Rebel musics. Volume 2 : human rights, resistant sounds, and the politics of music making 9781551646978, 9781551646992, 9781551647012

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Praise for Rebel Musics: Human Rights, Resistant Sounds, and the Politics of Music Making (2003) “A rich collection of ideas and information about music that inspires, delights, and educates at the same time. It is especially welcome at a time when people doing music are called upon by world events to walk out on the stage and do the unexpected.” —Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

“A complex and thought-provoking set of essays, which addresses politics, human rights, and resistance in music on a global scale. . . . Rebel Musics encourages us to dig deeply and confront the contradictions, power imbalances, and ethical questions constantly circulating through sound and social practice. Read this!” —Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music, Harvard University

“An important new collection, Fischlin and Heble’s Rebel Musics for the first time brings together the fields of politics, popular music, and human rights. Diverse and challenging, celebratory but refreshingly realistic, I strongly recommend Rebel Musics to all those interested in music and its political possibilities.” —Chris Gibson, University of New South Wales

Rebel Musics VOLUME 2

Rebel Musics VOLUME 2 Human Rights, Resistant Sounds, and the Politics of Music Making

Edited by Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble

Montr©al/Chicago/London

Copyright © 202 Black Rose Books Thank you for purchasing this Black Rose Books publication. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system–without written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, Access Copyright, with the exception of brief passages quoted by a reviewer in a newspaper or magazine. If you acquired an illicit electronic copy of this book, please consider making a donation to Black Rose Books. %ODFN5RVH%RRNV1R77 Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Rebel musics. Volume 2 : human rights, resistant sounds, and the politics of music making Daniel Fischlin & Ajay Heble. Names: Fischlin, Daniel, editor. | Heble, Ajay, 1961- editor. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. ,GHQWLʕHUV&DQDGLDQDSULQW _&DQDGLDQDHERRN _,6%1 VRIWFRYHU _,6%1KDUGFRYHU _,6%13') 6XEMHFWV/&6+0XVLFȋ3ROLWLFDODVSHFWV_/&6+3RSXODUPXVLFȋ3ROLWLFDODVSHFWV_/&6+6RFLDO MXVWLFHȋ6RQJVDQGPXVLFȋ+LVWRU\DQGFULWLFLVP_/&6+3URWHVWVRQJVȋ+LVWRU\DQGFULWLFLVP &ODVVLʕFDWLRQ/&&0/5_''&ȋGF

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Cover Design: Amanda Bartlett

“Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Music.” – Sun Ra . . . for those who aspire to both . . .

Contents

Preface - Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble

1

1. Remix One: Music and Transformation: Sounding Agency and Direct Action - Daniel Fischlin

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2. Music for Loneliness: Ambient Sound and Improvising Queer Resilience - Feryn Wade-Lang

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3. Rebellion Musics: The Reel Multiracial Jazz Archive Way Out West - Josslyn Luckett

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4. Singing for Justice: Oromo Women’s Musical Responses to Violence - Leila Qashu

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5. “Welcome to the Dance”: FandangObon as Polycultural Anti-Racist Remix - George Lipsitz

129

6. “I Sing of Difference”: Violeta Parra’s Testimonial Songs for Justice - Martha Nandorfy

148

7. A Hand on the Mic and a Fist in the Air: Sampling the Civil Rights Era in Holy Hip-Hop - Alyssa Woods and Robert Michael Edwards

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8. Enchantment’s Irreconcilable Connection: Listening to Anger, Being Idle No More - Dylan Robinson

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9. Remix Two: Music and Transformation: Sounding Agency and Direct Action - Ajay Heble

244

Contributors

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Index

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Acknowledgements

This is the fourth book project on which we’ve collaborated, and we are hugely grateful to the many people—family, friends, colleagues—who’ve continued to provide support and guidance for our work. We’re especially indebted to our editorial assistant Rachel Collins. In addition to communicating with our contributors, checking bibliographies, securing permissions, and helping with formatting, Rachel prepared the index for this book. Thanks, Rachel, for all your amazing work and your wonderful attention to detail. As always, it’s been a rare pleasure to work with you. We also continue to benefit from the tremendous support offered to us by staff and colleagues at the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), a partnered research institute generously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Particular thanks to IICSI’s Project Manager Justine Richardson, as well as to Patrick Collins, Erin Felepchuk, Richelle Forsey, Eric Lewis, Elizabeth Jackson, Jesse Stewart, and Ellen Waterman. Thanks, of course, to SSHRC and also to the Office of Vice President Research and the College of Arts at the University of Guelph. Thanks, too, to the many inspirational creative practitioners with whom we’ve had the opportunity to work over the years, including musical explorers at Silence, the independent community arts-space in Guelph that plays host to so many

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remarkable musicians pushing the envelope, sounding dissonance, and challenging us to listen, cocreate, and commit to forms of music that resist, protest, and advocate. Especial thanks to the Executive Director of Silence, Scarlett Raczycki, whose work in keeping the venue alive and thriving, has been remarkable. All authors who contributed to this volume responded promptly and enthusiastically to our invitation, this despite very tight timelines. Thanks so much for your contributions. We also want to acknowledge McGill-Queen’s University Press for granting us permission to reprint a revised version of Dylan Robinson’s essay. Thanks to Clara Swan Kennedy, Nathan McDonnell, and everyone at Black Rose Books, and to Andrew Bailey, Malcolm Campbell, Karina McInnis, and Eric Schnell. And, as always, we acknowledge the love, support, guidance, and friendship of our families, and especially of Martha and Sheila, without whom the work we’ve done together over so many years would not have been thinkable.

Preface

Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Black Rose Books, this second volume of Rebel Musics draws its inspiration from the vital role that music has played, can play, and will continue to play, in mobilizing movements for political change and social justice, at home and around the world. First published in 2003, the original volume of Rebel Musics sought to open up important questions and key debates about how musical activism resonates in practical and political terms, how musical resistance brings together people and voices that might otherwise remain silent or written out of history, and how political activism through music has influenced the potential for people to determine their own fates. When it first appeared, Rebel Musics was one of a handful of books exploring music and social justice across genres, cultural sites, and ideologies with the understanding that musical affect, the alignment of musical output with rights outcomes, and the power of music to model, if not enact, direct action were all largely under-explored, if not misunderstood, aspects of musicking. Whether they’ve been talkin’ ‘bout a revolution, fighting the power, or saying (or playing) it loud, musicians—sometimes with words, sometimes without—have found compelling ways to sound off against systems of oppression, to use music as a soundtrack for resistance, change, hope, and direct action. If these sounds of change seemed urgent

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when we first published Rebel Musics, they are even more pressing today as struggles for global equality ramp up in the face of ongoing systemic racism, unrelenting militarism, vast economic inequality, climate change, irresponsible technological monocultures, and persistent state attempts to strangle difference and the capacity for cocreation through the apparatus of state surveillance and repression of individual freedoms. Social movements such as Idle No More, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the Arab Spring, the Zapatistas, Via Campesina, and Extinction Rebellion, among others, have taken significant hold in advocating and enacting direct action across a range of critical issues, insisting on a different way of doing things, on disparate ways of taking progressive action to achieve more just ways of living. Inspired by these and other social movements, musicians in various genres continue to find engaging and potent ways to express their dissent against the status quo. In this second volume of Rebel Musics we’ve turned up the volume on the ongoing debate about music’s role as a force for change by adding eight new essays to the mix. And we’ve also chosen to round out the collection by including a significantly revised and reworked version of a previously published piece by the Canada Research Chair in Indigneous Arts at Queen’s University, Dylan Robinson. While our original plan had been to revise Rebel Musics by reprinting all the essays in the earlier volume alongside a few new essays, we quickly discovered that, with the new pieces we’d commissioned, the second edition was, in fact, turning into a second volume. Here, in other words, was a wholly new book, not just a revised edition. So, what you’re now reading is meant as a companion to that original volume with new voicings speaking to diverse issues and spaces not covered in volume one. In addition to our new introductory and closural essays, remixes as we’re calling them, essayists

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in volume two address gender identity, intercultural reckonings in which music figures as a key element in addressing difference, new forms of anti-racist musical discourse distinct from, though contiguous with, the civil rights movement, and site-specific field work where music plays a significant role. Our hope is that you’ll read the two volumes together. We also hope that as you read, you’ll take the time to listen to, and be provoked and inspired by, the rebel musics described here, musics that speak to the issues of the day, but that also have rich, expansive, generative, and sometimes unpredictable lives of their own sounded out on their own terms. Music integrates so many aspects of being, including the mysterious power of silence as a form of interlocution, the relation of the sonic world that surrounds us as it expresses realities beyond the merely human, and the infinite capacity of cocreation to generate resilient, moving forms of what the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano called sentipensante or thinking-feeling presencing-in-the-world. The capacity of music to encompass tension, discordant notes, extremes of feeling, and spaces of silence that are profound affirmations of identity makes it a powerful tool for addressing social injustice and for enacting ways of being more human in the face of systems that dehumanize and disempower, alienate and disenfranchise. In his last book, Hunter of Stories, Galeano reminds that “From the coasts of Africa . . . [the drum] traveled to the plantations of America. There it was outlawed, for the beating of the drum unbound the shackled and gave voice to those condemned to silence. The owners of men and property were well aware that such dangerous music, music that called down the gods, foretold rebellion. That is why the sacred drum slept unseen.”1 Essays in this book expand on what we understand by “dangerous music” and the often unseen power it has to unleash agency and transform the surreal reality of a world upside down, where the few exploit the many, where injustice is legal,

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where the community is at the mercy of the corporate individual, and where lack of ethics is a virtue upheld by oligarchs. Rebel musics expose these truths even as they enact empowered visions of solidarity, resilience, and transformative change.

Endnotes 1. Galeano, Hunter of Stories, 36.

Works Cited Galeano, Eduardo. Hunter of Stories. Translated by Mark Fried. New York: Nation Books, 2017.

1 Remix One Music and Transformation: Sounding Agency and Direct Action

Daniel Fischlin I.“We who believe in freedom cannot rest”: Premises Revisited The so-called masters of the universe have long understood that a chokehold on resources and the diminishment of human agency go hand-in-hand. Or, as Ralph “Petey” Greene, the African American TV personality and prison activist put it, “Ya CAIN’T do nothin’ if ya’ BROKE!”1 Agency, the power to act directly on the world, is the catalyst of transformation—not in the abstract of imagined realities fueled by hopes never realized, but in the tangible, material circumstances of the here and now that broaden norms of social justice, of economic equality, of equitable gender relations, of the delicate biotic balance with the earth, air, and water that all beings need to live, and of many other circumstances in which injustice, oppression, systematized violence, and inequality are perpetrated. Music sits uneasily in this equation. The vast bulk of music made across the globe is neither audible, except in the localized instrumentalities that give its soundwaves voice, nor an obvious source of the resources and power tied to the wealth gathered into the hands

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of oligarchs. Music remains a fundamental aspect of being human, even as its greatest value is that its extraordinarily diverse practices offer challenges to regimentation, orthodoxy, and circumscribed notions of the subject under the thumb of the state, the corporation, the techno-surveillance sphere, and other forms of control that delimit individual and community liberties and access to resources. Music is sonic affect—and that affect produces effects well beyond any sounding. To make it requires effort. Discipline and agency conspire to create the sounds no one thought could be played as do the historical contingencies that give rise to specific communities with distinctive aural imaginations. The impossible array of notes that only that particular musician is capable of, only that community of players with those specific histories—manifests as the interplay of timbres, textures, instrumentalities that can move people to feel things so powerfully they spring into action, they shed tears, they dance and gather, they seek to emulate through finding their own voice and agency. When musicians play live, their agency is present for all to see. Music is sound but it is also social information—information derived from the socius, the group of contingent relations that form a community capable of social practices and production. A singer’s voice takes flight and a crowd responds because the embodied spectacle of making music thrills. The Malian griot, singing family histories over a groove ostinato, moves people to laughter and tears, respect and remembrance, time-travelling through sound. The improvisers engaged in spontaneous musical dialogue model community formations where dissonance and assonance are explored and shared in real-time aesthetics that have political consequences. Agency occurs in sound. And we often forget how sound is the backdrop to any number of political discourses where manipulations of affect are critical—nationalism, populism, jingoism, all are produced as a

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function of compliance between desired state outcomes and the citizenry that supports these. Sound is omnipresent in this equation—a ubiquitous backdrop to, and often a resistant commentary on, the machinations of political systems focused on maintaining their power in the name of the narrow interests tied to oligarchic greed and control of majoritarian access to resources. Sound matters, as does the social and affective information it carries—whether manipulated to produce a specific political effect or systematically generated to express dissent. And how sound manifests in the world produces real effects: whether in the dulling of critical capacity and thus of political agency via oligarch-sponsored entities like Fox News or the Wall Street Journal; or in the drowning out of differential voicings struggling to oppose clearly corrupt and ineffectual systems of governance that have created the Sixth Extinction, the possibility of total species collapse due to climate change, and the countervailing voices embodied in movements like Extinction Rebellion and Idle No More. In a hyper-mediatized age where logorrhea is the norm and listening is not, speaking truth to power has perhaps become an anodyne cliché. And it is desperately in need of revitalization and refocusing. Sounding truth to power faces similar challenges when the logic of sounding is co-opted to seemingly progressive ends masquerading as such in the name of self-branding exercises, or heavily freighted attempts to address specific markets and demographics in the name of profit. Resistant musical practices—rebel musics— set aside and dispute these co-optive logics, returning music to its core dynamic of creative, affective agency in localized communities and intimate listening spaces associated with solidarity, ritual, healing, dispersion of community tensions, invocation of connections between the biotic and the human, celebration, transition, and mourning—to name but a few.

