had guided the group in their early days and was so intent on the young group making it big that he would sit in a chair with a belt in his hand during rehearsals. According to Michael, "if you didn't do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you." Busy recording and touring schedules meant that in essence, Jackson had no youth of his own.

Years later, Smokey Robinson would describe him as "an old soul in a boy's body." Did Michael Jackson have his childhood stolen from him? Or did he just never grow up? Perhaps both? In any event, it's clear that the troubled man he was to become had its roots in his early grooming as a musical icon.

The Jackson 5's influence waned as the 70's progressed amid label troubles and a changing musical landscape. Even as the group declined, however, Michael's star continued to rise. His 1979 solo album Off The Wall indicated an uncanny savvy on the part of Jackson and his songwriting team. The glitzy Disco beats were underlaid with a Pop sensibility that seemed to recognize the sound of the 70's was on the way out.

Off The Wall made history by becoming the first album to generate four top ten hits, and sold 20 million copies world-wide. However, Jackson felt the album hadn't made the impact he had hoped for, and aimed to go above and beyond on his next effort.

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There is no doubt that his next album achieved this new level of impact. What can be said about Thriller that hasn't been already? To date, it has sold over 100 million copies--a sheerly staggering amount. Listening to it today, it's still a magnificent piece of work, incorporating Rock, Soul, Funk and R&B into a seamless pastiche of musical perfection.

Thriller has become a touchstone of popular music. Any trend that took hold in the 1980's owes its existence to this album. The signature Eddie Van Halen riff on "Beat It" has become one of the most recognizable guitar parts in the world. And as the 80's drew Pop into synthesized, syrupy waters, songs like "Billie Jean" showed that the music could still be gritty, muscular, even sinful.

And then, there was the title track itself. The fourteen-minute video for "Thriller" was more of a short film than anything else, and helped legitimize the nascent art-form of the music video. At its height, MTV aired "Thriller" twice an hour just to meet viewer demand, and the still-fledgling cable station was viewed in a whole new light. It seems no exaggeration to say that without Michael Jackson, MTV might not have survived.

In broadening the scope of videos, Jackson also helped pave the way for other artists of color. Prior to Thriller's release, many had publicly criticized MTV for not playing enough Black artists. When Jackson himself voiced concern, it provoked CBS Records President Walter Yetnikoff to call the executives of MTV personally and declare "I'm not going to give you any more videos and I'm going to go public and fucking tell them about the fact that you don't want to play music by a Black guy." MTV caved, and the rest is history.

That a Black artist could become one of the most popular at the height of the Reagan 80's is truly something to behold. In one of the most surreal moments in music history, Reagan even invited Jackson to the White House in 1984. There is a deeper contradiction at play, though. While Jackson blazed trails musically and socially, he was also being shaped into the ultimate cash-cow. The music industry went through a massive expansion in the 1980's, and for much of that time, Jackson became its main figurehead.

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It's no coincidence then, that the 80's were the decade that saw the first public glimpses of Jackson's eccentric and weird behavior. Thriller had launched him into the exclusive realm of superstardom. His lawyer, John Branca, bragged that he had secured the highest royalty rate ever for Jackson, at approximately $2 per album.

This not only meant that the artist was now a multimillionaire, but that he lived in an un-poppable bubble. Jackson started surrounding himself with people who, as some have said, "wouldn't say no to him." He went on million-dollar shopping sprees. He bought a chimp named Bubbles. Rumors circulated of him sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber and attempting to buy the Elephant Man's bones. Both were untrue, but the fact that he circulated these rumors himself highlighted his increasing disconnect from any kind of reality.

It was also at this time that Jackson's skin tone started noticeably lightening. Up until the 80's, his skin had been a medium-brown hue. Some have speculated that he was bleaching his skin, the result of a deeply internalized racism. The actual reason for this, according to spokespeople, was Jackson's diagnosis of vitiligo, and he needed to balance out his splotchy skin-tone with lighter makeup.

Regardless, one can't deny that the singer was undergoing significant physical changes. Jackson began to express desire for a "dancer's body," and began noticeably losing weight. Medical professionals publicly stated that he was suffering from anorexia and body dysmorphic disorder.

As Pop was dethroned by Grunge and Hip-Hop in the 90's, and as Jackson's own life became increasingly mired in scandal, he struggled to stay on the cutting edge of music. This didn't stop him from selling millions of albums or booking the biggest stadiums world-wide. It did, however, highlight his growing reclusiveness and exhaustion. As the 21st century dawned, his weakened voice was increasingly manipulated by autotune, his performances became more infrequent to spare his exhausted body. By the time Jackson was called into court for a second child molestation case in 2003, many former fans had tossed in the towel on him.

It's eerily symbolic that Jackson passes away amidst crushing debt as the world descends deeper into the worst economic crisis in several decades. It's also tragic, given that Pop music is finally becoming interesting again for the first time in a decade. Whether the long string of shows he had recently booked in London would have helped catapult Jackson back to the top is a question that will never be answered.

There is one thing that is indisputable however: there will never be another artist who changes the path of music quite the way that Michael Jackson did. He widened the horizons of popular music to an immeasurable degree, and changed its trajectory forever. No matter what we may think of him as a person, we cannot separate him from the sick world that brought him up. We also cannot ignore that through his music, he changed that world for the better--if only a little bit.

This article originally appeared at The Society of Cinema and Arts.

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Don't Take No For An Answer!

2009-06-28T21:30:00.000-05:00

The Pride march is taking place today here in Chicago, as it is in several cities in the US. As always, history has an eerie way of achieving symmetry, as this year, the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, is also the year that a young, militant LGBT Liberation movement has been ignited around the struggle for same-sex marriage. Make no mistake, we will win this, but only if we fight!

It's in this spirit that I am posting this video. Few artists brought the fight for Gay Lib into the late '70s music scene in the UK like the Tom Robinson Band did. As strikes, protests and general unrest engulfed Britain in the late '70s amidst a crumbling economy, battles against all forms of oppression also took form. Robinson, a socialist, was one of the first British artists to be open about his own sexuality, and his band is perhaps best known for performing their single "Glad To Be Gay" at the Carnival Against the Nazis in April of '78.

I could embed the video for "Glad To Be Gay" right here, but the hard-driving, uncompromising sound of this song better encapsulates the fighting spirit that today's new movement. As folks can see, the band is seen performing at a Gay Liberation march in London:

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RIP Michael Jackson

2009-06-25T18:11:00.001-05:00

This is the King of Pop I prefer to remember.

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Beats of resistance in Iran

2009-06-24T18:52:00.002-05:00

Straight up: victory to the movement in Iran! Though the mouthpieces here in the US are determined to somehow spin this into an "Islamic problem," this is bigger than religion and bigger than elections. It's about the economic crisis sweeping the globe that has caused massive unemployment. It's about corruption, human rights and basic democracy.

The video below is for the song "Faryad," from a Persian rapper who goes by Pesare Bad. I couldn't seem to locate the translation of the lyrics, but the pounding beats and content of the video just about say it all. Hip-Hop has always been in a state of semi-legality in Iran, and it should come as no surprise that most MCs and artists have been as vocal as possible in their support of this new revolution.

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It should be on your reading list too...

2009-06-23T10:44:00.003-05:00

Regular readers of Socialist Worker will remember Todd Chretien's hilarious letter to Hugo Chavez urging the Venezuelan president to give other incendiary books to President Obama for his "summer reading list" (Chavez recently gave Eduardo Galleano's Open Veins of Latin America to Obama during a visit back in April, and recently expressed interest in giving him Lenin's What Is To Be Done? at a future meeting).

It's certainly a funny article, as Chretien conjures up images of late night Leninist reading groups in the White House basement ("dont invite NSA guys..." classic!). But even as Chretien offers up some essential books for our own reading list, he leaves the door open for our own participation, urging readers to send their own suggestions for Obama (and ourselves) as we head into this volatile political era. The readers' suggestions appeared last week on the SW website, and here is the submission that yours truly made:

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang
According to some, we're living in the age of the "first hip-hop president." And indeed, Barack Obama was elected with unprecedented support from the hip-hop community.

For his part, Obama has also professed to be a fan of the genre's "spirit of entrepreneurialism," and admitted to having Jay-Z on his iPod. But in the wake of the Don Imus fiasco, Obama proved himself willing to turn the rhetorical guns on hip-hop like any other politician.

This quintessential history of hip-hop puts the record straight: that rap is a lot more complex than talk about "bling and hos." At its best, it has been an outlet for young people's hopes and dreams when nobody else would listen to them. This book belongs on the president's summer stack. If he's going to be a "hip-hop president," then it's high time he learned about the real "change" that today's youth are striving for.
-- Alexander Billet, Chicago

Perhaps a bit predictable, but true nonetheless. I took up this concept even more in depth during my recent speech at the Socialism 2009 conference this past weekend. Stay tuned to this blog for an audio file of the session!