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In 2017, six months after the Women’s March on Washington, the largest single-day protest in American history took place on the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the US. Turned into a worldwide, annual event, organizers summarized that “The goal of the annual marches is to advocate legislation and policies regarding human rights and other issues, including women’s rights, immigration reform, healthcare reform, reproductive rights, the environment, LGBTQ rights, racial equality, freedom of religion, workers’ rights and tolerance.”2 As part of many similar actions to commemorate the original march, Women’s March groups in concert with the Working Families Party created Resistance Revivals or pop-up protests, with music as a key component: “‘calling for a resistance revival, a revival of our spirits, of our commitment to the movement, of our joy and of our power’. . . Paola Mendoza, one of the National co-chairs of the Women’s March and co-organizer of the Resistance Revival Chorus flash mob that took place in Times Square . . . explained . . . that the concept for these nights of song is inspired by Women’s March honorary co-chair Harry Belafonte, who famously said, ‘When the movement is strong, the music is strong.’”3 The Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of over sixty women, “hosts a series of regular musical events, Resistance Revival Nights, where the community gathers to rejuvenate our spirits and honor the protest songs that have historically been central to civil rights movements. We believe that art and culture are essential to changing hearts, minds, and history; and we commit to the principle that joy is in itself an act of resistance.”4 The example highlights connections between direct, take-it-to-the-street measures and the music that animates direct action as a key component in shaping meaningful resistance and the principles upon which that resistance is founded. Born from an understanding that music is a critical means to enact human solidarity, a compelling way of being together that

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transcends divisiveness, and that community music is a significant form of culture-jamming through solidary song, the Resistance Revival Chorus has animated street protests and also appeared on the Grammys. In 2018 the Chorus backed American singer-songwriter and rapper Kesha, whose “Praying” resonates within the contexts of the #MeToo and #TimesUp Movements as a song about emotional and physical abuse, healing, and finding liberation: “I’m proud of who I am / No more monsters, I can breathe again.”5 More than that, the Resistance Revival Chorus has created a public toolkit that allows others to follow its template for the use of music as a resistant practice to spread nationally and internationally, all the while explicitly tying the impetus for their musical practice to a long history of protest music: Music has always been at the core of resistance from indigenous peoples to enslaved Africans singing messages to each other in the fields. Enslaved Africans sang “Follow the Drinking Gourd” to escape southern slavery and head to the north. In the labor movement, the movement that gave us our work week, workers sang “Solidarity Forever” to state that the union makes them strong. During the era of Jim Crow, Black folks sang songs like “We Shall Not Be Moved” during direct actions as a sign of resilience . . . One of the most popular forms of music came from struggle, from dreams of revolution, that music is known today as Hip-Hop. When the Bronx was burning and people were fed government cheese to survive, hip-hop was a legendary art form that came from resistance. That is why we founded the Resistance Revival Chorus [in 2017], music has always been the center, the core and the joy of protest and resistance.6

Musicians coming together under challenging circumstances allow for new forms of discourse to emerge, new articulations that empower. Intercultural encounters of the sort that saw all-woman, American group Harpeth Rising play a show with Khmer musicians

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in Cambodia as part of International Women’s Day celebrations in 2019 are exemplary of this sort of emergent new discourse bound to, in this case, issues of gender equality: “‘Not all of the songs we’ve written are about women. But they are all encouraging and inspiring for all women out there. We also wrote music about women who protested for their rights and fought for their own identities,’ the trio said.”7 And when Oakland-based Arab-(Lebanese) American musician Naima Shalhoub recorded her debut album inside San Francisco County Jail in 2015, the recording was not only an extension of the weekly “Music and Freedom” sessions she had been animating at the prison, but also a reflection on how women (and mothers in particular) are the “fastest growing segment of the United States prison population.”8 The album Live in San Francisco County Jail incorporated spoken-word tracks performed by prisoners, and is remarkable for how its liveness integrates responses from the incarcerated women for whom Shalhoub was performing. Sam Levin describes how “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize”—the eight-minute song that kicked off the live concert—is the most intense track on the album. With Shalhoub’s dramatic arrangement of the folk song that was popularized during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the song’s blunt lyrics about seeking freedom from imprisonment moved the crowd of women in the jail to shout along with Shalhoub. The jail doors open/and they walked on out, she belts, increasingly louder as the song progresses, Keep your eyes on the prize/hold on. She directs the women to sing an echo of hold on back at her. By the end of the song, referring to the acronym used to describe their location in “County Jail #2” (CJ2), Shalhoub shouts, CJ2 jail doors open, and we what? prompting the women in the audience to scream, Walk out! The recording powerfully captures the apparent anguish of the women in the room—and the seemingly

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therapeutic release the music offers.9

Dialogue of this sort powerfully enacts agency and interchange, one aspect of Shalhoub’s project to find ways to address aspects of rehabilitative justice through music. Here, music functions as a basis for sharing experience as well as for imagining how to “hold on,” how to “Walk out!” as part of larger critique on inhumane carceral culture. Shalhoub’s album also set aside 50% of profits to support “social/re-entry programming for incarcerated women,”10 and is one aspect of Shalhoub’s vision of restorative justice, derived from her day job as a “restorative justice coordinator at Melrose Leadership Academy, a public school in Oakland,”11 and her “commitment to envisioning and practicing how music can play a role in the transformation . . . of people’s lives and the systems that affect us. Collaboration is key—with incarcerated women, advocates, organizations, educators, artists, and donors.”12 For Shalhoub “Music in the borderlands are freedom songs that cannot be contained by metal bars in a cell . . . . Music has that quality of expansiveness and the voice is a vessel for that expression and healing, reminding us that all deserve to feel worthy of life, especially in spaces of confinement.”13 Shalhoub’s work echoes other artists who have made music in carceral settings, including Johnny Cash’s landmark, career-defining 1968 live album At Folsom Prison. Cash’s engagement with prison reform through music was no cynical ploy to gain attention or to cash in on the notoriety that came with being a pill-popping bad boy playing to other bad boys in a prison setting. Instead, Cash had a long-term investment in advocating for prison reform and used his musical status and voice to do so at a time when in the American South such advocacy was unpopular and certainly not something other musical artists of Cash’s stature were anywhere close to as-

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sociating themselves with. Among many other actions over many years, Cash testified In July 1972, at the invitation of Sen. William E. Brock III (R-Tenn.) . . . before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on national penitentiaries. Cash spoke about the need to treat newly released prisoners as human beings and to keep youthful offenders out of prison, or at least away from older prisoners, citing the case of an imprisoned 15-year-old car thief in Arkansas who had died after being sexually assaulted by inmates. Cash [also] met with President Richard M. Nixon in the Oval Office to discuss prison reform during the same visit. Partly motivated by a rededication to his Christian faith, Cash talked up the issue at concerts and on his popular TV variety program, “The Johnny Cash Show.” He also worked quietly behind the scenes. He regularly corresponded with prisoners and . . . would visit the jail near his home in Sumner County, Tennessee, to play cards with the inmates.14

These examples highlight the multiple ways in which musical iterations spawn other forms of direct action, whether through celebrity status deployed at the highest level of governance as Cash did at the White House or through emergent artists like Shalhoub who take already scant resources and voluntarily redirect them in ways that have local impact. In all these cases, the power of music as resistance, enabling platforms beyond the music itself that produce dissent, arises from solidary expression that taps into the affective and generative principles music is capable of unleashing. It is important to understand such actions that integrate music into difficult circumstances as more than passive, or passing, therapy—or feelgood vainglory. Music made in this context, produced in association with broader intents to achieve social justice, ignites agency, brings voices together, echoes sentiments that are the wellspring of change, and amplifies generative and cocreative potential. And

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it does so in ways not easily quantifiable as part of a continuum of engagement with struggles to achieve social justice while resisting forces that generate inequity, oppression, cyclical violence, enslavement, and the destruction of the core generative principles embodied in the public commons. Creative improvising musician Pat Metheny, whose career has encompassed significantly different musical practices, from outside experimental noise to so-called jazz standards, with multiple Grammys across numerous categories, says: Some of my favorite musicians—Duke Ellington, Bach, The Beatles—they are all creative musicians and the creativity transcends the politics because to me, when people start talking about this is jazz, or this is punk rock, and this is heavy metal, all those discussions are political discussions, they’re not musical ones. I’m not interested in the political side of sound, I’m interested in the musical side . . . . You cannot beat good notes. They live through everything.15 

Here, Metheny is not so much turning away from the politics of sound as reinforcing why sound has power. The underlying focus on the creativity that produces good notes is profoundly tied to aesthetics as much as it is to ethics. Creative ethics are a fountainhead for the very affect that music is capable of producing in ways that travel well beyond music’s immediate ambit. And there’s the further affirmation that Metheny implicitly makes—music that sets out to be political while forgetting about the core principles of music as music is always already at a disadvantage and compromised. Or: stay true to the sound of “good notes” whatever the musical context, and the affect that comes from that will “live through everything.”

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Music harnesses sound and musicians devote their lives to making it, understanding its powers to move and affect, and deploying “good notes” as part of a primal, necessary expression of a shared cocreative humanity that is the source of community, of learning, of peaceful structures of co-existence, and the like. Music embodies contingency and relationality, two key aspects of how it provides generative models for living with one another through the continuum that spans from consonance to dissonance. Music, too, depends on listening. And listening is the space in which differential aspects of our dependency on each other are explored and made manifest. Relations that are the cornerstone of community become possible through listening. Music teaches us how to listen, gives us vastly different models for engaging in listening, itself a trope for the deep intimacies of interconnection that make community possible—and for the critical, situational responses arising from the affects that emerge when listening spaces are active. So, to speak of rebel musics is not to imagine an abstract presence far-removed from the transformative chain of being that leads from sounding to listening to being affected to taking action. Rather, it is to understand that sounding out is a vital, ancient form of human agency profoundly tied to musicking. And rebel music expresses these principles in the face of the greed-ridden oligarchs, the destroyers, and the corrupt institutions in terror of the resistant practices and voicings to be found in the spaces where rebel music flourishes. Where public commons spaces that music invokes have been co-opted in the name of profiteering, capital, self-interest, greed, and banality, rebel musics offer a way back to the sounding commons where renewal, solidarity, and agency become possible again. Like the vast wastelands left in the wake of industrial farming monocultures, tar sands exploitation, immense swathes of ocean

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turned into hypoxic dead zones or floating islands of plastic garbage twice the size of Texas,16 and clear-cut scars incised into boreal forests, music, too, is at risk from the logic of capital that attacks the commons. And yet, as examples throughout this book show, resistant music practices persist across a wide spectrum of sites across the globe. Poet Lisa Robertson has defined the commons as the “continuous language of collective formations,”17 and it is worth remembering that the language has multiple dimensions spanning silence through to aggressive iteration: music imagines what silence implies—listening aspires to both, and these spaces in which silence and imagination mutate into sonic agency are not to be underestimated as a vital component in the language of collective formations that is the commons. The musical commons, so under threat from corporate structures that have tried to co-opt music to hyper-capitalized structures of profit and commerce, is remarkably tenacious in generating sounds that rewild the commons, sound truth to power, and enable agency and direct action via the generative creative energies to which music is so profoundly tied. Rewilding the musical commons is something that occurs in multiple ways, not the least of which is through the significant intercultural networks that have sprung up in the last decades bringing musicians together from very different contexts into close working relationships, and the rise of improvisation as a determinative force in generating spaces for new musicking, new collaborative undertakings, often opposed to ossified systems of traditional music making driven by institutional and corporate interests. Independent labels that eschew commercial musical structures are another means by which rebel musics circulate, placing the means of production directly in the hands of the artists and groups creating independent sounds attuned to radically different purposes than profit. NoBusiness Records is an independent Lithuanian label devoted to an impressive catalogue of performers working

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across free jazz and improvised music and expanding the space for non-commercial creative voicings that disrupt mainstream music. Canadian label Barcode Free Music18 has an explicit mission statement associated with social justice and community music, promoting “alternative forms of musical cocreation that are community-based and socially-engaged . . . [through] musical projects that have a strong sense of social justice and on music that, [among others], fosters intercultural encounter(s) . . . that expands and redefines the frontiers of convention and experimentalism; that emerges from and fosters public commons spaces . . . that champions freedom of expression; that resists commodification; and that cultivates improvisation, experimentation, and risk-taking.”19 Similarly, independent music venues are vital to new musical iterations, incubating new sounds and performance practices in spaces where musical commerce is nothing more than another name for day-to-day survival. New York’s 1970s loft scene had spaces like the legendary 501 Canal Street storefront that was home to Friday night concerts where, as Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddens stated, “musicians who are taking the chances today [perform] and their gifts and commitment ought to be attended.”20 And more recently in Canada, spaces like Montreal’s Casa del Popolo, Toronto’s Tranzac Club, and Guelph’s Silence21 continue to stage a remarkable array of musical experimentalists, while incubating creative improvised musicking and fostering community spaces where outside musical practices retain a foothold. At the core of these resistant musical practices are freedom of expression, collective assembly, respect for contingency and difference, and cocreative agency—all embodied not only in the sounds that emerge from these spaces but also in the coincident social organizations that are required to imagine and generate these new voicings. African American poet and author Fred Moten’s work tries to “imagine . . . the commerce between musics that emerge from

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underground, experimental, stolen collectivities,”22 echoing Saidiya Hartman’s notion that “the right to obscurity must be respected.”23 Moten argues This [right to obscurity] is a political imperative that infuses the political project of emancipation as well as any number of other transitions or crossings in progress. It corresponds to the need for the fugitive, the immigrant, and the new (and newly constrained) citizen to hold something in reserve, to keep a secret. The history of Afro-diasporic art, especially music, is, it seems to me the history of the keeping of this secret even in the midst of its intensely public and highly commodified dissemination.24

Music’s non-verbal power to signify affectively is part of how this secret is kept, part of how the resistant project of emancipation enacts itself in spaces apart that incubate difference and preserve empowered notions of collectivity and dissidence. The holdback is as important as the shout-out. Obscure soundings, experimentalist improvisations, and fugitive forms of musicking retain the powers of surprise, the unheard, immigrancy, and the nomadic—all aspects of music that reimagines and enacts agency, autonomy, and resistance through its underground, marginal presence. Ambiguity, like obscurity, is a strategy when surveillance is the norm—especially when all forms of creativity are potentially commodifiable for extraction and profiteering, as has been the case with great swathes of African American musicking. When Moten describes African American jazz multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, and arranger Jaki Byard as someone “concerned with the ‘evident incalculability in human action,’” he is making a profound point about the non-repeatability of indeterminacy: “if a pattern were to emerge it would only be in refits and restarts, ‘the sudden rise at a given tune’ that keeps / withdrawing. his hesitation is a singularity that becomes our engine. our engine

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is that continued propulsive / chant that can’t be said alone.”25 Which is to say, human actions propel forward in the “chant that can’t be said alone,” disrupting patterns predicated on certainty and the hesitations of the restart that have the potential to become the “sudden rise at a given tune.” Resistant musical practices well understand this phenomenon, if not persistently aspire to it—thus the important connection between improvisatory musical practices and the wider field of social practices on which these reflect. Musical practices that model these understandings of human being push towards new forms of intersectionality that avoid reductive categories, that aspire to new understandings of the richness of human potential in which trans-identitarian realities become possible. Each to their own. Each more than just the ambiguity of intersectional identities that generate community and difference. English novelist Zadie Smith has argued that the “rigidity with which I considered my identity in childhood . . . was the consequence of a failure of imagination.”26 Smith goes on to posit that American novelist Philip Roth’s work’s “greatest lesson . . . is to insist on the fictional status of identity itself.”27 Smith locates this lesson in music as well, citing her evolving relation to Joni Mitchell as exemplary of non-static, trans-identitarian, nomadic ways in which meaning gets created. Journalist Claire Armistead describes how In an essay in [Smith’s] collection, Feel Free, she investigated one such change in herself, when she fell in love with the music of Joni Mitchell, a singer she had despised when she was a mixedrace teenager growing up on a London housing estate. “The reason for hating Joni Mitchell was that I didn’t listen to classical or ‘white’ music,” said Smith. “Then I had an epiphany, and suddenly realised that her voice was beautiful. It’s a responsibility to be as 28 open as you possibly can to the world as an aesthetic object.”

So, a mixed-race writer has an epiphanic moment made possible by

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music that speaks across issues of ethnic identity and that invites being “as open as you possibly can [be] to the world.” This openness translates into other forms of being that have political, social, and inter-relational impacts on the public commons in all its diversity—in all the rich workings-through of consonances and dissonances that contribute to its evolving ecosystem of contingency and agency. Both Smith and Moten elaborate abiding suspicions of static structures. These suspicions inhabit music’s generative disquiet, something Johnny Cash articulated in a full-page ad he placed in Billboard magazine protesting the refusal of radio stations and others to program his version of “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” a song by Peter La Farge about the Pima First Nations Indian who had been one of the soldiers to raise the flag on Mount Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima—a moment famously captured in the iconic photo taken by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945. The song is a bitter attack on how Hayes was treated upon his return from the war. Cash’s 1964 Bitter Tears album explored his family connections to Cherokee and Mohawk ancestors as well as his emergent awareness of struggles for Native American rights. In the excoriating advertisement he published attacking the radio boycott of his song, he states that “as an American who is almost a half-breed Cherokee-Mohawk (and who knows what else)—I had to fight back when I realized so many stations are afraid of ‘Ira Hayes,’” also ambiguously affirming that “I am fighting no particular cause. If I did, it would make me a sluggard. For as time changes, I change.”29 Restlessness, ambiguity, the capacity to change are necessary and wholly consistent with principles associated with the struggle for rights. Rebel musics expand on notions such as these, reinforcing border-crossing and nomadic generative principles as antidotes to policing, conformity, and orthodox notions of subjectivity and agency that squelch creative potential and the epiphanies that result therefrom.