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Son of Nun Interview, Part 2

2009-06-22T16:06:00.007-05:00

As the evening continued (and the alcohol flowed), my conversation with Son of Nun drifted into even deeper territory. To SON, one of the underground's most socially active rappers, the correlation between art and politics is never static. It is ever shifting, morphing, presenting new challenges to artists who wish to make a difference beyond the strictures of "the music world."

This isn't to say, however, that it's intangible. The history of music and struggle is full of rich and vibrant stories where, even if songs didn't directly change the world, they did give people the hope, courage and inspiration to fight for something better. There is a deeper level on which music exists, however. That's the level that hits people in their emotional core. Plenty of political music misses this entirely.

Music alone cannot organize people, but it can inspire and give confidence if it reaches this deep down place. And if an artist can walk this fine line, then they can manage to do a lot more than make pretty sounds. In truth, it can make people powerful--even dangerously so. It's a true travesty that so few are given the voice they need to put their message out. SON, however, understands all of this, which is part of what makes his music so necessary right now.

Alexander Billet: Has it been hard for you to transition from being a working teacher into being an MC? Because I know that there have been a lot of politically minded acts who have become frustrated with their music and end up abandoning it so they can do more on the actual ground.

Son of Nun: There's a part of me that's like "how do I make a tangible impact?" as opposed to just writing some songs. At the end of the day, it's still a song that I wrote. It's not like somebody can now pay their light bill. My song is not going to do that. But then at the same time you hear the story about Boots Riley (from the Coup). He was an MC for a while before he became political. But he was still a community organizer. And then, the story that I heard that made him want to put politics into his music was that the cops were harassing somebody in the projects, and somebody starting playing "Fight the Power" out of the windows, and then the people who were crowded around started growing and shouting "fight the power," to the cops that were still there. This got to the point where they left the dude alone, got back into their car, really slowly, and they got the fuck out of there. After he saw that, it was like "I'm putting politics in my fucking music!"

AB: That's incredible! See now, those are the moments you don't hear about when we're taught how to think about music. We don't think about how the art can actually affect people. I've never really believed in the idea that "music is the weapon," but I do think there are times when it can give people confidence, which is a pretty important element of fighting back.

SON: Yeah. And honestly, what I've been trying to do lately, something that I've realized. In doing music, especially the music that I do, I need to sometimes look at it from the role of a political organizer. What an organizer tries to do is assess the resources you have and figure out how to use them to see the change you want to see. So what I should be doing shamelessly is like, you know, "hey Alex, I'm coming out with an album." [laughter from both of us] I can't be timid about putting myself out there when I'm saying that this is bigger than me as an MC. If I was just all about "I'm a dope-ass MC, ra ra ra," then I might be more timid, but if I'm not, if I want an interview to go down the way that we're having it, where we're discussing the issues, then I need to not be fearful in any way of being like "yo, this is what I'm putting out, and this is why I'm putting it out. How can we use this as an organizing tool?" Just to put it out there, another pebble in the pond, and hope it stirs up consciousness.

AB: You're touching on something I've been thinking of from my end too. You know, the presence of radical artists and radicals who write about music is so needed for so many different reasons. For one thing, when you talk about being timid, there's this whole structure in the music industry of "critic vs. the artist." And you know what? I can't blame so many artists for thinking of music writers as the enemy because the music press is in such a lazy state right now. Rolling Stone, Spin, all of that. They'll chop up the interview and twist around what the artist is trying to say. So, there's a reason for musicians to look at critics like that. I think that the voice of the musician should be paramount. Specifically when you're talking about political music. The musician's voice matters! There are so many great musicians that take up what's going on right now, but the music press is steadfast on either ignoring them or being openly hostile to them. I want to aid the process in making the musician's voice a weapon.

SON: Right. And an effective weapon too. Because that's the thing: it's crucial, and it's fundamental to be able to empower your community as an artist because that's where you're at. So you need to figure out how to help inspire the people that you're working with on the regular. But it's also about trying to find a wider audience. To know the reason that this doesn't happen more, to know the structure of the music industry, to have journalists pour themselves out on that page who are part of that struggle, giving voice to artists... I think it's fucking crucial. That's why I'm glad to do this interview: because I know you're in it. You've done this work too! It's not just some abstract idea floating around in your head, it's about change. This is something that you love to do that's important and you're tying those two things together.

Putting these ideas out there is crucial because when it comes down to it, if folks don't know this shit they go nuts. This system eats people up. I mean it eats people the fuck up! Period. Hands down. That's what it does. People work for the machine to the point where if you resist it you feel like you're crazy. You're bumping your head up against the wall. You're coming up against the reality of a society that does not value giving you the things that you need as a human being. You're coming up against that inequity. To have people coming together to be like "no, that's bullshit, and we need to support each other."

AB: That's one of the things that I think good music does, be it Rap, Rock, Soul, Jazz: it breaks through that alienation. Whether it's political or not, it reminds people that they're not alone. It gives them hope. But that hope needs to be channeled in some kind of direction. I think there's a real need for songs that can give people hope in today's world--songs that say there is a way, there is an answer, we can fight. Like your song "Fire Next Time."

SON: "Fire Next Time" is a tribute to the rebels of the past who inspire me, the giants of the past whose shoulders I stand on. It also came from the idea that Black History Month doesn't just have to be in February. I wanted to do those two things and then also put it in a context of today. That was "the fire last time," what's the fire next time gonna be like? I tried to write it from the point of view of a soldier in the US Army who's Black and who's disillusioned--who's thinking "this is bullshit, you have me out here guarding this pipeline for Bechtel. Fuck that shit! You're making money, but my community's falling apart."

Jared Ball, who's an amazing activist and teacher at Morgan State, used to be in the military. And he came into the military because he had done some shit and was facing some time. They said to him he could get out of it if he joined the service. So I try to incorporate that aspect into it too. This is where I'm drawing my inspiration from, this is what they did. Another inspiration I mention in there is the Maroons. My people are from Jamaica, and the Maroons were those slaves up in the hills of the cotton-picking country in Jamaica who could not be defeated. They're not perfect, there's some shit that I struggle with about them, but the reason they existed is incredible! So incorporate those things into the song and put it in the context of today. We can do some real shit. That's why I say "the fire next time is comin' to DC." The seat of fucking power. We have the ability to do that, and if you need a spark, you need a reason, here's one. That's why I wrote the song.

AB: When you do that song live the participation of the audience seems so crucial. And even on the album, I notice you leave a blank space. You say "when I say fire, y'all say next time," then you say "we the fire," but there's no vocal where there should be "next time." Are you trying to get people listening to their headphones and chiming in?

SON: Yes. Yes. I was just kind of like "why not?" It's supposed to be call and response. I know that even though people aren't with me there in the studio, I want them to be coming along. Maybe after the first verse when they notice I leave it blank they'll be like "all right, I'll do it next time." You know? Call and response comes out of slave spirituals and that tradition. I wanted to keep that alive in that song. I didn't want to do a different vocal track for that part on the album version. I wanted people to know that so when they go to the show they'll be saying it with their fist raised! Also I wanted them to have the idea that they have to participate in some way.

AB: "Change is Constant" is another one I wasn't quite expecting on that album--especially as a final track. Talk about ending on a high note! First of all the beats are really flowy and laid back.

SON: Honestly, Mentos, the producer on the album--that was his doing. He sent me that beat and the song came out of me. I just thought "this is an amazing piece of music." I asked myself how I could translate it lyrically, how I can reflect it. I wanted to try to tie everything together. I wanted to say "maybe you don't agree with all my perspectives, but if you oppose the exploitation that people are enduring in this country and internationally, regardless of what you call yourself, then this song is something you can identify with."

And also I found that I had to acknowledge the importance of being solid in who you are. That's not something that's popular to do as an MC. I wanted to let people know that it's all right, that you're not crazy to want to resist, and that it's all right to attempt to love yourself and find strength in resisting these things for yourself. Because all of that is coming out of a place of love for humanity too. It might sound like some hippie shit, but that's where I am. I don't do the things that I do because I want to be president, or to increase my own power. I want people to be all right. It's political and it's also in that murky space--that reality that you have to deal with in yourself and in larger society. It's in that in between space. That's where I'm coming from.

AB: Any last words? As a send-off to the folks at home?

SON: As a send-off? To the folks in the struggle, thank you. To the artists that are in the struggle, stay in the struggle. Your strengths will come from there, and your lessons will come from there, as opposed to something that you read in a book. Stay in it, and let it all affect you.

This article first appeared at The Society of Cinema and Arts.

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Son of Nun Interview, Part 1

2009-06-08T22:40:00.006-05:00

Call it a hazard of the profession. I’ve interviewed many artists in all different genres, and while all have been more than willing to open up about their music, cracking into their opinions about all the myriad issues that surround us—politics, culture, race, sex, even the human condition itself—has proven something of a challenge. The way music is presented nowadays, it’s no wonder that so many musicians and artists would rather play it close to the vest. The iron wall that has been drawn between the creator and the reporter is a tough one to breach.

That’s not so with Son of Nun. A former Baltimore public school teacher who put down his chalk in favor of a mic a few years back, SON has become something of an underground mainstay. Hearing his licks, it’s obvious why. This man is full of ideas that drip from his rhymes. They are as literate as they are urgent, as erudite as they are sophisticated. His latest album The Art of Struggle, released last summer, has launched him even further into the minds of activists and Hip-Hop heads alike.

One might think that someone with such a formidable ability with the mic might be the hardest to get to open up. Alas, that is thankfully not the case. When I said down with him recently, he was more than ready to talk about anything that pecked away at his brain—or mine for that matter. With Hip-Hop currently at the biggest crossroads we’ve seen in its thirty-plus year existence, a conversation with Son of Nun makes you wonder if what we need is another hero, another next big thing, or someone as real and down to earth as this MC.

I set out in this interview to give SON a platform, to let him espouse his ideas unimpeded the way so many journalists in the mainstream won’t allow. What I ended up getting wasn’t an interview so much as a conversation, an exchange of ideas that breaks down the barrier between “performer” and “the rest of us.” It was also simply too much good stuff to limit to one article:

Alexander Billet: Let’s get this started: tell the folks a bit about yourself.

Son of Nun: I guess I’ll begin at the beginning. Born in the late ‘70s. Came up with sickle cell. I spent a lot of time in the hospital and shit. It’s a blood disease more common among Africans and people of African descent, and people say that it was an adaptation to deal with malaria. Malaria would infect the blood and essentially kill you. So what the sickle cell would do is that it would elongate the cell so that the malaria wouldn’t be able to attack the blood cells. But essentially the sickle cell itself can end up damaging your organs and killing you.

AB: I think you mention that in one of the songs of Blood and Fire [his first record]: “you want a battle, here’s a answer / first tackle sickle cell and then tackle cancer.”

SON: Yeah, so I dealt with that. Came up still pretty quiet, then I had thyroid cancer when I was in high school. I remember the surgeon being like “there’s a chance you could lose your voice, or your voice could be damaged” because the nerve that goes to the voicebox is right in that same area as the thyroid gland. So when they took it out and I could still speak, I was like “shit!” I was a quiet dude, and it made me realize the value of my voice and how much I had not been using it.

AB: Use it or lose it kind of thing…

SON: Yeah. So that made me recognize that I’m not gonna be as quiet, I’m gonna try to use my voice to do something. And then that turned into Hip-Hop, but that was a process. Not long after that, when I was in high school in the mid-‘90s, I kind of got fed up with Hip-Hop. It was all sounding the same. I didn’t know about the 1996 Telecommunications Act or anything like that so it was like, all this shit is sounding the same, none of it is telling me why things are fucked up. A lot of it is like “things are fucked up and I’m gonna get mine.” I came from the suburbs, so I can’t be like “I gotta kill this negro to get my shit.” It didn’t seem right, I didn’t come up in those circumstances. My mom was a single mother, she worked three and four jobs at the same time to make sure that I didn’t have to want for anything. That reality started to dawn on me, but I still couldn’t connect the dots. I was like “there’s a whole lot of inequity going on.”

My people are from Jamaica. I was lucky enough to get to go there and see that contrast between my family and what they had to go through versus the tourists. All of that stuff came together so by the time I went to college, which in and of itself was a blessing, I was on a mission to figure out what was at the root of all this. I didn’t get it in high school. So I went to college, and when I came out I was still kind of trying to figure it out. I had a better conception through the groups that I met in college, like learning about Mumia’s case, that opened me up. Then hearing his perspective on different issues—that helped me connect the dots a lot more, and I felt like I was on the right path. Then I met different organizations after that, and I started getting it: that it’s actually a system that is responsible for why some people are poor and a handful are rich. It’s capitalism. It’s a system that lets GM make record profits in one year and still close up shop in America and find cheaper labor south of the border so they can maintain record profits.

AB: When during all of this did you start becoming interested and serious about rapping?

SON: Well, as I said I was fed up with Hip-Hop, but at the end of high school I had a teacher in my English class who had us journal. I was shy and all that stuff, definitely not about myself or being a blowhard as many MCs are. She had us journal, and she would actually take the time to reply and leave comments on every student’s journal about what they had written. The impact that had on me was like “oh, somebody’s actually responding to what I’m saying and validating it.” So I started writing poetry after that, and then it was February ’97 when a friend of mine in college said “I heard that you write. Why don’t write something for us so that when we jam we can have an MC?” So I did that, and the first time I picked up the mic I was like “yo…” [laughter] Hearing the poetry back with music live was music just fueled that passion for writing. I started writing more poetry, found out about spoken word and was just amazed by it. This was at the same time I was becoming politicized, so I was thinking of how I can work in what’s going on in my mind into the art that I’m trying to create.

So that’s how I came into picking up the mic. I freestyled with the band, and the DJ had records and instrumentals, so I’d rhyme over that. Then I found Drum ‘n’ Bass. And because I was so fed up with Hip-Hop I was like “yo, this shit is ill.” So I got into that and started freestyling over that. Then, at that time, WHFS had this late night show called “Trancemissions” where they would play electronic music, and the host had a competition because Roni Size was gonna perform at the 9:30 Club. I submitted a CD that I did with a DJ who spun some downtempo stuff that was still Drum ‘n’ Bass. I was like “it’s a DJ competition but fuck it, I’ll just submit this.” And I ended up winning and got to open up for Roni Size at the 9:30 in DC. I was only twenty-one, so I was pumped!

Then it started to dawn on me that the shit I was talking about wasn’t what people in this scene were into. And I want my art to have some sort of impact in some way. I was still doing the slam-style poetry and I realized that there was an underground scene that I wanted to be a part of. So I started moving away from the Drum ‘n’ Bass and got deeper into the slam scene. Then I came across MC’s who were doing the same shit I was. And I started to realize that Hip-Hop is alive, it’s beautiful, and it still has all the things that I remember that inspired me still intact. People are still living that shit and doing that. And I started losing the fear that people weren’t going to get me. There’s a vibrant community of people that are on that level about saying the real shit that needs to be said. And that’s where I want to be. It was a process, I had to pay my dues all over again. So that’s how I came back into Hip-Hop, and started to love it and respect it again.

AB: It seems that you went through a real heavy evolution just coming back into Rap music and discovering what it is you love about it. And really, that evolution I think is ongoing. The Art of Struggle sounds very different from Blood and Fire. I know on Blood there’s a lot more Drum ‘n’ Bass influence, but on Struggle there’s a lot more organic sounding stuff on there.

SON: Man, with Blood and Fire, I love the album but listening to it a few years later there were a few tracks where it was like “maybe this one shouldn’t have made the cut.” In terms of production, in terms of rhymes, in terms of content, I’m one hundred percent proud to have my name on the cover. Period. It was a reflection of where I was at, and a reflection of where my roommate, who made a lot of beats for the album, was at. The Art of Struggle is a reflection of the time that I’ve spent working with different movements. It encompasses my perspective on a lot of issues like immigrant rights, the death penalty, the way that children are impacted the most by debt on the African continent and how that relates to child soldiers. There’s also a lot of pride on the album in term of the rebels that are in my past and my heritage—like the Maroons in Jamaica, and the people from this continent who have put their lives on the line to move things forward. That’s why I’m this pumped about The Art of Struggle. Because you know what? For me this is a dope project, and if you don’t like it then I don’t care. And that’s not to say it’s the best Hip-Hop album of all time. It’s not. But for me and where I’m at, it’s a reflection of my skills and my politics, and I feel like I can argue politically that these are the issues we need to address. It makes the case for solidarity in a way that you can relate to.

AB: At the same time Blood and Fire made a lot of waves on the east coast activist scene. I’ve seen you play at immigrant rights marches, at housing rights benefits. You did the Uprise Tour with Iraq Veterans Against the War, played with folks like Tom Morello, The Coup. Could you go a little more in depth as to how much working with those movements has impacted your material?