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Music everywhere is under sustained attack. By the music industrial complex that is systematically destroying live performers’ capacity to earn a sustainable living; by the limited bandwidth associated with mainstream channels of dissemination including state-run media like the BBC and CBC, but also corporations like iHeartMedia Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Communications Inc.), Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, News Corp. and Live Nation; by the commercialization of musical affect through monocultural social media, read advertising companies, like YouTube, where you can listen to just about anything for free so long as you pay by forking over personal information while taking in the advert that bait-clicks you to another advert; by the systematic displacement and destruction of small independent music venues for stadium markets where yet more advertising and alienation effects narrow the affective field, even as performers give way to lip-syncing and singing holograms of musical stars appropriated by the music industrial complex (Tupac Shakur, Amy Winehouse, Roy Orbison, Frank Zappa); by the predatory high-tech monopolies that rapaciously aggregate content into singularities that generate enormous revenues all the while stiffing the very musicians who create the content (YouTube, Google, Apple, Pandora, Amazon, and Spotify)30; and even by the handful of musicians themselves who have become apex predators in the new music industrial complex, obedient and highly profitable, sucking in vast celebrity economies while refusing to share (except for feel-good optics) their power and resources with the very musical community that engendered them in the first place. In December 2018 The Edge and Bono of U2 fame busked to raise money for the Dublin Simon Community housing charity just prior to an Oxfam report released in 2019 that found “The combined fortunes of the world’s 26 richest individuals reached $1.4 trillion last year—the same amount as the total wealth of the 3.8 billion poorest people.”31 The bittersweet irony of commodified progressive social

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consciences slumming in public as part of their own self-branding as faux progressives was a painful spectacle. Bono, whose substantial, close-to-billionaire fortune is partially the result of early investments in Facebook,32 itself a corrupt, soul-destroying perversion of the internet’s early aspirational democratizing potential, encapsulates the logic of neoliberal dodges that weaponize feel-good support for ethical engagement, all the while profiting from so doing. In 2019 when American billionaire rapper Jay-Z performed a new freestyle that included the comment “Gentrify your own hood before these people do it,” one quite reasonable reaction, from Chuka Ejeckam, the Director of Research and Policy for the BC Federation of Labour, was to cite African American activist and Black Panther, Fred Hampton: “We’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism. We’re going to fight it with socialism.”33 And of course Jay-Z’s throwaway line about gentrification makes assumptions about access to capital and equity that do not coincide with the realities of the American class system, where the poor are simply incapable of gentrification—itself a dubious segregative structure, because they have no access to resources. Teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg responded to a “let’s save the earth” tweet from Canadian pop superstar Justin Bieber promoting a star-studded charity video release by American rapper and environmentalist Lil Dicky by simply stating: “Great with songs about climate and environment. But what we need is [sic] role models who practice as they preach and live within the planetary boundaries. Or else they just normalise the extreme high carbon lifestyle of celebrities.”34 Shortly after this exchange (July 2019), the English pop-rock band The 1975 released an ambient/spoken word musical collaboration with Thunberg featuring a monologue in which she calls for civil disobedience and rebellion, stating “We have to acknowledge that the older generations have failed. All

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political movements in their present form have failed . . . it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.” While all proceeds from the recording were earmarked for the environmental advocacy group Extinction Rebellion, it came out that major artists refused to collaborate on the track with The 1975, even as Extinction Rebellion issued a statement that “Music has the power to break through barriers, and right now we really need to break through some barriers if we are to face this emergency. We are currently heading towards 4 degrees of heating for the world.”35 The 1975’s lead singer Matt Healy and manager Jamie Oborne said, “Greta is the most important person in the world to give a platform to. Other artists didn’t want to do it—it’s madness. Bigger artists than The 1975.”36 If anything, the incident drew yet more public attention to both Thunberg and The 1975, while highlighting the backroom politics and smarmy cost-benefit analyses of music companies, agents, promoters, and artists keen not to disrupt cash flows and public perception of the anodyne content that has become a staple of the music biz. Writ larger into this scenario is how dangerous music can be when associated with crisis, civil disobedience, and calls for political and systemic change. And how tedious are arguments that advocate for music’s supposed transcendence and its detachment from the very social contexts in which it gets made as a putatively supra-political expressive form. A further outcome of the public fray over the release was yet more information about the carbon footprint of the music industry itself, with “a recent study by University of Oslo professor Kyle Devine and Matt Brennan from the University of Glasgow [finding] that digital music formats, in terms of the large sums of energy required to power them, have led to at least 200–350 million extra kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions being released into the environment—already far surpassing all other older music formats from throughout history almost combined. The very playlists and algorithms pushing The 1975 and Greta Thunberg’s track

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warning of a climate emergency towards impressionable young ears are themselves polluters.”37 These examples are variations on a theme that sees celebrity culture of extraordinary wealth and influence capitalizing on aspects of movements for social justice—whether homelessness, gentrification, climate change—as a way to build brand recognition through the positive affect of being associated with progressive causes. As celebrity artists dredge and trawl through specific markets for enhanced recognition and resources, those markets are emptied of the very collective material resources needed to effect meaningful change. This is as true for musical acts associated with the music industrial complex as it is for other mass-marketed “products” that follow similar marketing and business strategies. Corporate pop star Madonna’s decision to perform at the 2019 Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv places in stark relief how the music industrial complex reproduces capital, and in this case nationalist, logic in the name of branding exercises with political consequences. Sponsored by Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, Madonna’s invitation to Eurovision was part of a larger international branding strategy, baldly stated by Adams: “I want to exhibit Israel to the world at large and show off our wonderful qualities,” he explained. “I feel like I’m doing something to show off the true nature of Israel. It’s really outreach to the world community and saying we are a modern Western democracy that has the rule of law, that has freedom, excitement, diversity.”38 Pink Floyd co-founder Rogers Waters, an outspoken critic of Israel’s deplorable treatment of Palestinians, called Madonna out. In an opinion piece for The Guardian titled “If you believe in human rights, Madonna, don’t play Tel Aviv,” Waters said:

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Some of my fellow musicians who have recently performed in Israel say they are doing it to build bridges and further the cause of peace. Bullshit. To perform in Israel is a lucrative gig but to do so serves to normalise the occupation, the apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, the incarceration of children, the slaughter of unarmed protesters . . . all that bad stuff. By the way, because I support human rights and criticise the Israeli government for its violations, I am routinely accused of being antisemitic. That accusation can be used as a smokescreen to divert attention and discredit those who shine a light on Israel’s crimes against humanity. I should point out that I support the fight for human rights for all oppressed peoples everywhere. The religion of the oppressor is neither here nor there. If I support the Rohingyas and deplore the Myanmar persecution of them, it doesn’t make me anti-Buddhist.39

At the same time as the controversy was unfolding between two behemoths of the music biz, Water Justice in Palestine was reporting that the Israeli blockade on Gaza was entering its twelfth year in 2019 with “Less than 16% of items needed to repair & construct [water] infrastructure . . . allowed entry” into Gaza while the territory’s economy remained under threat of collapse due to the ongoing punitive blockade.40 Further, Water Justice in Palestine noted that “95% of the [Gazan] population does not have access to clean water . . . in 2000, the public water network provided 98% of Gazans with safe drinking water. By 2014, after Israel’s bombardments, that figure had plunged to 10.5%.”41 These appalling numbers are a tiny part of a much larger picture of systemic abuses and violations faced by Palestinians, whether in the Occupied Territories or in Israel itself. So as the welter of injustices continued against Palestinians, injustices that dramatically undermined their basic right to clean water, music became a battleground between propagandists like Adams and Madonna and activists like Waters.

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Underlying this particular struggle is the more generalized fact that any entity or individual that achieves singular status in the global economic system heightens disparities, exploits and profiteers from the public commons—the aggregate of shared interests without which human life would be impossible. Celebrity singularities align, more often than not, with rapacious economic monocultures that are aggregating wealth and resources. Music slots into these economies in disparate ways, used to support governance structures that undermine equity and social justice, but also used to buttress actions that support rights struggles. “[T]he social relations embedded within music-making are enmeshed,” as improviser and essayist Edwin Prévost argues, “within the property and consumer relations required in this phase of capitalist society.”42 No sound is impervious to context. Musical monocultures exist as surely as do those that turn immense areas of California into almond wastelands, with bees having to be imported from all over the nation in order to enable pollination. They are unsustainable. They alienate. They are contrary to the underlying ethos of musical expression as a foundational aspect of voicing our shared humanity. And they replicate a failed system that in 2018 saw the following Fortune 500 companies, among many others, pay zero tax dollars in the very jurisdictions whose public commons they exploit: Amazon, Delta Air Lines, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, General Motors, Honeywell International, IBM, Halliburton, Kinder Morgan, and Netflix.43 That U2 had also famously engaged its high-priced legal team in 2006 to find wholly legal, but also wholly reprehensible, ways to engage with significant tax avoidance made Bono's charity busking even more questionable as a gesture. As philosophy professor Philip Goff notes “U2’s decision in 2006 to move their tax affairs from Ireland to the Netherlands, after the Irish government decided to cap the tax-free exemption on royalties at €225,000 (before this, artists in Ireland

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were not obliged to pay any tax on royalties) . . . [highlighted] the impact of transnational tax dodging on the developing world. In a chilling report, Christian Aid estimated that $160bn is lost to the developing world each year as profits made in poorer countries are shifted to wealthier tax havens.”44 So-called rebel musics and musicians are regularly co-opted, and it is important to note where this occurs as wealth aggregates in any one place. The logic of commodity exploitation is a powerful force, and the music industrial complex has created multiple examples of similar musical icons whose rebel identity is capitalized in the name of greed and profiteering.

II. “A force and power within myself I had never heard before”: Situational Musicking and Direct Action These are painful truths. And in their stead are multiple countervailing examples of music that is made with aesthetic integrity, that speaks to and for communities seeking to undo corrupt and destructive systems of economic disparity, militarized violence, systemic racism, and environmental apocalypse—music that has, intended or not, consequences in the world of the real. Music can erupt spontaneously in the most unlikely of places and situations. Situational musicking, whose unpredictability is so much a part of its power, provides rich examples of site-specific acts of sounding that have significant consequences beyond their immediate contexts. The myth of music’s transcendence and abstraction from material reality is undermined by any number of examples where music is used as the primary tool in actions with political consequences. Rhetoric limiting music to providing resources of hope and resilience often sets aside multiple ways in which music moves fluidly from being a resource of hope to a form of direct action.

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What follows are vignettes about rebel musicking, taken from a much wider sampling, which this book aims to inspire its readers to reflect on and discover. In that act of discovery lies the circumstances for modelling resilience, survival, resistance, agency borne of direct action, and renewed communities of engagement making a better world. The “In order to survive, we must keep hope alive” trope is, in itself, no longer sufficient for the world in which we live, poised on the edge of cataclysmic environmental upheaval and the totalitarian economic and political forces desperate to maintain the status quo. In order to survive we must take direct action in the name of the underlying agency that makes us human, cocreative, and capable of the coming necessary and radical transformations— if the music and the players who play it are not to become extinct. * ** Some musicians live tragically short lives curtailed by complex personal and social circumstances that make it impossible for them to live in this world. Canadian creative improvising musician Justin Haynes died in March 2019 in an apartment he could not afford after sustained struggles with disability and mental health issues, single parenthood, and a stint of homelessness. Like other Canadian musicians before him who dealt with similar issues, including the Ottawa-based Mapuche wind instrumentalist, percussionist, and vocalist, Dario Domingues who also died under similiar circumstances at the age of 46, Haynes had a unique voice and made music with integrity and creative flare even as he confronted the demons of mental illness and poverty. The irony of an exceptional talent living in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet dying in these circumstances is a disquieting reminder that the oligarchs keep the resources to themselves and that the ostensible social supports are driven by cost-benefit analyses, actuarial risk calculations, and the politics of cruelty and

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dissociation. Weeks before Haynes died, he published an article on homelessness and disability in Toronto’s NOW Magazine that offered a brutally honest analysis of the realities facing people in his circumstances. Haynes notes how “Like most people living with a disability, I receive $1,150 a month from ODSP [Ontario Disability Support Program]. Although that includes a housing allowance ($457), income support for food and clothing, etc. ($547) and a TTC [Toronto Transit Commission] pass ($146), it doesn’t quite add up to the $1,200 rent I now pay for 300-square-foot underground in South Parkdale.” Further, Haynes explains that If my rent were lower I’d be eligible for money under the city’s Housing Stabilization Fund (HSF), but my application has been denied because my rent is just too darn high! . . . After the province dumped the Community Start-up Fund on municipalities in 2013, the HSF was flown in to help people get off the streets and out of the shelters by providing the average individual with up to $1,600 for first and last months’ rent and/or moving costs, arrears on utilities and, for first-time tenants, some household basics. The city has under-spent the budget by an average of $3.5 million a year since 2013. But as my rent exceeds 85 per cent of my income, the city feels I should try to find something more affordable as they are unwilling to support such an irresponsible and lavish lifestyle choice, which I clearly cannot afford . . . . It was quite literally the cheapest apartment I could find this side of a crack house after ending up at Seaton House last month (I had to borrow from a friend for the rental deposit and will be paying it back by giving his son guitar lessons for the rest of my life.) 45

Painfully, honestly, compellingly—Haynes wrote about the cruel anomalies of a system designed to crush people with the kinds of challenges he faced, describing his experience at Seaton House, the largest men’s shelter in Canada, as a place where “On a bad night, there are more than 700 men here. Some are coping with

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drug addiction. Some appear frightened and shell-shocked. How could this happen to me?”46 Indeed. It happens because systemic poverty for musicians whose work is undervalued and underpaid is a reality the world over. Even when standards of professionalization and achievement within institutional structures of various sorts are achieved, they are no guarantee of breaking through the poverty line. And if you choose a different route, as Haynes did, through the challenging world of improvised musicking where truly new music does in fact get made through risk-taking, discipline, community engagement, and experimentation, the economic realities are even more severe. A 2013 report on musicians’ income in Canada found that “the average independent musician earns a stunning $7,228 from playing music, although the report . . . notes that they ‘only’ spend about 29 hours a week on the pursuit. If they got their slack asses in gear, they could stand to make as much as $9,336 a year, or less than half the average minimum wage.”47 And as Toronto-based singer and former partner to Haynes, Rebecca Campbell wrote in a memorial to Haynes, “Justin’s poverty was the result of both his calling and his mental illness. Making music, especially adventurous music, doesn’t pay very well. But he worked hard, and when push came to shove, he eased up on the dream, and tried his hand at various jobs. He worked at Value Village, as a support worker in harm reduction, as a roofer and in a prison. He wasn’t a self-indulgent artist who felt the world owed him. He worked diligently, whenever and wherever he could, in the field in which he excelled.”48 So, the circumstances around Haynes’s life and death relate specifically to the realities that make being a musician, articulating the very agency that is potentially so generative as both a musical and

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social practice, so difficult. The bottleneck that chokes out resources from people like Haynes is part of the problem that rebel musics address. And Haynes’s own voice continues, sadly, to resonate in the almost last words he spoke publicly: I appreciate the fact that I’m lucky to live in a wealthy country and in a society where I am able to obtain assistance so that I can survive, raise a kid and hopefully make a humble contribution through my work in the community. I used to feel ashamed about being on disability. (I’m now in my eighth year and I’m 46). But now I’m pissed off.  It doesn’t work. Not in this town. Not in 2019. Les [a Toronto-based social worker] and others in his position can’t get creative with the rules. But someone’s gotta.49

No one did. And another voice gone, trapped in an Orwellian system desperately in need of transformative justice. Music, as Haynes’s life in sound makes clear, is a critical part of the public commons to which Haynes wished “to make a humble contribution.” By giving voice to homelessness, Haynes took his situation as a musician and transformed it into a terrifyingly honest account of wider social issues. Haynes’s example reminds that a public commons without music is unthinkable. Every voice lost to the commons diminishes the collective, generative potential of the commons to resist, rebel, and reimagine in the face of destroyer culture’s greed and self-interest. And Haynes’s life trajectory exemplifies how the margins of music-making nonetheless provide powerful resources, under the most difficult of circumstances, for translating affect into concrete action in defense of other margins.

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* ** Johanna Schwartz’s 2015 musical documentary They Will Have to Kill Us First details attempts to organize a concert by Khaira Arby (1959–2018) in Timbuktu, Mali—this in the face of civil conflict and fundamentalist Islamic intimidation to censor all forms of music making. Arby, under significant pressure not to re-introduce music into a conflict zone where jihadists had banned it, nonetheless returned from exile to give a concert in Timbuktu in 2015, saying “Our religion has never banned music. The Prophet was greeted with songs when he arrived in Mecca. Cutting music is like keeping us from breathing.”50 Her mixed family background as both Tuareg and Songhai, and her fluency in all seven languages spoken in Mali, gave her voice a unique authority to speak to the issues that she persistently raised through music throughout her life: “While Tuareg rebellions followed one another in 1990–1996, 2006, and 2007– 2009, she advocated peace. She sang about the rights of women to autonomy, training, happiness and fulfillment, and also against female genital mutilation.”51 In a very different cultural context, the Trinidad-born jazz pianist and singer Hazel Scott (also a speaker of seven languages), once one of the biggest stars in American jazz, was dragged before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1950 because her “outspokenness on civil rights issues made her target . . . like many black activists who took on the fight for racial justice, Hazel did not and would not denounce the [Communist] party’s efforts on behalf of the struggle. Additionally, in the early days of the Communist Party of the United States, the organization had attracted many West Indian Americans, including Hazel, due to its opposition to colonialism.”52 Author Lorissa Rinehart describes how

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Rebel Musics On a rainy September morning in 1950, jazz pianist Hazel Scott stood in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee hoping to clear her name. The publication “Red Channels” had accused Scott—along with 150 other cultural figures—of communist sympathies. Failure to respond would be seen as an admission of guilt. But her appearance at HUAC had a greater purpose than personal exoneration. She believed she had a responsibility to stem the tide of paranoia that gained momentum by the day. She told the committee’s members, “Mudslinging and unverified charges are just the wrong ways to handle this problem.” With the same poise she brought to the stage as a musician, she testified that “what happens to me happens to others and it is part of a pattern which could spread and really damage our national morale and security.” Chin up, shoulders back, she warned against “profiteers in patriotism who seek easy money and notoriety at the expense of the nation’s security and peace of mind,” and that continuing down this road would transform America’s artists from a “loyal troupe of patriotic, energetic citizens ready to give their all for America” into a “wronged group whose creative value has been destroyed.” * ** When she stood in front of HUAC, it only made sense to speak truth to power, to stand up for what she believed in. She believed herself the embodiment of the American dream, and she spoke in its defense. In an unwavering voice she told the committee, “the entertainment profession has done its part for America, in war and peace, and it must not be dragged through the mud of hysterical name-calling at a moment when we need to enrich and project the American way of life to the world. There is no better, more effective, more easily understood medium for telling and

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selling the American way of life than our entertainers, creative artists, and performers, for they are the real voice of America.”53

As Rinehart describes, shortly after her compelling testimony before HUAC, Scott had her successful The Hazel Scott Show TV program cancelled, a show that was broadcast three nights a week on the DuMont Network and that was “the first television program to have an African-American woman as its solo host.” Further, concert and club gigs disappeared, and she soon found herself in exile in Europe before dying in relative obscurity in 1981 at the age of 61. Rinehart notes how “Her albums are hard to come by now and her name never appears where it should, beside Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and others who we think of when we think of jazz. But for a while, she led them all, until a country twisted by fear pushed her past the point from which even she, the force of nature that she was, could not return.”54 While the blacklisting of those who sound and speak truth to power is common practice, Scott’s life trajectory, including her appearances as a teenager playing piano and trumpet with her mother’s all-woman jazz band, which sometimes featured Louis Armstrong’s second wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong, underlines the fundamental connections she stood for between the expressive power of music, itself its own form of agency and direct action, and the threat this expressive power embodies against authoritarian state power. Both Arby and Scott exemplify powerful women of colour struggling for social justice, using music, and the platform music gave them, as a critical component in their capacity to take direct action. * ** Omaha First Nations elder and activist Nathan Phillips initiated a global firestorm in January 2019 by simply beating a ceremoni-

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al drum and singing in public in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Taken from his birth mother by the American child welfare system, a Marine Corps veteran, and an active participant at Standing Rock in the Indigenous Movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Phillips found himself in the midst of a highly racialized encounter between Make America Great Again (MAGA)-hat wearing high school students attending an anti-abortion pro-life rally from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky and Black Hebrew Israelites: It was at that point that a young bearded Pawnee man approached Phillips. “Uncle, we’ve got to do something,” he said. “I don’t want to get in the middle of that.” Phillips replied. “It’s like a race war.” “Sing a song!” the young man said, pushing a drum into Phillips’s hand. Phillips flashed back to that night on the hill and the mornings in camp at Standing Rock. “When I put the drum in my hand and I thought about it, I thought: ‘I’m going to pray here.’” The song Phillips chose is the anthem of the American Indian Movement (AIM). It is, for many Native people, a song of pride, awakening and empowerment. But for Phillips, it is also an ode to loss: his brother died at an AIM party in the 1970s. “When I got here to this point and started singing,” Phillips said, pointing to a spot between the circle and the crowd on his handdrawn map, “that’s when the spirit took over.”55

The incident went viral on social, national, and international media, and focused further attention on the inequitable treatment of First Peoples, systemic racism now aligned with white supremacists and populists given license by the Trump administration, and the conditions needed to generate reconciliation and learning across vast cul-

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tural divides. Phillips’s reluctant intervention translating sound into “awakening and empowerment” became a touchstone for radical acts of forgiveness that express Indigenous values. Phillips states his desire for reconciliation in spite of what “is happening all across the country: hate and division, economic struggle, environment catastrophes, the oil, the water—they don’t mix . . . . Our lot as Indigenous people, which we’re trying to get back to with instructions, is not to return hate with hate but return hate with love.”56 Music made in the public commons in this example serves as a form of resistance, but also as a predicate to imagining social healing, “the capacity of communities and their respective individuals to survive, locate voice and resiliently innovate spaces of interaction that nurture meaningful conversation and purposeful action in the midst and aftermath of escalated and structural violence.”57 * ** The remarkable African American activist Ella Baker (1903–1986) whose work on behalf of the civil rights movement eschewed charismatic, celebrity leadership in the name of grassroots organizing and quiet behind-the-scenes work, and who fearlessly critiqued the civil rights movement itself for sexism and classism, stated in 1964 that “Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest . . . . ”58 Baker’s statement, which became a touchstone of the civil rights movement, and which still calls forth to action in the name of opposing systemic racism and state-sponsored oppression, was turned into an a cappella song written by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon and performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock, an all-woman African American group founded in 1973 and devoted to recounting African American history and experience. Kim Ruehl recounts how Five years ago, in a crowded room at the Highlander Research

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and Education Center in Tennessee—a now-85-year-old education and organizing center for activists, occasionally called the epicenter of the civil rights movement—Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon talked about how she and the SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] Freedom Singers used music to help change the world . . . . She told us how she learned quickly that gospel hymns were . . . a strong foundation for the civil rights movement’s many freedom songs, because most of the black activists already knew them and it was quick and easy to replace the word “Jesus” with “freedom.” . . . Reagon helped cement the role of a cappella singing in freedom movements as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which got her expelled from college. She built upon that concept further when she founded Sweet Honey in the Rock [whose name derived from a line in Psalm 81:16] in 1973. Though Reagon left the group in 2004, Sweet Honey has continued down the same path it’s been traversing for more than four decades, through its 27 recordings—including 2016’s #LoveInEvolution—and the 23 women who have, at some point, sung as part of the group.59

The sustaining power of song translates from Ella Baker’s assertions about being unrelenting in the quest for freedom, forever restless, through to the freedom songs that have been sung across multiple generations of the freedom movement in specific situations as a source of inspiration to direct action and as a resource for powerfully affective articulations of transformative cultural memory. As J. Todd Moye observes in his study of Baker’s life in the civil rights movement, “Full-throated singing of freedom songs would become the hallmark of the Albany Movement [a desegregation campaign originating in Albany, Georgia in 1961]. ‘When I opened my mouth and began to sing’ . . . Bernice Johnson said, ‘there was a force and power within myself I had never heard before. Somehow this music . . . released a kind of power and required a level of concentrated energy I did not know I had.’”60

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* ** In accepting the 2019 Juno Award for Indigenous Album of the Year for Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, which uses archival recordings of traditional Maliseet songs as a way to unsettle “the bilingual Anglo-centric Canadian music narrative,”61 two-spirited Canadian composer, singer, and pianist Jeremy Dutcher, a Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) member of the Tobique First Nation in North-West New Brunswick had this to say: “Our [Indigenous] music is not niche. Our music is saying something,” he said from the podium, asking fellow nominees Elisapie, Leonard Sumner, Northern Cree and Snotty Nose Rez Kids to stand up and be applauded along with him. Backstage a little later, he repeated his message to the Indigenous Album nominees—each of whom, he noted, represents “a different tradition and a different language.” “You’re all beautiful . . . . What you do is magic, truly,” he said. “Our music is . . . viable . . . . Our music does deserve to be on these stages and seen because it hasn’t been seen for a long time. Until 1951, we weren’t even allowed to gather and share our music. It was illegal under the Indian Act.”62

Dutcher’s musical work as a queer Indigenous artist resists dominant narratives based on colonial oppression that attacked and censored musical expression as a vital nexus point for transmitting Indigenous cultural values. That Dutcher “was previously responsible for development, coordination and Indigenous outreach at Egale Canada [formerly Equality for Gays And Lesbians Everywhere], which is currently . . . [Canada’s] only national LGBT human rights organization,”63 shows the not uncommon alignment of resistant musical practices with direct actions, also taken by musicians, in other spheres of influence. Dutcher’s example of the ex-

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traordinary resilience of the margin in the face of multigenerational oppression, also pokes holes in the stereotype of the musician as artist segregated from other possible actions in other social spaces. Like the example of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) who went from bartender to outspoken and influential youngest woman in Congress in little over a year, people regularly exceed the limits imposed on them by virtue of circumstance and it is wholly possible to transfer energies in and across multiple undertakings in the course of a life. It is little wonder that when a college video of AOC dancing was leaked to American media in early 2019 in the hopes of undermining her, she simply responded by releasing another video of her dancing, this time in front of Congress: the Republican tactic of shaming by association with dance music marked not only the fear of the generative power of sound and movement but also the fundamental divide between creative and destroyer cultures that rebel musics consistently iterate. And we must not forget what American improviser, composer, and virtuoso multi-instrumentalist William Parker reminds us of in his composition “We Often Danced,” which frames the memory of the “inside survival of slaves coming from Africa to the Americas and how the dream of dancing is a station of hope for all oppressed people in the world.”64 * ** In the city of Guelph, Ontario in January 2019, student-led protests against fossil fuel investments and arguments to divest immediately from these were loudly accompanied by an all-woman samba band, whose sound and clatter supported the urgent call to divest in an age teetering on the precipice of irrevocable climate change. In the same week in the same city, Inuk contemporary throat singer and improviser Tanya Tagaq from the hamlet of Iqaluktuutiaq (meaning “good fishing place”), Nunavut, performed a sold-out wholly improvised show at the 2019 ArtsEverywhere Festival. The

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truth-telling power of her voice speaking across millennia of practice culminated in her chanting, in English, “colonizer . . . you know what you’ve done,” as the hair-raising, risk-taking performance sounded the truth of generations of colonial aggression that are part of the ugly history of Canada’s relations to First Peoples. Earlier in the performance, Tagaq had spoken to the audience of the centrality of improvisation to her musical practice, saying that “improvisation . . . is time itself,” an uncanny insight into how musicking that emerges from this precept can access the historical power of sounding in the here and now of improvised performance, giving new meaning to what “now” means. Both examples show how resistant musics occur with little attention or fanfare in ways that sit outside convention, asking that we listen more carefully, and that we be moved by sound to direct action. * ** Countless global examples of music deployed in the face of crisis, oppression, and struggle exist. In Puerto Rico after the devastation of Category 5 Hurricane Maria in September 2017, which killed an unprecedented number of Puerto Ricans (over 3000) and left the island in crisis with close to 80% of its agriculture destroyed and its power grid completely eliminated, the improvised call and response form of Afro-Puerto-Rican music known as Plena became a vehicle for protest: “Plenas are sometimes known as ‘singing newspapers,’ giving the latest updates on what people are feeling and the news of the day. The headline of this week’s plenas was about the devastation of Hurricane Maria. Winding through the neighborhood streets, they sing about resilience: ‘Our plena, our song, our music, is stronger—our community is stronger than Maria.’”65 Members of Defend PR “a multimedia project . . . to ‘document and celebrate Puerto Rican creativity, resilience, and resistance’ . . . collected and distributed supplies after the hurricane . . . . Defend PR also made [a] video of Adriana

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Santoni’s song calling attention to the environmental justice issues on the island.”66 Santoni is a member of Plena Combativa, a women’s organization that uses culture-jamming to generate change and initiate direct action. Plena Combativa’s self-description reads: “Nuestra cultura es una herramienta de lucha. La plena no es la excepción. [Our culture is a tool of struggle. Plena is no exception.]”67 In the Occupied Territories, Muqata’a, recognized as a leading figure in Palestinian hip hop who began rapping in 2007 as a member of the Ramallah Underground collective, “insists that the hip hop movement in Ramallah is heavily influenced by politics and the need for change. We live in a very stagnant political situation, so we need this kind of disruption.”68 The Palestinian underground music scene generally is a space for rassemblement, political commentary, identity affirmation and a way to connect and communicate through shared culture. Palestinian DJ Sama asserts that “For Palestinians interested in electronic music, we’re not the strangers they shaped us to be. We resist with our music, together, we are the revolution.”69 Networks of cultural exchange facilitate resilience and the sharing of experiences, especially among youth who gather in this scene. Again, music is a key transmitter of shared values, ideas, and social information that resists containment and generates connection. Underground scenes, as discussed earlier, harbor resistance, but also nourish alternative forms of expression not easily suppressed and part of a vital process of generative cocreation that advocates change, recalling Afro-futurist, improviser, and visionary Sun Ra’s admonition that his music aims “to co-ordinate the minds of peoples into an intelligent reach for a better world, and an intelligent approach to the living future. By peoples I mean all of the people of different nations who are living today.”70 And a 2016 song composed by Afro-jazz Zimbabwean musician