SON: It’s definitely impacted it in the sense that I have learned a lot more from the people who are actually in these struggles, fighting this war against their own group. Just hearing their perspective on it—I didn’t know that there was an IVAW doing the same shit that the soldiers in Vietnam were doing. Everyone wasn’t always against the war in this country, but in that context, IVAW was like “no, this shit is fucked up, and we’re not standing for it.” Also, knowing that Iraqis were resisting their occupiers the same way that people here in this country would, tooth and nail. Having those experiences with those movements has been so important to me. There are a lot of political artists out there; everyone doesn’t always know about them. But when you’re a political artist who is also walking the talk, then you know people and you build those relationships. Then when those people are trying to find a way to make their point through culture, you have that relationship. When you walk the talk your ideas bump up against reality, and it helps to shape them, it helps to trim the fat. And it helps you be figure out whether you’re on the level where you’re saying something because you read it in a book or whether you see it’s what the people are actually saying. I have my perspective on why shit is fucked up, but that’s one perspective. And I need to rap with the people who are actually living that and who are actually fighting against that so that it looks like I’m coming in on high to tell you how things need to be done.

AB: There was a lot that happened in between your two albums that have affected Hip-Hop as a whole too in terms of different issues and movements. Hip-Hop had to respond to Katrina, the Jena Six, and a lot of other stuff that has exposed the racism in this society. Seems to me a lot of Hip-Hop artists have been forced to respond to it and have wanted to respond to it. Has any of that affected you too?

SON: No, not at all. [laughter]

AB: Short and sweet answer. I like it.

SON: Naw, man, of course. Of course. It’s like Chuck D said, “Hip-Hop is the Black CNN.” I wish I was the dude who said it. But Chuck D said that shit years ago. So yes. I could not claim to be a political artist, or even a Hip-Hop artist, if I wasn’t talking about the shit that was going on. You know what I mean? You couldn’t be a writer if you didn’t have an experience. And where are you gonna gain experience besides the reality you’re given? Fuck yeah, the last five years a hell of a lot of shit has been going on. Being a Hip-Hop artists is about exposing contradictions and putting them in your face, being like “deal with this.” Why is this? Why does this happen? What that does is it opens up larger questions about the society we live in. Everybody knows that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but what does that actually look like? People don’t necessarily need that to be pointed out because you know that you’re broke. But it’s like how can I help connect those dots? And in the past five years there have been a lot of dots to connect.

AB: There’s one specific song I’ve seen you do live that takes a real cue from all the stuff that’s happened recently, and that’s “Speak On It.” Tell me about that song, because when I see you do it you’re either holding up pieces of paper with the issues on them or they’re projected behind you.

SON: “Speak on It” is six issues. It’s Katrina, it’s Stan “Tookie” Williams who was executed by the Terminator out in California, immigrant rights, the uprising in Oaxaca from a few years back, military recruiters in schools and it’s also about the bombing of Lebanon back in ’06. My reason for writing that was that I was trying to open up these issues and put them up against each other in one piece so that people would be like “right, this shit happened, and this is how different people are experiencing oppression.” You can’t get around how this same system is responsible for all this. With that song, I wanted to put it all on the table and be like “this is how I see what’s going on.” After you hear that shit, you can’t not have a perspective. That’s not to say that you need to agree with me, but these are things that should be thought about and organized under. There’s a line that I have at the end—usually when I perform, though it didn’t make it to the album—where I say “agonize or organize, stand aside or moblize, close your eyes or strategize,” you know what I mean? That’s what’s going on, what are we going to do about it?

AB: There are a lot of artists that will talk about all these different issues, but I think there’s a big need in this fractured political society that we live in to tie those things together. That’s the job of the left, of radicals, and you do it better than most. Which reminds me of another track on the album, “Child Abuse.” It falls into what you were talking about earlier with how Third World debt actually plays in to the phenomenon of child soldiers. And you know, that’s the kind of stuff you don’t hear from Bono. You know, the man speaks out about Third World debt and all of these celebrities are speaking about Darfur but none of them are really putting it in a context of a bigger system. There’s a line in that song where you say “Kanye came closer than most, but he got shook by King Leopold’s ghost.” I love that line!

SON: I love it too.

AB: It touches on the diamond trade, and colonialism, but also ties it into Hip-Hop really well. Could you expand on it a bit more?

SON: Well, King Leopold was the king of Belgium, and Belgium took over the Congo in the 1800s. And he tried to play himself off as a humanitarian, saying they were going to help the poor and shit. So that’s the backdrop. King Leopold’s Ghost is a book that I did not read, but I saw the documentary. It’s about the history of the Congo. Basically, the Congo was not turning a profit until the need for rubber became more apparent with the advent of the automobile. So once they found out that they had these rubber trees, King Leopold decided he was going to make production sky-rocket. And he had Africans rounded up, forced into slave labor, and said that if they don’t produce enough rubber that they would cut off their right hand and throw it in the ocean. And there were soldiers who would get paid based on the number of hands they returned. At one point, there was a Belgian bureaucrat who said “well, you have all these hands, but how do I know these are from men?” So they had the soldiers bring back the genitals of the men, so they would have to cut off the nuts and the dicks off of men. And all of this would get thrown into the ocean.

So, the reason I put Kanye into that is that he did this song that everyone knows “Diamonds of Sierra Leone.” It was a great track, but what I took from it, and maybe I was wrong about this was that he was saying “yo, this is fucked up, kids are walking around with no hands because of these diamonds.” But he’s also like “I’m not giving these diamonds back.” And even Jay-Z has a line there where he says “the day I give the chain back is the day I give the game back.” So it’s like this hard line, yeah this is fucked up, but this is how it’s gotta be. I hadn’t heard a whole lot of commercial artists make that point or even raise the issue about the diamond trade, but the conclusion was still wack. It’s not just MCs, because diamonds were around before Hip-Hop. Kanye raised the issue but he didn’t take it far enough. All of that I try to put into that line.

AB: Both “Child Abuse” and “My City” take up the connection between how war and globalization affect people at home and abroad. You talk about the inner-cities here in the US and the schools and then also about the Iraqi resistance. First of all, did your experience as a high school teacher affect that first verse? Because that line “my high school never had many computers, but they always had plenty military computers,” that’s one of those lines that hits you. I’ve looked around the crowd after you say that line live and there’s a whole bunch of people in the audience whose faces light up. It’s like their saying, “yeah, me too!”

SON: I mean, it’s just what I noticed. I was a teacher, and yeah there are some computers, but they’re these shitty-ass old—you remember the floppy disc? Back in the day when it was still floppy? That’s the computers they had. They’re old. So it’s like they were lacking in quality computers, but they weren’t lacking in people who were willing to sign folks up for the military. That was the situation. It was tough to come up against that. I’d find myself in the situation where I was saying “look, I don’t have twenty thousand dollars to give you, but the military’s fucked up. You’re gonna have to risk your life and you don’t even know if you’re going to get that money.” And it sucked, because that’s not gonna pay anyone’s bills.

So what I try to do in “My City” is just open it up. This is the situation from a student’s perspective. I wanted to put it out there and expose that inequity. And then at the same time show it from the point of view of an Iraqi who is part of the resistance and the reasons that he would be fighting. So it’s like how do I convey reality through song in a way that’s not cheesy? ‘Cuz that’s another thing; as a political artist you don’t want to be the guy whose CD people buy because they think they should. I also want people to think it’s dope and for it to resonate with them, not just think “well, he’s making reasonable arguments, so I should support him.”

AB: It’s like, why don’t you just go out and buy a Noam Chomsky book right?

SON: Right.

Next week: the second part of my interview with Son of Nun

This article originally appeared at The Society of Cinema and Arts.

*****

Plague Lovers' Purgatory

2009-06-01T19:25:00.010-05:00

In a career almost twenty years long, the Manic Street Preachers have never gained a massive following in the US. In their native UK, the Manics have been among those ranks of bands that everyone knows--their songs became drunken anthems in London's working-class pubs long before the boys of Oasis even formed.

Their music has always skated dangerously close to Rock 'n' Roll's edge--blistering guitar licks, a rhythm section that refuses to be part of the background, and lyrics that play as much with "I-don't-give-a-shit" nihilism as they do with meaning and purpose. While Grunge may have brought a youthful anger back to Rock, few American groups gave it a direction.

The Manics, however, blended their sneering cynicism with a political compass that most bands on either side of the pond couldn't maintain in the crumbling grandeur of the '90s. Their inconoclastic use of media manipulation, their willingness to skewer anything that smacked of stale establishment junk, and their outspoken affinity for radical ideas clearly set them apart, especially because they did it with such style and fearlessness.

Whether it's this refusal to be anything but themselves, or just a consequence of the chronic myopia from which the American music industry suffers, the Manic Street Preachers' American audience has always remained sparse. With any luck, that will change with their new album.