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Cris Gera, “Chema Zimbabwe” (Cry Zimbabwe), commented “on the difficulties Zimbabwean citizens were experiencing; Gera dedicated it to the future generations of his country . . . ‘I considered composing this song towards the development of my collapsed beloved country on behalf of the voiceless. Through music, Zimbabwe will be set free, as this amplifies the voices that already exist. My music stands up against the negative; we should not continue under these tough conditions we are living in as Zimbabweans.’”71 The song led to death threats against Gera and his family and culminated in exile from Harare and eventually “As of the beginning of January 2018, Gera is finally in a place where he is safe to continue creating music. The International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN), an organization that relocates artists whose creative expression and lives put them at risk of persecution, relocated Gera to the city of Piteå, Sweden.”72 For Gera, “Through jazz music, I realized that I could effectively put across issues that are at the heart of people’s day-to-day living.”73 Like Gera, Iranian composer and performer Mehdi Rajabian, imprisoned in 2015 for the pursuit of illegal musical activities including the promotion of banned women’s voices, exemplifies the disruptive potential of music as well as its capacity to promote alliance and interaction. In 2018 he released an album (Middle East) promoting peace in the Middle East bringing together twelve other musicians from neighbouring countries. Rajabian states, “We work against the oppressive regimes. We say ‘No’ to war, to suppression, to human rights violations and to poverty . . . . I hope for a day in which we don’t have to make music to express the simplest desires of human rights. For me, notes will always be as bullets and instruments will be as guns. And I’ll be a soldier.”74 Music that storytells the day-to-day has the potential for political critique that gains traction in the public commons, threatening

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oppressive state structures that squelch freedom of expression. The public commons composes itself daily in this mode of the everyday retold through multiple voices, multiple songs, harmonies, and dissonances. Examples such as I’ve used throughout are to be found virtually everywhere music is made as a function not of an inherent association with politics, but as a function of how music compellingly expresses quotidian experiences in ways that matter. The capacity of these microtransgressive iterations to travel through and across the global village is a source of the power of the medium, transcending barriers, finding new truths, and addressing people through affective correspondences that are the source of solidarity, community, and direct action. Music in this mode invokes the capacity for transformational justice that escapes localized contexts, that identifies underlying patterns that require disruption, and that confirms that voices do, indeed, carry. “Music,” as Sun Ra put it, “can break down / Any door / Be it stone or iron. / It can teach a king to / Smash tradition’s fort / Cross the moat of feudal defense / And bring to naught / The bonds of languages / That separate and demean.”75 These are not idle powers. When merged with the deep song that grounds being, whether in the heartbeat or electric pulse of all things, the sound of windrush through trees, or the flow of water streaming from a winter melt, music has the potential to return humanity to the deepest wellsprings of identity, agency, transformation, cocreation, and community. How music is used in the name of these remains a choice all musicians and listeners confront in the particulars of their creative practices. These practices reverberate across multiple sites, divides, traditions, and new potentialities. And the commitment to sound

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remains at its core a contingent expression of the capacity to be fully, dissonantly human with the diversity of sonic creation amplifying how we are all more than any one thing.

Endnotes 1. Greene’s quote is used by bass player Christian McBride’s Twitter account (@mcbridesworld) as its header text. 2. “2017 Women’s March.” 3. Egozi, “The Women’s March.” 4. “Resistance Revival Chorus.” 5. Lyric from “Praying,” track 5 on Kesha’s third studio album, Rainbow (2017). 6. Resistance Revival Chorus, “Resistance Revival Chorus Toolkit.” Alexandria OcasioCortez, who I discuss later in this chapter, under significant pressure from conservative political forces trying to silence her searing, methodical, and very public critique of corrupt governance in the US, in April 2019 tweeted a video of the Resistance Revival Chorus while citing lyrics from their performance of the African American spiritual “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn me ‘Round,” which originated in the early twentieth century and became a hallmark song associated with the American Civil Rights Movement: “Ain’t gonna let injustice turn me around / Turn me around, turn me around / Ain’t gonna let injustice turn me around / I’m gonna keep on a-walkin’, keep on a-talkin’ / Marchin’ up to freedom land.” 7. Kanika, “Women’s Voices.” 8. Levin, “Naima Shalhoub.” 9. Levin, “Naima Shalhoub.” 10. Shalhoub, “Borderlands.” 11. Levin, “Naima Shalhoub.” 12. Shalhoub, “Borderlands.” 13. Shalhoub, “Borderlands.” 14. Stewart, “Johnny Cash.” 15. Metheny and Linhart, “Pat Metheny Q&A.” 16. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch “covers an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers, an area twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France” (“What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?”). 17. Robertson, “Prosody.” 18. Full disclosure: Barcode Free Music is an independent label run by a co-operative of musicians, of which I am a member. 19. Barcode Free Music, “Barcode Free Music.”

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20. Qtd. in Ayers, “Coming of Age.” 21. Full disclosure: Silence is a Guelph-based, not-for-profit, independant community artspace focused on improvised and experimental musicking. I serve as its Artistic Director and was a co-founder of the space. 22. Moten, B Jenkins, 102. 23. Moten, B Jenkins, 105. 24. Moten, B Jenkins, 105. 25. Moten, The Little Edges, 57. 26. Smith, Feel Free, 341. 27. Smith, Feel Free, 339. 28. Armitstead, “‘Identity.’” 29. This quote has been excerpted from Johnny Cash’s letter, which can be viewed in full in Tatiana Cirisano, “Johnny Cash’s Family.” 30. In 2019, lawyer Scott Allan Burroughs noted how Spotify, Google, Pandora, and Amazon are four gargantuan tech corporations who are in direct competition with one another for your music-streaming subscription dollar. Yet, they recently banded together to form a multibillion-dollar Voltron hellbent on ensuring that musicians are paid the bare minimum for the exploitation of their work. These behemoths’ quibble is with the Copyright Royalty Board, who recently, after years of consideration, a thorough review of thousands of documents, and hearings involving dozens of witnesses, took the wholly rational and considered step of raising internet streaming royalties by small percentages for the next few years, maxing out at 15.1 percent of total content cost in 2022. What this means is that a maximum of 15.1 percent of the monies received by app companies who do little more than sell access to artists’ music will be paid to the artists (to be split with their labels and publishers and other rights holders). In exchange for providing the digital platforms, the tech companies will be stuffing their gaping maws with the remaining 85 percent of the streaming revenues, which revenues now basically fuel the entirety of the music business. (Emphasis mine.) 31. Luhby, “The Top 26.” 32. As reported by John Bonazzo in 2015 in The Observer: The U2 frontman is now the world’s richest pop star, and his music had nothing to do with it—in fact, it was an investment in Facebook that netted the Irish rocker his big payday . . . . Bono bought a 2.3 percent share in Facebook when the company went public in 2009—the investment was at that time worth $56 million . . . thanks to the social media giant’s ongoing popularity, the share is now worth over $1 billion. Bono bought the stock as part of his work with Elevation Partners, a private equity firm of which he is managing director. Thanks to Bono’s newfound

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wealth, Paul McCartney is now only the world’s second richest pop act—but he’s still sitting pretty with $818 million. Madonna ranks third, with a net worth of $582 million. 33. As posted to Twitter by Chuka Ejeckam (@ChuckaEjeckam) on April 27, 2019 and available at https://twitter.com/ChukaEjeckam/status/1122203563462025216. 34. As posted to Twitter by Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) on April 19, 2019 and available at https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1119308213722275840. 35. Ronan, “Thank You.” 36. “Greta Thunberg’s 1975 Feature.” 37. Jack, “Greta Thunberg.” 38. Cohen, “Behind One Man’s Effort.” 39. Waters, “If you believe.” 40. From a tweet by Water Justice in Palestine (@WaterPalestine), April 16, 2019, https:// twitter.com/WaterPalestine/status/1118153517091262465. 41. From a tweet by Water Justice in Palestine (@WaterPalestine), April 16, 2019, https:// twitter.com/WaterPalestine/status/1118153725489451013. 42. Prévost, Minute Particulars, 58. 43. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) lists 60 corporations that paid no federal income tax in 2018 stating that “Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes at the 21 percent statutory corporate tax rate, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion” (Gardener, et al., “60 Profitable,” 1). 44. Goff, “Tax Rogues.” 45. Haynes, “My Affordable Housing Trap.” 46. Haynes, “Shelter Skelter.” 47. Berry, “The Average Canadian.” See also Tony Wong’s discussion of average artistic income in Canada. Wong cites the case of Canadian singer-songwriter Danny Michel who states, “‘Everywhere I go, musicians are quietly talking about one thing: how to survive,’ . . . Despite being in the Top 20 charts on CBC Radio 2 and 3 for 10 weeks, and climbing to No. 3, Michel said his hit song ‘Purgatory Cove’ earned him just $44.99 on the popular music streamer Spotify. ‘This is simply unsustainable,’ he says. ‘My album sales have held steady for the last decade until dropping 95 per cent due to music-streaming services.’” 48. Campbell, “In Memoriam.” 49. Haynes, “My Affordable Housing Trap.” 50. Translated from the original (“Notre religion n’a jamais interdit la musique. Le Prophète a été accueilli avec des chansons lorsqu’il est arrivé à La Mecque. Nous couper la musique, c’est comme nous empêcher de respirer.”), which appeared in Commeillas, “Au Mali.” 51. “Khaira Arby.” 52. Chilton, Hazel Scott, 143. 53. Rinehart, “This Black Woman.”

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54. Rinehart, “This Black Woman.” 55. NoiseCat, “His Side.“ 56. NoiseCat, “His Side.” 57. Lederach and Lederach, Blood and Bones, 208. 58. Spoken by Ella Baker as keynote speaker at a rally in Jackson, Mississippi in 1964. 59. Ruehl, “We Who Believe.” 60. Moye, Ella Baker, 141. 61. Bliss, “Jeremy Dutcher.” 62. Rayner, “Looking Like.” 63. “Jeremy Dutcher.” 64. William Parker, liner notes to Voices Fall from the Sky, Centering Records, 2018, compact disc. 65. del Barco, “Puerto Rico.” 66. Paso Peace Museum, “Puerto Rico.” 67. Taken from the organization’s Facebook page, though this description was updated during the writing of this essay. The Facebook page, available at http:// www.facebook.com/pg/plenacombativa/about/, now reads “Proyecto musical político-feminista que utiliza la Plena puertorriqueña como herramienta de denuncia, lucha, protesta y propuesta.” [Trans: “Politico-feminist, musical project that uses Puerto Rican plena as a tool of denunciation, struggle, protest, and proposal (for change)”] 68. Townsend, “Raving in Ramallah.” 69. Qtd. in Townsend, “Raving in Ramallah. 70. Sun Ra, liner notes to Sun Song (originally released with the title Jazz by Sun Ra), 1957. 71. Speaker and Taboy, “Profile: Cris Gera.” 72. Speaker and Taboy, “Profile: Cris Gera.” 73. Qtd. in Speaker and Taboy, “Profile: Cris Gera.” 74. Brennan, “Jailed.” 75. Ra, "Brother of the Sun,” 90.

Works Cited “2017

Women’s March.” RMWomensMarch.

Wikipedia.

Accessed

April

26,

2019.

http://bit.ly/

Armitstead, Claire. “‘Identity is a pain in the arse’: Zadie Smith on Political Correctness.” The Guardian. February 2, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMArmitstead.

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Ayers, Nabil. “Coming of Age in the Loft Jazz Scene.” The New York Times. August 9, 2018. https://nyti.ms/2LFvzjZ. Barcode Free Music. “Barcode Free Music.” https://www.barcodefreemusic.com. Berry, David. “The Average Canadian Indie Artist Earns a Whopping $7,228 a Year Playing Music, Plus Some Other Industry Stats.” National Post. March 5, 2013. http://bit.ly/RMBerry. Bliss, Karen. “Jeremy Dutcher Aims to Disrupt ‘Anglo-Centric Music Narrative’ With Wolastoq-Language Album: Premiere.” Billboard. April 5, 2018. https://bit.ly/ RMBliss. Bonazzo, John. “Bono’s Investment in Facebook Make Him the World’s Richest Pop Star.” Observer. August 31, 2015. http://bit.ly/RMBonazzo. Brennan, David. “Jailed for My Music: Mehdi Rjabian on His Hunger Strikes, Solitary Confinement, and Album for Peace.” Newsweek. March 14, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMBrennan. Burroughs, Scott Alan. “Short Arms and Deep Pockets: Tech Giants Still Hate Paying Artists.” Above the Law. March 20, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMBurroughs. Campbell, Rebecca. “In Memoriam: Justin Haynes.” Now Toronto. April 18, 2019. http:// bit.ly/RMMemoriam. Chilton, Karen. Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008. Cirisano, Tatiana. “Johnny Cash’s Family Condemns White Supremacist: Read Cash’s 1964 Letter to Radio Station.” Billboard. August 8, 2017. http://bit.ly/RMCirisano. Cohen, Benyamin. “Behind One Man’s Effort to Bring Madonna to Israel.” From the Grapevine. April 9, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMCohen. Commeillas, David. “Au Mali, Le Luth Continue.” Libération. February 12, 2016. http://bit. ly/RMCommeillas. del Barco, Mandalit. “Puerto Rico’s ‘Singing Newspapers’ Tell a Story of Resilience. NPR. October 6, 2017. http://bit.ly/RMBarco. Egozi, Arielle. “The Women’s March Launches ‘Resistance Revival’ in Effort to Keep AntiTrump Momentum Going.” Mic. July 25, 2017. http://bit.ly/RMEgozi. Gardener, Matthew, Steve Wamhoff, Mary Martellotta, and Lorena Roque. “60 Profitable Fortune 500 Companies Avoided All Federal Income Taxes in 2018.” Report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, April 2019. http://bit.ly/RMGardener. Goff, Philip. “Tax Rogues Like Bono Are Harming the World’s Poorest People.” The Guardian. November 7, 2017. http://bit.ly/RMTaxRogues. “Greta Thunberg’s 1975 feature ‘rejected by big artists.’” BBC. August 12, 2019. http:// bit.ly/RMBBCGreta. Haynes, Justin. “Shelter Skelter: Inside Toronto’s Seaton House, Canada’s Largest Men’s Shelter.” Now Toronto. February 1, 2019. http://bit.ly/ RMShelterSkelter. ———. “My Affordable Housing Trap.” Now Toronto. March 3, 2019. http://bit.

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ly/RMHaynes. Jack, Malcolm. “Greta Thunberg, The 1975 and a Different Musical Climate.” The Big Issue. August 16, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMJack. “Jeremy Dutcher.” Wikipedia. https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Dutcher. Kanika, Som. “Women’s Voices.” Khmer Times. March 1, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMKhmer. “Khaira Arby.” Wikipedia. Accessed April 26, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMKhaira. Lederach, John Paul, and Angela Jill Lederach. Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Levin, Sam. “Naima Shalhoub: Finding a Voice Behind Bars.” East Bay Express. November 25, 2015. http://bit.ly/RMLevin. Luhby, Tami. “The Top 26 Billionaires Own $1.4 Trillion – As Much as 3.8 Billion Other People.” CNN Business. January 21, 2019. https://cnn.it/2VMtMwZ. Metheny, Pat, interviewed by Warren Linhart. “Pat Metheny Q&A: A Musician in Pursuit of the Perfect Song.” Joni Mitchell Library. March 25, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMJoni. Moten, Fred. B Jenkins. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. ———. The Little Edges. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. Moye, J. Todd. Ella Baker: Community Organizer of the Civil Rights Movement. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. NoiseCat, Julian Brave. “His Side of the Story: Nathan Phillips Wants to Talk About Covington.” The Guardian. February 4, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMNoiseCat. Paso Peace Museum. “Puerto Rico: History, Culture, and Hurricane Maria.” Accessed April 26, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMPasoPeace. Prévost, Edwin. Minute Particulars: Meanings in Music-making in the Wake of Hierarchical Realignments and Other Essays. Matching Tye, Essex: Copula, 2004. Ra, Sun. “Brother of the Sun.” In Sun Ra: The Immeasurable Equation: The Collected Poetry and Prose, edited by James L. Wolf and Hartmut Geerken, 90. Wartaweil: Waitawhile, 2005. ———. “Liner Notes from Sun Song [Jazz by Sun Ra].” Transition Records, 1957. Rayner, Ben. “Looking Like It’s the Year of the Mendes at the Junos as Artists Pick Up Early Awards.” TheStar.com. March 16, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMRayner. “Resistance Revival Chorus.” AppNexus. http://bit.ly/RMResistanceRevivalChorus. Resistance Revival Chorus. “Resistance Revival Chorus Toolkit: Introduction to the Resistance Revival Chorus.” Medium. August 30, 2017. http://bit.ly/RMResistanceRevival. Rinehart, Lorissa. “This Black Woman Was Once the Biggest Star in Jazz. Here’s Why You’ve Never Heard of Her.” Narratively: Hidden History. August 1, 2018. http://bit.ly/RMRinehart. Robertson, Lisa. “Prosody of the Citizen.” Contours 1 (2015). http://bit.ly/RMRobertson. Ruehl, Kim. “We Who Believe in Freedom Shall Not Rest.” NPR. January 16, 2018. http://

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bit.ly/RMRuehl. Schwartz, Johanna (dir.). They Will Have to Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile. 2015. Shalhoub, Naima. “Borderlands: Singing Through the Prison Walls.” IndieGoGo [campaign page]. April 23, 2015. http://bit.ly/RMShalhoub. Smith, Zadie. “The I Who Is Not Me.” In Feel Free, 333–47. Toronto: Penguin, 2018. Speaker, Tom, and Clarisse Taboy. “Profile: Cris Gera.” Artists at Risk Connection. January 2019. http://bit.ly/RMARC. Stewart, Allison. “Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison: How the Troubled Country Singer Found His Cause.” National Post. May 30, 2018. http://bit.ly/RMStewart. Townsend, Megan. “Raving in Ramallah: How Underground Music is Bringing Palestinians Together.” Independent. February 2, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMTownsend. Waters, Roger. “If you believe in human rights, Madonna, don’t play Tel Aviv.” The Guardian. April 17, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMWaters. “What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?” The Ocean Cleanup. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMGarbage. Wong, Tony. “Canada’s artistic middle class is disappearing. Blame the digital economy.” OurWindsor.ca [originally published in the Toronto Star]. July 17, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMWong.

2 Music for Loneliness: Ambient Sound and Improvising Queer Resilience

Feryn Wade-Lang

The carpet of my room is covered by black audio cables, curving and snaking around each other like the slippery bodies of eels. The ones in use connect to the cheapest single-input Behringer mixer I could buy. The mixer is jacked into my iMac, and GarageBand is open, recording. The chords running into the mixer link back to the Boss ME-50 pedal I borrowed from my dad, back to the MicroKorg I’m crouching in front of on the floor. I have a number of pre-set synthesizer sounds lined up, but I’m not too worried about making other preparations. Whether out of genuine interest or sheer laziness, I’ve chosen to improvise whatever music I plan to make today. And I’m not trying to make just any kind of music—I’m trying to make ambient music. I find some sounds on the Korg that I like and loop them— crackling bass, icy pads, electronic harp notes played in reverse. The rumbling of deep space. I layer them on top of one another until the mix is ear-shatteringly loud. Reverb and delay stretch out

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each individual sound like sheets of latex. A blur of indistinct digital noise. I make slow transitions, trying to shift from idea to idea in the moment so that I never feel bored. In the midst of it all I feel myself going into a trance, my mind funneled into the music I’m summoning from nowhere. An automatic impulse pulls my fingers to the keyboard. I spend fifty minutes in that trance, barely recalling what I’ve created, until I stop and listen back. When I listen to it then, I think I love it. When I get older I might still find some value in it even if it’s bad—I might recognize the poor taste even behind the seasoning of nostalgia. The future doesn’t matter when I consider what I’ve made. What matters is that I conjured up atmospheres, moods, imaginary places. The fact that I could even do that, even if I couldn’t do it well, is enough to make me happy. I cut up the fifty minutes of improvised textures into songs and upload them to Bandcamp where they will sit in digital space, unacknowledged by anyone but me. And that will feel like enough, because while I was making the music I wasn’t thinking. Not about my life in high school, not about my acne flare-ups, not about the hidden queer angst I carry inside me. I let myself sink into the trance generated by the music’s ambience, the malignance of my inner life momentarily soothed. * ** What is ambient music? It’s a genre title that can’t be taken for granted to mean what you think it means. When someone thinks of ambient music, they might think of New Age music like Enya, soundtracks for spa days or meditation retreats. They might think of the spaced-out music that plays in rave chill-out rooms à la Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85–92 (1992). While these are certainly offshoots of ambient music, the meaning of the genre’s title can be traced back to the English musician and producer Brian Eno, a critical voice in any discussion of ambient music.

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Though Eno’s music career kicked off as a founding member of the glam-rock band Roxy Music, he is more recognized now for his contributions to ambient music, a genre whose name he helped coin. In the liner notes of his 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports, he posits a clear definition: “Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”1 The artistic ethos Eno lays out for ambient music is one that acknowledges multiplicity and does not demand to be listened to in any one way. It affords the listener a sense of freedom—you can choose what you get from the music, and you can choose how deeply you want to engage with it. The album exemplifies this aesthetic over the course of its four long tracks: sparse, sustained piano notes like droplets of rain, the soft hums of a synthesizer mimicking the tones of a human voice. It’s music you can leave on in the background or music that can consume all of your attention. Before he released Ambient 1, Eno’s 1975 album Discreet Music contributed to the initial consolidation of the genre, before it had a name. The first half of the album consists of a 30-minute long instrumental piece comprised of looped synthesizer phrases. It’s sparse, with the high release on the synthesizers allowing them to linger. There is a loose structure, one that feels largely improvised. The quietness and simplicity of the sound really do make the music discreet, and this sonic discretion was something that ended up codifying ambient music as a space of intimacy and apartness. In an interview for Al Jazeera, Eno tells the story behind the album. The year of its release he had been struck by a car after slipping into traffic. While Eno was confined to a hospital bed, a friend came over and put on a record of eighteenth-century harp music before she left. The volume of the record was too low and he couldn’t reach over to adjust it. He lay there, frustrated, until he

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found himself caught up in a new way of listening to music, captivated by the way the notes of the harp were just loud enough to surface over the sound of rain tapping against his window. He experienced a revelation: “I suddenly thought of this idea of making music that didn’t impose itself on your space in the same way, that created a sort of landscape that you could belong to, that you could be part of.”2 Even in this description there is agency that belongs to the listener—you can belong to this sonic landscape, if you choose. You can be a part of it, if you choose. While you might choose not to belong to it in one moment of listening, there remains the sense that you have the freedom to belong to the music when you need somewhere to belong. Another good example of this kind of non-imposed, open ambient music occurs in previously mentioned Aphex Twin’s aptly titled Selected Ambient Works Vol. II (1994). Deviating from the techno-tinged atmospheres of his early ambient works, Selected Ambient Works Vol. II is notable for being the only release from Aphex Twin (alias of English electronic artist Richard D. James) to consist of “pure” ambient music—music that follows the same sort of ethos established by Eno. It is music preoccupied with creating a sense of place, one derived from a distinct capacity for interiority. Though the sonic palette mostly consists of frosty synthesizer pads, each song manages to craft a unique mood: “Radiator,” mechanical and dissonant; “Rhubarb,” a blissful walk through a greenhouse; “Tree,” mythical and foreboding. In a conversation with ambient music scholar David Toop, James describes the album as “standing in a power station on acid.”3 James’s conversation with Toop further consolidates the music’s relationship with imagined spaces. According to James, a significant source of inspiration came from his lucid dreams. The sounds themselves are all approximations of sounds that James heard in his

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dreams, sounds he would attempt to make in a dreamed-up version of his studio. Though the music possesses qualities that tend towards introspection, that aesthetic also comes from the interior process that created the music in the first place. To absorb what that interiority feels like, the music demands close listening. When you allow yourself to listen to ambient music in closer detail, to let each sound cover you completely, you are allowing yourself to be submerged. To be submerged is to be wholly within the ambience, the imagined place, to feel untethered from the gravity and solidity of the material world. I use the word “submersion” because it reminds me of the feeling that comes from diving underwater. * ** I’m three or four when I first learn how to swim. I take lessons at the YMCA on Grosvenor Street right across from the building where my mother works. She drops me off there and I cry when I’m separated from her. At this age I’m too anxious to be left alone. I relax once we reach the kiddie pool. In that low-lit room the turquoise-coloured water shines back up against the white-tiled ceiling. We learn how to do starfish floats. I lean back, spread my limbs like the face of a lotus, arms and legs akimbo. I close my eyes and try to forget the chemical stench of the pool. Echoes of laughter punctuated by splashes reverberate around the room, as though every surface is reflective. The pool is lit from below and I want to be where the light beams. I spin onto my stomach and let myself sink. Turquoise—my sight is covered by pure turquoise. Looking to where the lights are, floating, sinking, submerging, I’m allowed a moment of peace. Then burning. My eyes are suffused with fire. I learn very quickly that submersion is not possible in this sort of pool. One of the in-

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structors lifts me out of the water, and I feel a surge in me, announcing that I’m going to cry again. Later, in the summer, my mother takes me on an eight-hour drive up to Pancake Bay Provincial Park for a few days of camping. We set up our camper on a perch that overlooks the dunes of the beach. Beyond the patterns in the sand lies the crystal-blue water of Lake Superior. Every day we spend there I find time to go out into the water. Though the water is frigid, icy in temperature, I am not dissuaded. I still lean back and spread out like a starfish. Rather than the dim glow of the kiddie pool, I look up and see the searing light of the sun. The air smells fresh, nothing like the chemical stench in that tiled room. Here I have the freedom to sink and be submerged. I leap into the unfolding waves and let them overtake me, tow me beneath the surface. What I desire in the water is annihilation, to be with the fluidity and the flow of each wave. I will not be fixed in one place. I will be in constant ambient motion. * ** There are some deeper aspects of ambient music that I want to write about here, aspects that I think might help explain its significance to me. To delve into these concepts a little more, I want to highlight a specific work by a specific artist: American musician and writer Pauline Oliveros. She’s an artist who deserves as much credit as someone like Eno when it comes to codifying ambient music as a genre. To begin, I suppose I should establish the story behind the album Deep Listening (1989). On October 8th, 1988 Oliveros, along with collaborators Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis, descended into the Dan Harpole Cistern at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend,

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Washington. They brought their instruments with them: accordion, didgeridoo, trombone, conch shell, garden hose. Their intent was to use the resonant space of the cistern to record music. The reverb time within the cistern was forty-five seconds.4 As Oliveros describes in her book The Roots of the Moment, “It was nearly impossible to distinguish direct from reflected sound.”5 The music recorded in the depths of the cistern would be collected in the album Deep Listening, and Oliveros, Dempster, and Panaiotis would christen themselves the Deep Listening Band. While they would go on to produce further works, Deep Listening is a particularly important example of the role of reverb and delay in ambient music. In Deep Listening, individual sounds are stretched out into ripples of vapour. They are not confined to a single instant, but instead fill up the immense spaces conjured in the ear. They arise in much the same way as sounds in a landscape do. On the song “Suiren” the deep, layered drones and the voices that rise as mist blur together into an unfathomable mass of sonic fog. You can try to feel your way through the dense haze by clinging to a stray sound, a single motif to keep you afloat, or you can let yourself be submerged beneath a sea of sound. You can let it overtake you, you can trust it to carry you, you can find joy in feeling lost. To be sure, Oliveros and the Deep Listening Band are just as willing to get lost in this sound as you, as the album is generated through their improvisations in their chosen space. Improvisation was key not only to the process behind making this album but is part of the creative process that can be read into the aesthetics. The sounds rise into your ear not as choreographed movements in a dance, but as voices in conversation with one another and the cistern in which they sing. This improvisation, accentuated by the reverberations of the space, provides the music with its looseness, its pervasiveness. It’s like a pool that allows you to

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swim out in any direction. Agency is an essential component of improvisatory art, and that same kind of agency is imbued into the sound, passed down to the listener. Keeping Eno’s ethos for ambient music in mind, the listener gets to choose how to navigate this ambient sonic landscape. I keep returning to the metaphor of water because ambient music has a unique relationship to water. If reverb is an important element in the creation of ambient music—as it is with Deep Listening—then we have to think about how we describe reverb. Dry and wet. Direct and reflective sound. The reverb important to ambient music is not dry reverb, the sound of the direct input from an instrument. It’s the wet reverb, the effected sound, the sound that bounces off surfaces and fills up cathedrals, concert halls, cisterns. That wet sound is what generates the sensations that I call submersion. You dive. The water rushes up, devouring your descending body, and you find that you are weightless. The laws of gravity are briefly broken. You watch as strands of your hair, suffused with water, are waving before your eyes like seaweed. You watch the bubbles as they rise from your lips. Now your ears are flooded. The noise from the world above is no longer present. All you hear is this low, humming drone, the hiss of currents, the swishing of your limbs moving through the water. You are surrounded. At peace. Maybe you let yourself believe for a moment you could be part of all this blue. I want to feel the noise of the world filter away under the waves of sound. I want to feel, for a moment, like I am a part of the sound. A sound among so many sounds. Dislocated. Disembodied. That’s what ambient music means to me, and it’s something I can access simply by listening, by tapping into the freedom inscribed into the music. If ambient music creates a sonic landscape that the listener can belong to, then I suppose I listen to ambient music in the mo-

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ments when I feel I don’t belong anywhere else. For Oliveros, Deep Listening was more than an album—it was a process and philosophy integral to her art. She published a book called Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice in 2005 and established the Deep Listening Institute (now the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer) that very same year. The institute’s website describes Deep Listening as a practice that “explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature of listening . . . [to cultivate] a heightened awareness of the sonic environment, both external and internal.”6 Deep Listening challenges you to orient yourself towards the sounds you hear in music, in nature, the noise of your own body and—in a way—to the noise of your mind. The musical and social practices of Deep Listening are tied to Eno’s ambient music ethos through similar preoccupations with the attention paid to sound: what falls into the background? What does it mean to pay attention to these dissociated sounds? Perhaps listening to these sounds enables you to engage in the imagined landscapes of ambient music. Perhaps this kind of listening can bring you into greater awareness of your own body and your own mind, of the quiet thoughts to which you might not otherwise pay attention. Oliveros’s practice of listening and the way it informed her music is deeply embedded in her political beliefs and identity as a queer woman. She brought together an all-female performing group called the ƂEnsemble, and the introspective nature of the practice was established with the goal of better enabling healing amongst the members of marginalized groups. In her Sonic Meditations she writes: “Healing can occur in relation to [listening] when . . . individuals feel the common bond with others through a shared experience

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. . . when one’s inner experience is made manifest and accepted by others.”7 Those who occupy marginalized identities that attempt to voice their unique experiences tend to find themselves ignored by the dominant culture—they have a routine experience of not being listened to. If those marginalized people are not listened to, then those who wield institutional power won’t use that power to address their concerns or make their lives easier. For those who bear such a weight, deeply listening to one another—sharing your experience and allowing it to be acknowledged as real—can be a way to heal the pain of being marginalized. That listening won’t permanently heal the wound, but such healing is hardly achievable anyways. Rather, it becomes a part of an ongoing process of healing, one that is slow but constant and deeply tied to ambient aesthetics. * ** One day, I take a walk through the trails behind my father’s house. As I walk I try to direct my ear to each individual sound. Gravel crunching beneath my shoes. A breeze rustling the cattails that border the path. The trickle of a stream. Birds chirping in the distance.