Journal For Plague Lovers is a near-breathtaking piece of work, even by the Manics' standards. It is the first album to feature lyrics penned entirely by the group's backup guitarist and lyricist Richey James Edwards, who disappeared on February 1st, 1995. Edwards' body was never found, though his car was discovered near a notorious suicide spot two weeks later. Edwards, who had long battled with depression, was declared "presumed dead" at the request of his family in November of 2008.

A few days before his disappearance, Edwards gave a notebook filled with lyrics to bassist Nicky Wire. After thirteen years of sitting unused, Journal is the long-awaited result. Though it might be easy to think of this album as a novelty, a fossil of sorts, the shocking reality is that this is their freshest sounding and most relevant album in a decade! Edwards always brought an irreverence to his lyricism that was more harrowing than humorous, and that ethos seems to have soaked into every aspect of Journal.

"Peeled Apples" is a brutally abrasive opener, filled with razor-on-metal guitars. James Dean Bradfield's dangerous wail makes Billy Idol sound like a cat with a hairball problem, and Sean Moore's drums have the determined pound of a wrecking ball smashing through concrete. None of its intensity fades on the second track, "Jackie Collins Existential Question Time," which sees Edwards ruminating on the underbelly of traditional sex and marriage:

"Tonight we beg,
Tonight we beg a question
If I a married man,
A married man begs a Catholic
And his wife dies without knowing
Does it make him unfaithful people
Oh, Mummy, what's a sex pistol?"

This kind of world-view has always been at the heart of the Manics' music. Their keen love of Situationism has inspired them to turn the traditional inside out and lay its own emptiness bare--whether that be sex, work, love, leisure, even the concept of beauty itself. Unlike so many "political" groups who will rail on and on about specific issues that may or may not be relevant in a few years time, Manic Street Preachers play at the much more insidious sicknesses that plague modern capitalist culture. It's not only better song-writing, it's a timelessness that makes their music that much more potent--not to mention amazingly poignant almost fifteen years after the words were written.

This kind of universality comes out full-frontal on Journal For Plague Lovers' title track, which relies on tornado-swirl guitars and Bradfield's joyfully masochistic delivery. More broadly, the song's topic is the unabashed arrogance of absolute power:

"Only a god can bruise
Only a god can soothe
Only a god reserves the right
To forgive those that revile him"

Tell me these lyrics don't ring true in the age of billion dollar bank bailouts--especially when Bradfield sings "oh, sweet stimulus." Screw relevancy, this kind of statement is flat-out dangerous--in the best way possible!

It's a fitting tribute to Edwards' memory that his lyrics can find such immediacy long after his absence. There is obviously no way he could have predicted the present battle of ideas over same-sex marriage, let alone the current economic meltdown, when he lambasted the collisions of sex and power. The material that shows up on Journal finds traction in our own era, however, and that's one of the things that makes Edwards as close to immortal as an artist can get. It's also one of the reasons that more people in today's America need to listen to the Manic Street Preachers.

Originally appeared at The Society of Cinema and Arts.

*****

A Change is Gonna Come?

2009-05-25T19:15:00.006-05:00

"Separate but equal." It's a term that is unavoidably associated with one of the most shameful episodes in American history--when racism and bigotry were legally codified, when a whole section of the population were denied the most basic of human rights. Today, "separate but equal" is taken seriously by nobody who actually believes in real equality. And yet, it's a logic that is shockingly alive in modern America.

The inequality that continues to divide this country was on full display this past week on, of all places, the season finale of "American Idol," where Adam Lambert, the glam-rocker from San Diego with the golden pipes was beaten out by Kris Allen, an Arkansas native so white-bred he makes John Mayer look dynamic. Lambert had been considered a shoe in for the next Idol all season. His stage presence, charisma, his unique song arrangements and sheer vocal range put him miles ahead of any other performer on the show. How the hell did he get beaten by Allen?

I have no illusions of "American Idol" being a platform for real progressive social change. Despite its populist bent, it is, at its core, a show run by and for the benefit of the music industry. With this in mind, it would be easy for any of us to write the whole thing off. In this case, however, attention must be paid.

Rumors of Lambert's sexuality have surrounded him this entire season. Many have been demeaning--as if eye makeup and tight pants make necessarily make a man gay. When pictures surfaced of the singer dressed in drag and kissing another man, Bill O'Reilly found reason to throw his screed into the ring, speculating whether the pics would "have an effect on ['Idol']."

Lambert himself has been reticent to comment on whether he is gay, straight, or bi, though he did acknowledge that it is indeed him in the pictures. His studio version of Tears For Fears' "Mad World" includes a verse, cut from the live performance, where he switches the words "hers" for "their" and "girl" for "person." Regardless of how public he has been about his preferences, the media have been quite willing to present him as someone with a "different" sexuality.

So producer Simon Fuller knew exactly what he was doing when he selected Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" for Lambert to sing on the "Idol" finale last Tuesday. The song, possibly one of the most moving in the history of popular music, was written by Cooke in early 1964, four months after the Black artist had been arrested while checking into a whites-only hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana. As the American South was swept by the Civil Rights movement, "A Change is Gonna Come" tapped into the rising hopes of millions:

"I go to the movie
And I go downtown
Somebody keep tellin' me
Don't hang around

It's been a long, long time comin'
But I know a change is gonna come
Oh, yes it will

Then I go to my brother
And I say 'brother, help me please'
But he winds up, knockin' me
Back down on my knees"

It's no exaggeration to say that Lambert's searing, gut-bucket Blues version of the song spoke to many on the same level Cooke's did. The passage of Proposition 8 in California on election day has ignited a new movement for gay civil rights in our time. Demonstrations for same sex marriage have drawn hundreds of thousands onto city streets across the country. And in a turn of events that show how much public opinion has shifted in recent years, four states have now passed legislation that allows people of the same sex to be married.

How all of this played into Kris Allen's victory over Adam Lambert last Wednesday is impossible to tell, but it seems to provide a twisted proxy for the battle of ideas taking shape. Lambert, a gender-bending glam-boy surrounded by rumors about being gay electrifies one of America's most-watched television shows with consistently strong performances, only to lose to a dime-a-dozen guitar plucker, who also happens to be an Evangelical Christian.

Despite this, most polls show support for gay rights at the highest it has ever been in this country, while Allen's own beliefs appear to be in steep decline. Not that you would be able to tell from the past several weeks. The newly empowered Democrats, lead by Barack Obama, the supposed arbiter of "change," have been largely indifferent to the new movement. Their silence on Proposition 8, their tacit support for the Defense of Marriage Act (signed into law, let's not forget, by Democratic President Bill Clinton), has enabled a Christian Right that was utterly defeated in November to somehow define the terms of the debate.

Their desperation, however, is just as palpable--to the point where they are willing to let a publicly shamed beauty queen become their figurehead. Carrie Prejean may be little more than a puppet in all of this (that's a beauty queen's job, after all), but many in the knuckle-dragging anti-gay community are surely thankful she came to prominence when she did.

And so, what millions watched on "American Idol" last week was a lot more than a music show. When the world finds itself in its current situation, sometimes the shallowest forms of culture can become fascinating allegories for real-life struggles. Millions waited with baited breath as the results were announced for "Idol" last Wednesday. Just as many will be doing the same as California's supreme court announces its decision on Prop 8 this Tuesday. If it is overturned, it will be further proof that movements work. If it's upheld, it may leave many in the LGBT community wondering when their own "change is gonna come."

This article originally appeared at The Society of Cinema and Arts.

*****

"This scene, it's something to live for:" an interview with Intifada

2009-05-24T12:40:00.007-05:00

The word “Intifada” has become damn-near ubiquitous over the past several years. Loosely translated, it’s Arabic for “uprising.” Since the beginning of the second Palestinian mass rebellion in 2000, it has re-entered the English lexicon as a slogan for all kinds of resistance. So, it’s not really surprising that four guys from Chicago’s thriving hardcore scene would take it up as a name for their band (a quick search online will reveal that they’re not the only ones who’ve taken the moniker). It’s a fitting word for their music: defiant, frenetic, unpredictable, and sure to put a frown on the face of anyone who adheres to the least bit of tradition.

But when I sat down with drummer Alberto, guitarist Joey, bass player Oak, and vocalist Noe, they made clear that the band’s name isn’t just vague propaganda. One of the more recent additions to the WindyCity’s diverse array of punk bands, they were more than happy to delve into all sorts of deeper ideas regarding their origins, their attempts to overcome divisions within punk, and the relationship between the personal and political in their music.