Maybe the birds break from the tree in which they’ve gathered and fly through the air above me. Maybe a dog barks, or maybe I can hear a conversation as I pass behind rows of backyards. The sounds of the landscape are not composed. They are in a constant state of improvisation, reacting to one another, and my ear hears each sound as something that arises from the atmosphere of the place. A symphony in the valley. There is a nascent desire in me to strip off my clothes and wan-

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der out into the waving cattails, to merge with the landscape. To be submerged, surrounded, overwhelmed, annihilated. To sense myself as a sound amidst all these sounds, to cease to be anything more than a sound. A drone that echoes on into infinity. A sound that can’t signify. A sound that is only a sound. Why can’t my body be only a body? * ** In talking about ambient music’s relationship with space and water, it also feels appropriate to talk about its relationship to song structure. With the exception of artists like Grouper, who blend ambient music with more traditional stripped-down song structures, ambient pieces tend to evolve slowly over time rather than alternate between verse-chorus or soft-loud dynamics. Elements are gradually introduced, shift, sustain themselves, and harmonize with one another, and the changes they undergo by the end of the piece are sometimes so subtle they are difficult to notice. Rather than sharp stripes of distinct colour, ambient music can be likened to a vast gradient. Though the previously described work of Deep Listening can certainly be understood in these terms, I believe this point can be better exemplified by Christina Vantzou, a neoclassical and ambient composer whose works I also wish to highlight. Her “No. 4 String Quartet” (2018) is a song that, as she points out in an interview with Bandcamp Daily, is constructed from many different takes playing the same set of motifs.8 A drone of harmonizing strings blankets the entire track, the pitch of each individual string slowly changing. As the drone morphs, violin flourishes arise, looping and building on top of one another. What Ross Devlin calls the “emergent quality” of Vantzou’s music is showcased adeptly on this track, as “strands of melody appear out of a dense fog of drone.”9

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Given how this emergent quality of sound can be extrapolated to a much broader survey of ambient music, it seems as though the genre also contains the notion of song-as-process. The glacial developments of an ambient song mean that the music is in a constant process, never quite finished—there is a sense that the drones of “No. 4 String Quartet” can go on forever, always making incremental sonic transitions. Ambient music seems guided by gradual shifts, a musical technique tied to improvisation. There is no strict linear path set before the music is performed. It is defined less by rigid structure and form but rather by a sense of flow and gradual, organic change. While the song might not be consciously informed by Oliveros’s Deep Listening methodology, there are layers of sound here that attend to the small sonic gestures, the ones that might be otherwise imperceptible, the changes that might go unnoticed. The politics of such shifts in attention to the imperceptible, to the unnoticed, are tied to queer aesthetics where precisely such generative spaces invite gender difference into a form of resilient being. * ** To expand on this idea of ambient music’s song-as-process structure, I’d like to turn to one of my favourite ambient artists, Julianna Barwick. I can’t remember how I found Barwick’s music, but when I heard it I knew I’d discovered something different. Much of the ambient music I came across felt cold, composed of metallic synth tones and humming bass. Barwick’s kind of ambient music was composed solely of her own voice. A video posted to the YouTube channel of New York City public radio station WNYC called her the “one-woman choir” and showed her sitting on her bed in her Greenpoint apartment, using a looping pedal to create walls of sound using her own voice. She devised this method of composition to enact her love of singing, and she uses echo and reverb extensively to

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recreate the feeling she got from singing in churches or reverberant parking garages. Like Oliveros and company, her music is centered on listening to space and layering through improvisation. An important difference is that although the music captures an abstract sense of open space, the process of creation derives from solitude. Her song “The Magic Place” (2011) is a good example of Barwick’s process, beginning with a set of loops and interwoven harmonies. More vocal phrasings emerge and layer over one another, stretched out by the reverb into what sounds like a choir of druids singing some sort of prayer. Light synth pads emerge to establish a faint, atmospheric drone. Once the song has been built up, the layers all peel back, until only a single line of Barwick’s voice remains. The song fills up until it can’t contain anything more. Through layering and repetition, “The Magic Place” transitions from states of sparseness to states of overwhelming fullness. By the time I heard her music I’d already been making my own ambient jams for a couple of years. The fact that someone could make an entire album through improvised vocal phrases was something I found uniquely inspirational—and so I decided to do my best imitation. I borrowed a multi-effects pedal from my dad and plugged my cheap Apex mic into it. For a weekend in the summer, when I should have been studying for exams, I tried my own hand at ambient choral jam sessions. I tried to follow Barwick’s lead, never planning ahead, pulling my voice into loops, weaving that same net of song for myself. In that moment, improvisation meant instinct. Instinct that would lead my voice to something beautiful, something that swelled and enveloped me, helped me leave my body. Improvising in this context meant listening to myself. * ** I discovered ambient music not through any of the genre’s “big

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names”—not through anybody I’ve discussed previously in this essay—but through an experimental indie rock band from Atlanta, Georgia named Deerhunter. I’d asked for their album Cryptograms (2007) one Christmas even though I’d only heard one song from it. I think I was fourteen. My mother gave it to me as a gift while we were visiting my grandmother, and I spent the entire holiday there listening to it through a pair of tinny Sylvania CD player speakers. And while I might have been tempted to listen by the more straightforward indie rock singles, it was the ambient interludes on the album that struck me. Back then I had no idea you could even make music like that. The four instrumental tracks on the first half of the album captured my imagination, each unique in colour and texture. The ethereal, wandering “White Ink” that summoned up a wall of massive, echoing guitar; “Providence,” composed of bright, heavenly drones that are dissolved in a wash of piercing, hellish static; the haunting “Red Ink,” the last substantial instrumental track, filled with humming synthesizers, a choir of bells and delayed tape vocals. I found something present in them, something absent in the other songs on the record. They evolved, forming open fields of sound. Though the music in itself captured me, there was also something about the person who fronted the band—Bradford Cox. I found him interesting not only because of how he talked about going into trances making these improvised ambient jams and tape loops, but also because he seemed like one of the only artists making ambient music that I could relate to. He was unabashedly queer, openly asexual, wore dresses on stage, and seemed to take some pride in his eccentricity and nonconformity. He was somebody who fucked with gender in a way I sometimes wished I could. I suppose I’ve been deliberately vague about my self-avowed

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queer angst, and it seems that now is the point where I have to talk about it. I guess I should establish some more context and admit that part of why the interiority of ambient music appealed to me was because I felt profoundly lonely as a teenager. I never really had any friends in high school, or at least no close friends. No one I felt I could share the deepest parts of myself with. Even in my final year, when I managed to befriend a group of like-minded people, I never really told them about myself, about my sexuality or my ambivalence about gender, even though I’m sure all of them knew about it to some extent. I doubt the deep self-loathing I felt helped me break out of my shell. Ambient music gave me a place I could belong when I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, even in my own body. There is a specifically queer and trans form of loneliness I call “the loneliness of the closet.” It’s the kind of loneliness that creates the fertile ground for an active—potentially overactive—interior life. So much of your identity is kept locked in your mind, in the realm of your deepest fears and wonders. It can reach a point where everything external about you feels like an act. Whenever you are out in the world, whenever you let yourself talk to someone, you know there’s this perimeter you’ve set up and won’t let anyone cross. This loneliness can become cancerous, metastasizing to the point where you know it might even kill you. When I listened to ambient music—from Deerhunter to everything else—I felt I was listening to a soundtrack for my queer loneliness, even if I didn’t have the words or knowledge to name everything I felt. It filled up all the empty space inside me with sound. It made the loneliness feel somehow poetic or profound. It helped me feel that same kind of serenity in solitude that I found at the bottom of Lake Superior. And maybe that soothing quality of ambient music was enough to help me stay alive.

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* ** When we talk about political music, we mostly talk about music with explicit political objectives or messages. Protest songs, punk rock, hard-core hip-hop—lyrics imbued with righteous anger and disgust at racial injustice, capitalist violence, and consumer culture. The music surrounding those lyrics acts as a vessel to amplify whatever message is embedded in the words between guitar strums and breakneck beats. There is nothing essentially political or revolutionary about the sounds being made. It is deployed within a specific political context. These are songs designed to catch your ear, to be played to crowds hollering either in support of the message or against it. They are deployed in the social world. But perhaps we get a bit too swept up in the romanticism of revolutionary rock to acknowledge the quieter forms of political change that occur through music. “The personal is political.” It’s a phrase that has by this point become something of a Second Wave feminist cliché—though that does not make it any less true. There is not some partition between our everyday lives—the choices we make, the work we do, the ways we think—and the political mechanisms of society and culture. Our personal lives are constantly interfacing with our political circumstances, whether we choose to acknowledge that truth or not. And while we all find ourselves infatuated with more visible processes of social change—visible processes that need to happen for any change to arise—there are also processes that happen in our minds, in our households, between us and those we love, in places that are not nearly as visible. There are times when the political infiltrates the personal, even if it is an infiltration only you happen to notice. Perhaps you come to some revelation that shakes the foundation of how you see your world, how you see yourself. Even if those processes are quieter, they hold just as much importance.

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Which brings me to a question I’ve been mulling over: can ambient music be political? I’m sure Brian Eno and Pauline Oliveros would say yes, but I still want to take some time to dwell on this query. To answer it, I suppose I’d have to think about how it signifies and the contexts in which it is deployed. But even if I can reach some sort of conclusion on that subject, that only leads me to another important question: if ambient music can be political, why does that matter? * ** I don’t know why it took me so long to realize I was transgender. I’m not going to tell you that I always knew, because I didn’t. And I’m not going to tell you it was a sudden realization, because it wasn’t. It was the melting of a glacier—slow trickles, slow heat, until the water that remained trapped in stasis for so long burst and flowed out into the ocean, out into the unknown. It was a process, a symphony of drones growing louder and louder until I had no choice but to listen. * ** When I’m older I return to Pancake Bay. I’m excited to return to the campgrounds of my childhood, the crystal-blue waters where I would find solace. I’m excited to recapture that feeling once again. The sky is such a bright blue it becomes hard to find the line between the water and the horizon. Though the air is cool as it rolls in from Lake Superior, it’s still a stiflingly hot mid-July day, so I waste no time in putting on my swimsuit and rushing into the freezing water. There’s a bit of family wisdom about dealing with the frigid temperatures of Lake Superior—you have to dive completely under the surface before you’ll finally stop feeling cold. In a way, the lake demands that you be submerged.

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As I dive, I realize this is the first time I’ve gone swimming in years. Once puberty hit me I felt like the mere possibility of someone glimpsing my unclothed torso was deeply humiliating. My body itself felt humiliating. For some reason I just assumed back then that everyone felt this way. As I dive, I realize that my feelings about Lake Superior are tangled up in so much more than just the water. The water is tinged with nostalgia, imbued with the significance of history and time. This is water that my mother swam in when she was young, water that my uncles and grandparents swam in decades ago. This is water I swam in when I was young. Beneath the soft waves of the lake I understand my submersion in the water to be submersion in all of the feelings and memories provoked by this nostalgia. I think ambient music might operate on a similar principle, at least for some people. As cringe-inducing as it might be to look at, the comments on the video for Aphex Twin’s “Rhubarb” show that a number of people have felt that the music provokes nostalgia. Paragraphs are dedicated to people remembering good times, reflecting on new losses and old grief. The music has helped plunge them into that interiority, and it has provided a way for them to listen to themselves. In my present moment I have complicated feelings about nostalgia. Maybe I perform mental time travel back to my supposed halcyon days, or maybe I can try to recapture the supposed purity of youth and innocence by staring into an old photograph. But whenever I go back I’m forced to ask myself: did I know? Were there any signs? It’s the same feeling I get whenever I go through old photographs. Can I even recognize myself in them? Is the body in the photograph one that ever belonged to me?

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* ** Can ambient music, music that I have described as inducing deep states of interiority and self-listening intimacy, be political? If we’re going to talk about political, revolutionary music, let’s compare some examples. An overtly political song is “True Trans Soul Rebel” (2014) by the punk band Against Me! Since coming out in 2012, lead singer Laura Jane Grace has become a trans icon, and this song shows her narrating some of the darkest moments of a closeted trans person’s life—moments of self-loathing, self-harm, and unshakeable terror at overwhelming loneliness. “Does God bless your transsexual heart, True Trans Soul Rebel?” she shouts over roaring guitars and crashing cymbals. In an article for Elle discussing political music, Grace says: “To get up on stage and have so many people connect with the song, shout the lyrics back at me regardless of whether or not they themselves are trans . . . just seeing that they can connect with that base human need of love that we all have. The weight of that moment is never lost to me . . . ” Though the lyrics of the song are unabashedly personal, they become a means for unifying people, even if they have no way to understand fully the experiences Grace describes. Though personal, “True Trans Soul Rebel” is equally political, creating an atmosphere where people can experience kinship through common experience, allowing their internal realities to be acknowledged and thus becoming a generative space for healing in the queer commons of sound. To think about how “True Trans Soul Rebel” is political, it is important to attend to what the music signifies as well as the context in which it is deployed. Firstly, it’s a punk rock song with loud guitars, drums, and a distinctly fast tempo. The genre conventions of punk rock already communicate that there is a political meaning

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to the music, a message of rebellion and nonconformity, something carried along by the sonic conventions of punk. Secondly, in terms of context, the song is typically played in clubs, stadiums, concert halls—wherever Against Me! happen to tour. “True Trans Soul Rebel” is written to be played in such a context, with its singalong chorus and mosh-ready drums. It’s music for people to jump around, crash into each other, have those moments of catharsis and chaos you can only have at a punk show. In this way, the signification and the context are paired together. But of course, that’s not the only context. When that queer angst comes calling, sometimes I want to slip on my headphones or turn on my speakers and blast “True Trans Soul Rebel.” Sometimes I want to bang my head to it. Sometimes I want to lie in bed and cry to it. But even in those cases, the political message of the song is relevant to the cathartic affect I’m trying to achieve. Even when I’m listening to it alone in bed, my intimate personal is interfacing with a wider political socius. So how can the politics of “True Trans Soul Rebel” be compared with ambient music? Let’s go back to the question of signification and context using another ambient song from my teenage years: “Boy 1904” (2009) by Jónsi & Alex, an artistic collaboration between Jónsi (stage name of Jón Thór Birgisson), the lead singer of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós, and his partner Alex Somers. In terms of signification, the song is a wash of reverberating choir vocals with humming bass to anchor the rest of the music. The sounds are vast and gorgeous, carrying the same sense of submersion I’ve previously described in this chapter. If the music signifies interiority, how does that tie into its context? Unlike the anthems of Against Me!, “Boy 1904” is not typically played over screaming crowds of people slamming into one another. There are no lyrics to shout back. It doesn’t ask for movement—it doesn’t ask for anything. Whether you listen at a distance or listen deeply, the choice is yours. Speaking for myself, the context in which “Boy 1904” tends to play is when

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I’m getting lost in my own mind. That’s how I listened to it when I was sixteen and that’s how I listen to it now. Even if I’m out in the world—at school, on a train, going for a walk—I can listen to it to help bring me deeper inside myself when I want to escape, to be submerged, to slip away into a space where I can feel like I belong. But how can such interiority possess any political meaning much less effect meaningful political change? * ** What worries me about submersion is that it seems to be only in my mind, only temporary. As I move through the world of the real, I can’t hope to remain in such a state. When people look at me they will make judgments, assumptions, all related to my appearance and my gender presentation. Maybe ambient music is the only place where I can feel free of these judgments and imposed assumptions—the only place where I can assume agency without fear. Maybe that feeling of submersion is something I can only carry in my mind, in those sounds. But in the world that I must manage myself in, that ideal is not something I can reach. Being trans is fucking hard. It’s hard enough to even hold something like that in your mind, to acknowledge that reality to yourself. It’s hard enough to ask yourself why you’ve felt like a total fraud for so long and understand what the answer means. It’s hard enough to let yourself be alone with that knowledge. It’s another thing to consider how hard it will be to tell other people that you’re trans, or how hard it will be to make sure they use your correct pronouns and your chosen name without them lashing out at you. It’s another thing to consider the possibility that being visibly trans makes you vulnerable to employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and other forms of violence. How can submersion be extrapolated into the real world?