Billet: How did the band get together?
Noe: High school. We met each other individually and we started introducing each other to one another.
Alberto: I first met Noe when I skipped my band class in high school. I was chilling with my friend Manny, and he ran in a circle with this cat (Noe), so he introduced me. I knew Oak from just seeing him wear a punk jacket…
Oak: I was the most punk to begin with. I was like the punk punk with the mohawk and the jacket, and all that shit…
Alberto: Yeah, so I knew Oak and he introduced me to Joey…
Noe: We just started hanging out…
Oak: Yeah, and me and Joey had this Screeching Weasel kind of band called the Hendersons. And then me and Noe had this street punk band called The Defiled. And then these guys, everybody else but me, started Intifada with two other different bassists, and they were trying to get some shit started. They all kind of knew me, and their original bassist couldn’t make it to the first three shows, so they asked me to play in his place, and I just ended up being part of Intifada.
Billet: So you usurped him. [laughter] When was all this? It was ’05, right?
Noe: Yes.
Oak: Summer of ’05.
Billet: We were talking earlier about how your sound has evolved a lot since then…
Noe: Yeah, it’s developed so much, and we’ve gone through so many phases. Our first stuff, I think we can all agree, was definitely a bit more original, and then with everything else we took a lot of influence from the stuff we were listening to.
Oak: It was weird because these guys were playing, like, fast… really fast hardcore before we even started listening to really fast hardcore, and then we tried to play that. And then—I don’t know, dude—our new stuff is all over the place and crazy. It’s just some crazy shit! Every fucking band and every genre I’ve listened to is mixed up in my mind, I’ve formulated this sound, and it’s coming out in our new stuff.
Joey: Imagine this, okay? Punk rock, hardcore, in the lotus position… [laughter]
Billet: Oddly enough, that seems about right. Now, hardcore has kind of this undeserved stereotype, especially from outside the scene, as being an angry white kids thing…
Oak: Ha!
Noe: It’s true, though. It’s true, because it’s in the ‘80s that it blew up and it was all the white kids—except for Bad Brains. But it was all the white kids and then, I don’t know, some time around Los Crudos (recognized as one of the first Latino punk bands in Chicago) that shit just flipped around.
Alberto: Yeah, that was one of my biggest influences was that during the ‘90s, Crudos was setting up stuff in the hood because they weren’t getting invited to North Side shows and stuff like that. So, you had the whole DIY Latino explosion right here.
Noe: Actually, we’re all North Siders.
Alberto: Yeah, we’re all North Siders. Everbody thinks we’re from South Side (which is predominantly Black and Latino). But there’s Latinos in the North Side too. I’m from AlbanyPark. All the Guatemalans live there, so…
Billet: That actually leads me to the next question. Where are all you guys originally from?
Oak: Born and raised Chicago, straight up. My parents are from Thailand so I’m Thai by descent. But straight up, live in the same house I was born in.
Alberto: I was born in uptown Chicago, and lived here all my life. My parents are of Guatemalan descent, both of them.
Noe: Yeah, I’m the only one with a story. [laughter] I was born in Mexico. I came here when I was about seven years old.
Billet: What part of Mexico?
Noe: Guadalajara. I was born there. I came here. I went through all the legal bullshit, and I was lucky enough to get all my papers and all that stuff. About three years ago I became a legal citizen, and I’ve been living in HumboldtPark for about thirteen years now.
Joey: I was born in Kenya. [Lots of laughter because he obviously wasn’t.] No, I was born in Chicago. I don’t even know where I was born. I think I was born somewhere in the South Side.
Billet: Now, Chicago is a bit of a unique city because it has a Latino punk scene that is a scene unto itself but still relates to the broader hardcore scene. And you guys, I’m assuming, see yourself as part of that.
Alberto: Well, we definitely started off as part of the South Side label—Southkore, that’s run by Benny from No Slogan—and that’s actually because Noe’s brother played bass for No Slogan. So, I guess that’s how he got introduced: Noe seeing Southkore shows. You know, it was a spot for Latino bands to play because Chicago’s really segregated as far as a city—always is, always was, probably will be always. It’s always that you’ve got your anarcho-punk kids on the South Side, your straight edge kids, your Latino scene scattered everywhere.
Noe: You do what you can, though. I mean, just last week, we had a couple of straight edge bands playing with La Armada. They just came here a couple of years ago from the Dominican Republic…
Joey: With a lot of weed…
Noe: Yeah! I mean the biggest potheads were playing a show with the biggest names in straight edge hardcore here in Chicago. It’s definitely good to see that, but there’s still a divide. And like Alberto was saying, there always will be, I think. We can do as much as we can do, and hope that it works out.
Alberto: I started setting up shows here in Chicago about a year and a half ago. So, obviously, at first I would hook up my friends, the bands I knew and was tight with. But then I started realizing that I was pretty sick of this segregation bullshit—all the bands playing their own little scenes, and kids weren’t coming out. It didn’t have a name back then, but right now it’s called Inner-City Hospitality.
Joey: Where you get a handshake and a shank. [laughter]
Alberto: Yeah, exactly… Welcome to Chicago, man! [mimics stabbing someone] No, but what I try to do usually is mix bands from all over because, obviously, in every scene there’s cool people, and there’s good bands. So we don’t want to segregate that. We want to bring it all together. It’s my little skewed view of unity, but at least I’m doing something.
Noe: When you put on a show like that you can definitely bring in a good crowd and hopefully they all get along. And for the most part get along pretty well.
Billet: Chicago is also a big hub for the immigrant rights movement, nationally, after it sprung up here back in ‘06. Have you noticed, since that movement, a bit of a breaking down of those boundaries?
Joey: Well, I was a major figure in the Black Power movement in the ‘70s. [laughter]
Billet: Oh, so you came straight from Kenya into the Panthers? [more laughter]
Noe: No, but honestly I can’t say how it was before, because it’s word of mouth. You know, like Alberto was saying with Los Crudos. They had to bring it into their crowd, but I think there’s definitely been an improvement since then. And let’s face it; these past eight years it was commonplace for everyone to hate a common person. Hate really brings people together, as bad as that sounds…
Billet: When you have a common enemy…
Noe: Yeah, but it’s true. And I definitely think it’s gotten a little easier for people to mingle.
Alberto: It’s always that segregation. I mean, even just how Chicago is built—you go to a block and you’re in a Latino neighborhood. You go a few blocks south and you’re in a Polish neighborhood. You go a few more blocks south and you’re in a Black neighborhood…
Noe: And then you’re in Gold Coast…
Alberto: Exactly! Then you’re in some yuppie-ass hood! But for the most part, what I’ve been trying to do and what these guys are trying to do here is really just trying to bring the people together. It’s something hard to do, but if you’re not taking that initiative, nobody’s going to do it. Still, you see all these shows with the same people putting it on, and the same shows will be the same few bands every time.
Oak: Also, it’s hard because we’re pretty much the youngest. All those scenes—the Latino scene, the straight edgers, South Side—were around before we were arriving. We just kind of jumped in. Like I said before, I started as a street punk kid and I went to street punk shows, and I realized after a year that it was fake. None of the kids were actually involved in anything; it was like a party scene. I really didn’t see anything going on. Then Noe invited me to ChicagoFest, and I saw the scene—the real scene! It blew my mind! And I was like, “Holy crap, I want to be a part of that.” Even though it was all segregated before, I never saw that. I saw it as “the real scene” and “the fake scene.” To me, even though we see it from different views and we’re all different, we’re all working together and we’re all a part of the same thing. We all live in the same city, and although there is segregation, I believe we can always work together. That’s the way I’ve seen it, and even though we’re the youngest, I feel like we have the potential to pull everybody together because I’ve always seen past all that shit.
Billet: A name like Intifada conjures up a lot of images of political resistance. Has that affected your activity as a band?
Noe: It’s sad to say, but we have to confess to it: We’re not as politically active as we would like to be. When we first started, when Alberto first approached us with the name, we took no political stance to it.
Joey: It sounded cool…
Noe: Yeah, it sounded cool. And then there were other bands that were like, “Fuck them. Let’s show ‘em up.” [laughter]
Joey: We started the MySpace revolution of Intifada bands.
Billet: Yeah, I did notice a few other bands called Intifada on MySpace.
Joey: There’s like ten! [more laughter]
Alberto: Honestly, I did think about it when I chose the name because I like the theme of uprising and stuff like that. But it’s such an ambiguous term—you can uprise against whatever the hell you want. Mainly, in Noe’s lyrics, I see more of a social struggle than it is a political struggle. A lot of his stuff is pretty personal. Like he told me before, “You’ve got to change yourself before you can change anything else.”
Billet: Do you think that can dovetail sometimes: the social, the political, and the personal?
Noe: Definitely! I try to steer away from writing the political lyrics because there are a lot of bad bands that do it horribly. But the way I’ve always seen it is, politics are always social. Politics are always individual because whatever is said or whatever is working around you always affects you personally. And it’s about taking it from your perspective. Definitely taking it from your perspective within an entire community, but always starting with the individual.
Alberto: You know, we all have a common struggle. For us, growing up in the inner-city, being of color, we face certain racism, certain feelings that people have against us. But at the same time, we’re just trying to change individuals and individual thought, you know?
Billet: Between Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and the recession, do you think there is an opening or an increased interest in bands that bring the political, the social, and the personal together?
Alberto: There definitely can be a leeway into that. But again, we’re not there. We’re not experiencing it. We can never see from the perspective of some dude in Palestine who’s getting his fucking house bombed to shit every day. So you can speak out about it, but honestly, it’s not going to be the same as somebody speaking out from there.
Billet: Do you think it’s possible for bands like this to play a role in solidarity with Palestinians?
Noe: Yeah. I mean we’re playing a benefit for the School of Music in Gaza! Every show, I believe, should have some sort of direction, some sort of impact, where you can influence something. It’s nice to have an outlet where we can be angry, where we can say what we want to say and have fun, but it needs to go in a direction, too.
Billet: How did the Gaza benefit come together?
Noe: We actually just got invited. There have been a few earlier this year. This is the first we’ve been asked to. And it’s pretty cool because we’re getting a pretty good mix of the punk crowd and hip-hop crowd and everything. I’m really glad that we got invited to participate.
Alberto: I guess one of the main goals would be, you know, just don’t be apathetic. Raise concern of what you want to be concerned about, and don’t just sit on your ass and talk smack about it without doing anything. That’s a good way to approach it. If you’re going to be a band from the U.S. that can go home and not get your house shot to shit, that’s pretty sweet. You’re not there, but it’s good not to be apathetic. That’s why another thing we try to revolve around is the idea of saying what you want. Feel it from the heart, start your own band, do what you do.
Billet: Any final thoughts—the scene, your band—any last words for the good people at home?
Noe: This whole thing saved and ruined my life. [laughter] I can easily say that this whole punk thing, thanks to my brother, ruined my life forever—and honestly saved it. I don’t know where I would be if it weren’t for this band.
Alberto: I’d probably be running around in a gang in Albany Park if it weren’t for this. Straight up, this scene, it’s something that we live for. I mean what else would we do on the weekends? We’re trying to do it. And, Inner-City Hospitality—if your band needs a place to stay…
Joey: Fuckin’ self-promotion!
Alberto: No, man! I’m just saying…
Joey: Yo, man, let me tell you something: if it were not for Intifada… I would probably be a Reggaeton star right now man! [laughter] I fuckin’ hate these guys! [loud laughter] I wish that somebody would shake the fuck out of them! [even louder laughter]
Noe: It’s love…
Joey: No, but seriously, man… I can’t imagine being any-fucking-where except a dingy basement, playing on half-working equipment, and a duct-taped up guitar. That is my fucking life! Working forty-plus hours a week, that’s just in-between time really, just killing time until I play the next show. That’s all it is!
Oak: I guess all I have to say is, man… I think somebody said it before: Stand for something, believe in something, or fall for anything. Fucking find your own fucking truth, think it through and through, look within yourself, and find what you think is most worth fighting for, and follow through. In any form, it doesn’t even have to be music—in your fucking life. What you believe in the most, just do it, and believe in it, and don’t fucking listen to anybody else. Listen to yourself, listen to your inner-voice and follow that always!

This article originally appeared at Razorcake.

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Calling for a boycott in Sri Lanka

2009-05-22T17:03:00.005-05:00

M.I.A. has been in the news, and on this blog, quite a bit lately. It's little wonder why, with her being declared one of the most influential people in the world by Time, her clothing line, and the featuring of "Paper Planes" in not one but two hit movies. And as one of the only Tamils with a high profile in the west, she has understandably become a spokesperson against the vile human rights abuses taking place against her people at the hands of the Sri Lankan government during the recent upsurge in the country's civil war.

That war was officially declared "over" this week. This doesn't, however, mean any kind of relief for Sri Lankan Tamils. As Tamil socialist A Sivanandan recently wrote: “There will be no peace because the causes of the military struggle have not been addressed—massive discrimination, racialisation of everything, massive censorship, the murder of journalists in the south and anybody else who speaks up.”

Ms. Arulpragasam is, unsurprisingly, continuing to speak out on the situation. In a recent post on her Twitter, she listed several companies that do business in Sri Lanka, including Ralph Lauren, Hanes, Tommy Hilfiger and Wal Mart. These are all companies that have, in the past, been implicated in using sweatshop labor in far-east countries, so it's only fitting they benefit from the ongoing Tamil exploitation.

M.I.A. isn't the only one calling for a boycott of these companies. She links to a recent editorial in the London Times goes more in depth into other outfits the do business in Sri Lanka, and likewise calls for people to not buy from them.

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RF: the blog, the 'zine, the legend

2009-05-21T11:02:00.005-05:00

I'm pleased to announce that Rebel Frequencies will be producing its first ever 'zine for release in mid-June! If all goes according to plan (which it rarely does), this will be the first issue of a quarterly released DIY magazine version of RF.

The reasons for releasing this 'zine are many-fold: first, the events of the past several months in both music and the world at large call for a need to reach past the traditional, web-oriented audience for RF. There are countless music fans out there who haven't yet been exposed to this blog's content who would dig it, and an RF 'zine is a great attempt to reach them. Second: the content, not just of the mainstream rags, but also in the 'zine world, just doesn't seem to really be taking up the sea-change in that is taking place in music--among musicians or audience members. And third, the DIY ethic I picked up during my Hardcore Punk days dies very, very hard, and can only be somewhat satisfied by a mere blog.

Be sure to get a copy! While the 'zine will feature content that has appeared here before, there are also going to be articles that haven't. Don't miss out! If you live in the Chicago area, you'll be able to pick it up at such book and music retailers as Quimby's, Reckless Records, and Myopic Books.

If you don't live in Chicago, you can order it through RF! More will come later on how much this will be, but rest assured, it will be affordable!

*****

Whose Country Is This?

2009-05-18T20:17:00.010-05:00

The battle lines have been increasingly drawn over the past several months--in politics, culture, art, and in music. The economic crisis has provoked a palpable outrage among ordinary people that can't be denied. Unemployment continues to climb, schools and hospitals are being shut down, all the while bankers take their bailouts and laugh all the way to... well... wherever the hell bankers laugh all the way to.

None of this means, however, that it is always easy to recognize what side everyone is on. Case in point: Country artist John Rich's latest single "Shuttin' Detroit Down." Rich, one half of the Country duo Big & Rich, has made "Detroit" the lodestone of his second solo effort Son of a Preacher Man. The song is old-school, shedding the stadium-oriented sound that country has taken on in recent decades in favor of pared down acoustic and steel guitar.

When in late March, "Shuttin' Detroit Down" shot to number 12 on the Country music charts. Listening to the lyrics, it's painfully obvious why:

"Now I see these big shots whinin' on my evening news
About how they're losing billions and it's up to me and you
To come running to the rescue

Well pardon me if I don't shed a tear
'Cause they're selling make believe
And we don't buy that here

'Cause in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down
While the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets on out of town
And DC's bailing out them bankers as the farmers auction ground"

No working person in their right mind can disagree with any of this. But as the saying goes, context counts. And the context that Rich has couched himself in is very ugly indeed. A quick search for "Shuttin' Detroit Down" will reveal where this song got one of its first televised appearances: Fox News.

On the day Son of a Preacher Man was released, Rich performed the song on the nightly "news" show of verbal diarrhea master Glenn Beck. Beck, who John Stewart rightly described as "a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking," made a name for himself by masquerading as a regular guy and spouting off some of the most foul right-wing bigotry one can hear. When Rich appeared on his show, he was over the moon. For his part, Rich dedicated the song to "all the hard working men and women out there watching Glenn Beck today."

The timing was prescient, as March was also when CNBC editor Rick Santelli's "Tea Party" rallies began to sweep the country. Santelli's rallies have tapped into the anger of disaffected middle class Americans against the bailouts and directed it not just at the bankers, but at welfare programs, affirmative action, immigrants and the very people being evicted from their homes, who Santelli refers to as "losers." Beck's interview with Rich was juxtaposed with footage of people carrying signs that read "Say No to Socialism!" On tax day, he performed the song at the Tea Party held in Atlanta.

Rich's sincerity can't be doubted. The sentiments expressed in his song are shared by millions of people facing the loss of their jobs or homes. He doesn't, however, see a contradiction in expressing those same sentiments on Fox. Neither does he see how his own support for such politicians as Fred Thompson and John McCain undercuts his supposed sympathy with workers.

Fox News, after all, is steadfastly against the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it infinitely easier for workers to organize a union. They are also, famously, against the right for undocumented workers to citizenship, seeing it easier to point the blame at them than the massive companies that exploit them. All of this is what makes Fox's attempt to wrap itself in concern for working people all the more devious and horrifying.

What's truly disturbing about all this isn't just that Rich is wittingly allowing his song to be exploited by the most stomach-turning elements in this country. It's that in doing so, he's enabling the ongoing strangle-hold of conservatism on Country music. Contrary to popular belief, Country hasn't always been a cesspool of jingoism and bigotry. From Johnny Cash to Steve Earle, Country's affinity for the down-and-out has lent it to progressive or even radical causes.

But the past several decades have seen a fictional "Middle America" intertwined with NASCAR and Confederate flags to the point where they may seem indistinguishable. Right-wing politicians have been able to paint liberals and progressives as big city elitists ready to gut the livelihoods of hard-working Americans for the sake of some kind of soft communism.

The past couple years have proven what a sham this Red State/Blue State dichotomy is, though. For the first time in thirty years, most Americans support more government spending on schools, hospitals and jobs. They want a universal healthcare plan. They want a racial and sexual equality that simply hasn't been forthcoming. And yes, they want the damn bankers to give them their money back!

The faux-populism of Santelli, Beck and Rich doesn't turn the outrage of ordinary people into something productive. On the contrary, it exploits that anger and uses it to keep people divided. Ordinary Country fans gain nothing from buying into these politics. Here's to hoping that a new breed of artist can take the stage back from Rich and his ilk.

This article first appeared at The Society of Cinema and Arts.

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Don't miss RF at Socialism 2009!

2009-05-15T22:15:00.010-05:00

Just a friendly reminder: I'll be speaking at Socialism 2009 in Chicago. The title of the talk is "You Can't Stop Us Now: Hip-Hop in a New Political Era," and will be at 11:30am, Friday, June 19th at the Wyndham O'Hare Hotel.

Events of the past few years have a lot of heads wondering "what's next?" There is a lot going on in Hip-Hop, and with the economic crisis drawing more and more people onto the streets, the possibilities for collision between struggle and culture are more potent than they have been in quite some time. This is a talk that no serious music fan or activist should miss!

That can be said for S'09 in general. This event will bring together some of the most dynamic activists, writers and speakers in the country and the world. Don't be left behind. Check out the schedule and register today!

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Rising from the Middle

2009-05-13T21:11:00.007-05:00

It might be easy to think Chicago's Hip-Hop scene is on the decline since the release of Kanye's 808's and Failure... I mean... Heartbreak. Hip-Hop evolves at a breakneck pace; by the time you put your finger on a trend, it's already yesterday's news and most heads have moved on to the next thing.

Chi-town, however, is still going strong. This was asserted in, of all places, the Red Eye, the free daily distributed by the Tribune. If one of this town's establishment papers is crowing the virtues of this scene, you know it's been stomping around for a while.

The piece highlights four rising Chicago MCs to watch. It's no surprise that Naledge from Kidz in the Hall, who has his first solo dropping in June, is on there. This writer's personal favorite, however, is Mic Terror, who recently got a big bump in popularity after M.I.A. discovered one of his tracks.

Terror's material captures the transition that Rap is in right now. It's bouncy, intense, paying equal tribute to what came before--East and West Coast, Old and New School--while adding a unique spin. The contradiction that is Chicago, it's decaying urban life butted up against slick "development," seems to drip off his beats and rhymes. That's a contradiction everyone is trying to navigate right now.

*****

Reality Relapse

2009-05-11T21:05:00.006-05:00

Music has changed a lot in the past five years. It's become more urgent, more immediate, gained a higher degree of calculated grittiness and a slightly lower tolerance for bullshit. Pity nobody told Eminem that.

Back in the late 90s, as well as the first half of this decade, Mr. Shady set the pace for artists around the world. His unbelievable ability with a mic and unabashed willingness to speak his mind--no matter how much controversy it stirred--put him at the forefront. As the first white rapper to carry real credibility among all sections of the Rap community, he helped usher in an era when Hip-Hop was to become an unstoppable global phenomenon with universal appeal well beyond the limits of the American ghetto:

"Look at these eyes, they be blue baby, just like yourself
If they were brown, Shady lose, Shady sits on the shelf...

Let's do the math, if I was Black, I would have sold half
I ain't have to graduate from Lincoln High School to know that"

Lyrics like these from 2002's "White America" displayed how aware Em was of his role--and all the contradictions in American culture that it brought to the forefront.

Which means he should know better than anyone that Hip-Hop shifts at a pace unseen in any other popular genre. Why then, one might ask, is he releasing an album that sounds like it was recorded five years ago? Relapse is Eminem's first album since 2004, and listening to the singles leaked on the internet, it certainly shows.

"We Made You" just about sums it up. Em still has a great skill with rhyme and flow. His penchant for skewering pop culture icons remains intact as ever, leading him to lambast everyone from Kim Kardashian to Samantha Ronson. But five years after he went into recluse, it doesn't seem irreverent so much as self-referential. Even the Dr. Dre-produced beats seem recycled, as if they were created in a bubble where nothing ages or evolves.

None of this has stopped Interscope from putting every ounce into generating positive publicity for Relapse. Street teams have slapped up posters in every major urban area in the country, and the web has been abuzz with hype for the album for weeks now. The album's content, however, has been met with little more than shrugs and yawns from critics and fans alike.

It's not simply that Eminem hasn't kept up. All the alienation, the raw and untempered outrage he once tapped into is still there in millions of young people. In times like this, however, it takes a much more dynamic and focused form. The bottom-up rumblings that have made themselves known since the beginning of the recession cry for a soundtrack that directs its anger at something more specific than the celebrity elite. What's truly confusing is that Em has been more than happy to sharpen the point of his lyrical spear before. In a time that calls for it to be sharper than ever, Mr. Shady has chosen to hold back on giving his barbs some real purpose.

Compare this to the current status of M.I.A., the seemingly unlikely standard bearer whose star never seems to stop rising. The Tamil refugee turned super-artist has a lot more in common with Eminem than one might think: an unapologetic willingness to speak her mind, a background not stereotypically associated with Hip-Hop (aka "she's not Black"), and an aesthetic that bends the boundaries of her genre and dares her audience to shed their preconceived notions.

Record execs are either oblivious or begrudgingly accepting of the fact that "Paper Planes," one of the most recognized songs in the world right now, is essentially about robbing white tourists in a Third World country. More broadly, though, it's about taking back the wealth stolen from these countries by the West.

It's not far-fetched to say that the global explosion of "Paper Planes" is indicative of a shift in mass consciousness the likes of which hasn't been seen in almost two generations. Surely, this shift has been a long time coming, but it has only been in recent months that it's made itself known. Where yesterday's youth seemed divided and out for themselves, today's young people were willing to vote a Black man in as president and are keenly aware that their collective futures are at risk of being flushed down the crapper.

Musically, the new direction of this energy is best embodied in an artist like M.I.A. A refugee, daughter of a freedom fighter, an unabashed militant whose vision of the future doesn't include compromise. Though she spent her early career as a favorite in the Indie scene, her music has always been unmistakably Hip-Hop. Its collision with Punk and Electronica and her ability to gain acceptance in multiple sub-cultures highlights just how much people's ideas have changed in recent years.

When she was selected at one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" last month, it took many people, including this writer, by surprise. To some it might be her first step toward selling out. The events of Time's honorary gala, though, show an artist as willing as ever to speak truth to power. What's more, she was in the rare position to speak it to its actual face.

Writing on her MySpace blog, M.I.A. recounted the admittedly odd experience of meeting such figures as Oprah Winfrey, and actually urging her to speak out on the Sri Lankan war against Tamils. In her signature tongue-in-cheeky style, she also wrote:

"MICHELLE OBAMA GAVE A SPEECH AND THERE WAS MAD SECRET SERVICE IN THE AIR SO I DIDNT GET TO THROW A PAPER PLANE AT HER SAYING 'STOP THE BOMBING OF THE TAMILS IN SRI LANKA'"

What seems surreal about this is the sheer clash of interests taking place. It's worth taking a step back to note the real significance of the whole phenomenon. Here is the daughter of a guerilla fighter, a woman who has never shied from making clear whose side she is on, being pointed to by one of the most establishment magazines in the world as a major influence. Ultimately, very little has changed in M.I.A.'s outlook. What's changed is the way ordinary people look at the world around them and what they are willing to fight for.

When cultures shift, it's not uncommon to see a new and dynamic future alongside the stale, rehashed past. It's unfortunate that the latter of the two can be found so pronounced in an artist who not so long ago was on top of his game. The embodiment of the former, however, in a musician who sees the world in a radically different way is something that can give us all a lot more hope.

This article first appeared on The Society of Cinema and Arts.

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