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Submersion is a profound interior state, disconnected from the social realm, yet an incubator for profound social change. Perhaps the interiority provoked by ambient music can serve as a preface, something that leads into practices of externalization. Oliveros understood the potential for such action in her own listening practices, something observed by Kerry O’Brien in a New Yorker piece commemorating Oliveros’s death. O’Brien writes that Oliveros’s meditative exercises “shouldn’t be mistaken for escapism or disengagement,”10 quoting her as saying: “Listening is directing attention to what is heard, gathering meaning, interpreting and deciding on action.”11 Ambient music is, by genre convention, designed for interiority, but that interiority can become a place where one is able to engage in this kind of listening. It can become a place to affirm an inner truth or experience and bring it out into the world. It can remain a destination for escape, at least for a moment, until you are ready to go out into the harsh light of the world again. Knowing I was trans came with the realization that I didn’t want to keep this part of me locked away in my mind. It was a part of me that surfaced through introspection, through listening deeply to myself, but it was one that I had to externalize: coming out, transitioning, letting the people I love understand who I am while connecting with other people who are like me. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that ambient music helped me reach a point in my life where I felt more able to realize my inner truth. Even now the imaginary landscapes of ambient music provide an escape from the social world that presents me with boundaries that must be navigated. To let myself be submerged, if only for a moment, produces, however illusorily, a vision of freedom. And it might only be a dream, but it is the landscape of a dream that I can go to as long as I have this music. * ** Maybe that is how ambient music and submersion are both inherently political, aspiring toward some form of social justice where

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freedom to interiority and intimacy really exist, really matter: ambient music, as it does for me, sustains and nourishes inner life when it feels like the outside world is not a safe place to be. It helps one live through moments when it feels like the surface you present to the world isn’t the one that matches who you are. It can help you when you are caught in the flow of slower change, changes that maybe only you can see. It can bring you to interior states that you discover need to be externalized. It can help you be calm, or brave. It can help you see beauty in a brutal life. It can caress you as you cry, and it can make the loneliness of the closet, or the loneliness beyond it, feel easier to bear. It can help you sleep, gather your strength, and when you’re ready you can go out into the world and be as you are. This world makes the mere fact of being queer/trans an undeniable weight. It is not enough that your personal is political—your personhood is made political. And when the supporters of fascism, transphobia, and queerphobia are dead set on erasing queer and trans people from art, from politics, from public life, whatever you can use to sustain yourself is imbued with political significance. In those quiet moments of doubt where we feel the most vulnerable or the most alone, weighed down by the stress of having our existence be a topic of debate, whatever gets us through that moment has political meaning. And we must hold on to what makes us resilient. We must hold on to what helps us be brave, or calm, or what helps us find the catharsis to escape from numbness and nihilism. We must hold on to what helps us be here and be seen. Because we are not going away. We will be listened to. That is what ambient music means to me—it is a tool for resilience. I cannot speak to what it means for everyone else, and I cannot speak to what other queer/trans people find their resilience in. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way about ambient music. But even if I am, I know that I’ve found something in it that I have

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always needed—sounds that can sustain me. Ambient music is an ocean I can dive into whenever I need to. It is a sonic sanctuary where briefly, fleetingly, the weight can be lifted until I have the strength to carry it a little further. It is the sound of identity becoming true to itself through queer resilience and resistance.

Endnotes 1. Eno, liner notes to Ambient 1. 2. Al Jazeera English, “One on One.” 3. See Toop, “Lost in Space.” 4. To read Oliveros’s account in her own words, please refer to Roots of the Moment, 14–15. 5. Oliveros, Roots, 14–15. 6. “About Deep Listening.” 7. Oliveros, Sonic Meditations, 2. 8. Devlin, “The Emergent Ambience.” 9. Devlin, “The Emergent Ambience.” 10. O’Brien, “Listening as Activism.” 11. Oliveros qtd. in O’Brien, “Listening as Activism.”

Works Cited “8 Female Musicians Talk About the Power of Political Songs.” Elle. December 12, 2016. http://bit.ly/RMElle. “About Deep Listening.” The Centre for Deep Listening at Rensselaer. Accessed April 30, 2019. https://www.deeplistening.rpi.edu/about-deep-listening/. Against Me. “True Trans Soul Rebel.” Track 2 on Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Total Treble, 2014. Al Jazeera English. “One on One – Brian Eno.” Brian Eno interviewed by Riz Khan. YouTube video, 24:46. June 4, 2011. https://youtu.be/glxrJRcTVyE. Aphex Twin. Selected Ambient Works Vol. II. Warp, WARPCD21, 1994. Barwick, Julianna. “The Magic Place.” Track 3 on The Magic Place, Asthmatic Kitty Records, AKR081, 2011, compact disc. Deep Listening Band. Deep Listening. New Albion, NA 022, 1989. Deerhunter. Cryptograms. Kranky, KRANK 104, 2007, compact disc.

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Devlin, Ross. “The Emergent Ambience of Christina Vantzou.” Bandcamp Daily. April 13, 2018. http://bit.ly/RMDevlin. Eno, Brian. Ambient 1 (Music for Airports). EG, AMB001, 1978. ———. Discreet Music. EG, EGSC 303, 1975. Jónsi & Alex. “Boy 1904.” Track 5 on Riceboy Sleeps, Parlophone, 2009, compact disc. O’Brien, Kerry. “Listening as Activism: The ‘Sonic Meditations’ of Pauline Oliveros.” The New Yorker. December 9, 2016. http://bit.ly/RMOBrien. Oliveros, Pauline. Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice. New York: Deep Listening Publications, 2005. ———. The Roots of the Moment. New York: Drogue Press, 1998. ———. Sonic Meditations. Sharon, VT: Smith Publications, 1971. Toop, David. “Lost in Space.” Originally published in The Face (March 1994), and available online at http://bit.ly/RMAphex. Accessed May 22, 2019. Vantzou, Christina. “No. 4 String Quartet.” Track 6 from No. 4. Kranky, 2018. WNYC. “Julianna Barwick, The One-Woman Choir.” YouTube video, 3:50. February 12, 2010. https://youtu.be/ABzkVhqGDIY.

3 Rebellion Musics: The Reel Multiracial Jazz Archive Way Out West

Josslyn Luckett “I seek the divinity of outcasts, the richness of rebels . . . ”1 If there is a perception among East Coast jazz critics and scholars, as Anthony Macías has lamented, “that other than 1950s white cool jazz, nothing of real importance happened in California,” popular jazz documentary films have gone a long way to frame and fortify this myth.2 Think back for a moment to the California of Bruce Weber’s seductive, Oscar-nominated documentary, Let’s Get Lost (1988), to the endless shots of Chet Baker cruising in a convertible along the Santa Monica coastline, his muted horn mixed so seamlessly with the sound of the swaying palm trees. And with the miles of archival footage in/of Jazz (2001) by Ken Burns, how much of it went west of Kansas City, in spite of the opening lines by Wynton Marsalis declaring that jazz “objectifies America”? One repair strategy that Macías campaigned for was to launch a California Composer Laureate position. He advocated for Gerald Wilson to be its first recipient, because in his view, Wilson’s “fusion of African American, Mexican, and other Latin musical traditions links us to the history of our racially rich, ethnically diverse state.” My recent research joins

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similar efforts against erasure by scholars like Macías, Gaye Theresa Johnson, Daniel Widener, Steven Isoardi, and Deborah Wong, who not only document and celebrate the transformative legacies of the musical innovators on the West Coast, they frequently emphasize the cross-racial collaborations and social justice commitments of many of these Black, Latinx and Asian American musicians. Through my own exploration of a rebellious group of multiracial independent filmmakers who trained at UCLA in the early 1970s, I landed on an audiovisual archive of West Coast musicians, swinging from jazz to taiko to ranchera ballads to peyote chants, that produced constant surprises and dazzling displays of sonic solidarity. The focus of this essay will be to explore two of the most consistently featured composers/ensembles of this UCLA filmography—Horace Tapscott and his Arkestra and Dan and June Kuramoto in the early days of Hiroshima—and how the film projects they cocreated with emerging Black and Asian American filmmakers in the 1970s produced a counter media archive that insists: let’s not get lost. This archive challenges us instead to remember the fullness of the collaborations and contributions of more of the regions and people of this country to this music that continues to surprise, energize and transform communities of performers and listeners. Let us consider one such community circa 1978 at the first annual two-day Watts Towers Jazz Festival. Horace Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra was the headlining act, along with two other celebrated artists associated with the L.A. jazz scene, bassist Henry Franklin and saxophonist Frank Morgan. One could easily stop here and dig into the careers of these three underappreciated giants, but after seeing a poster of the festival recently I was most intrigued by the fourth headliner on the bill: the band Hiroshima. The out, activist Arkestra and the pre-Arista debut, Hiroshima on the same bill, in Watts, in 1978? Wow.

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Now, full disclosure, at the time of the concert, I was in elementary school and living in Irvine, California. We’d moved there from Los Angeles in the early 1970s for my psychologist father’s job at the counseling center at UCI. Pops might occasionally pack us in the car to drive back up to L.A. for things like the Playboy Jazz Fest (on one such occasion, I got to see Jaco flip on stage with Weather Report!), but he wasn’t exactly hep enough, in the loop enough, or possibly even interested enough to make the O.C./L.A. commute for the Arkestra in Watts. Pops was a serious, if fairly mainstream, jazz fan with an enormous vinyl collection: Miles? Yes. CTI folk? For sure. Nancy and Cannonball? He couldn’t get enough. And that first, distinctive, self-titled Hiroshima LP with the mask on the cover . . . that was definitely in his O.C. rotation. Pops, to my knowledge, did not own any Tapscott records, doubtful he had any Frank Morgan, and though he definitely had the Hugh Masekela joints that Henry Franklin grooved on circa “Grazing in the Grass,” he would not have been up on Franklin’s collaborations with John Carter and Bobby Bradford. I say all this to suggest that decades later, long after moving back to Los Angeles in the 1990s and coming to Tapscott on my own (sitting as close to him and Maestro Higgins at the packed World Stage in Leimert Park as often as I could) my brain at first could not conceive of Horace and Hiroshima sharing the Watts Towers Jazz Fest Stage in the 1970s. But now, after years of researching a group of film students who showed up to UCLA in the decade after the Watts Rebellion as part of a pilot Ethno-Communications program (1969-1973), this festival line up makes perfect sense. In fact, by 1978, Tapscott’s Arkestra, along with Dan and June Kuramoto from Hiroshima, had contributed music, composed original scores, and/ or appeared in nearly ten film projects by these UCLA filmmakers.3 This parallel development of Tapscott and the Kuramotos almost becoming “in-house” composers for the Black and Asian American

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filmmakers trained at UCLA is reason enough to reconsider the recent film scholarship on the UCLA filmmakers that frequently focuses on only one community of colour at a time versus a more relational approach to their filmographies.

An early Ethno-Communications location shooting course with students Larry Clark (far right), Eddie Wong (hooded sweatshirt), Steve Tatsukawa, Davoud Ismaili (black hat), Prof John Young (black glasses) and Teaching Assistant David Garcia (center). Photo: Robert A. Nakamura, 1971 / Visual Communications Photographic Archive

The trailblazing group of Black independent filmmakers who came out of UCLA beginning at the time of the EthnoCommunications program are now most frequently referred to as the “L.A. Rebellion” filmmakers. In 2011, the UCLA Film Archive celebrated this group by launching a retrospective of their work called, “L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema.” Led by Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, the Archive followed this program with an award-winning anthology of scholarly essays about the filmmakers, and eventually they released a 3-disc DVD Anthology making many of the early works of these filmmakers widely available for the first time. On the accompanying UCLA Film Archive webpage, “The Story of the L.A.

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Rebellion,” they describe the arrival of the filmmakers to campus as follows: In the late 1960s, in the aftermath of the Watts Uprising and against the backdrop of the continuing Civil Rights Movement and the escalating Vietnam War, a group of African and African American students entered the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, as part of an Ethno-Communications initiative designed to be responsive to communities of color (also including Asian, Chicano and Native American Communities). Now referred to as the “L.A. Rebellion,” these mostly unheralded artists created a unique cinematic landscape, as—over the course of two decades—students arrived, mentored one another and passed the torch to the next group.

The filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion include directors such as Charles Burnett, Haile Gerima, Julie Dash, Alile Sharon Larkin, Larry Clark, Barbara McCullough, Zeinabu irene Davis, and Billy Woodberry. While I stand in awe and gratitude for the scope and power of this archival/restoration/revitalization project, my own Ethnic Studies/Third World Solidarity/UC Berkeley training was ever so slightly challenged by the parenthetical nod to the other filmmakers of colour. What was this Ethno program? Who were these other filmmakers of colour and what kinds of films did they make? What would happen if we took them out of the parenthesis and put their work in conversation with the Black film students? Turning to an earlier round of scholarship on the Black filmmakers, by Clyde Taylor (who first named the group the L.A. Rebellion in 1986), Ntongela Masilela (who called them the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers) and Toni Cade Bambara (who dubbed them the Black Insurgents), it was interesting to see that even though all of them contextualized the decidedly political film work of the Afrodiasporic UCLA group within the framework of the new cinemas

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from Latin America, Africa and Asia, only Bambara mentioned that they were part of a multiracial film program. In her essay, “Reading the Signs, Empowering the Eye: Daughters of the Dust and the

Steve Tatsukawa, Rufus Howard, Eddie Wong (behind camera), and Larry Clark. Photo: Robert A. Nakamura, 1971 / Visual Communications Photographic Archive.

Black Independent Film Movement,” Bambara even named several of the Chicana/o and Asian American filmmakers associated with the program and importantly offered up the name of the program: Ethno-Communications. The Ethno-Communications Program was a short-lived but extremely generative initiative headed by UCLA’s first African American film professor, Elyseo Taylor, who in 1969 assembled a group of Asian American, Chicana/o, American Indian and Black student activists to first form a “Media Urban Crisis Committee” (the students called themselves the MUCCs and sometimes, “The Mother Muccers!”). The committee demanded that the university recruit more students of colour to the film school, hire more faculty of colour, and they collectively insisted on and created new film department curriculum relevant to their intellectual, cre-

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ative, and political concerns. Two of the courses Elyseo Taylor first taught as a result of this organizing, “Film and Social Change,” and “History of African, Asian and Latin American Film,” are still offered at UCLA today, 50 years later. It makes sense that Bambara, firmly associated with women of colour activism and literature movements, would highlight the multiracial dimensions of this training program.4 In her analysis of the Black Insurgents’ work, culminating with Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, Bambara admits that these films demand a more rigorous engagement from the audience, “whose ear and eye have been conditioned by habits of viewing industry fare;” these Black independent projects ask “that the spectator honor multiple perspectives rather than depend on the ‘official’ story offered by a hero . . . .” The reward for this new engagement is “an empowered eye.”5 Following from Bambara, the rich reward of honoring the multiple perspectives of the wider group of filmmakers of colour out of the Ethno program has been the discovery of just how jazz-heavy that wider filmography is. The range of multiracial rebellion musics documented in this work ought to have made Ken Burns shudder and completely rethink his PBS opus, especially because just about all of the footage I’ll mention below had been shot well before he edited Jazz. Not counting the array of composers of colour who provided non-diegetic music for these UCLA filmmaker’s projects, you can see here rare and dazzling on-camera performance footage of L.A.-born jazz pianist Eddie Cano in work by Esperanza Vasquez and Moctesuma Esparza (La Raza: Celebration, 1975); Bay Areabased avant-garde composers Jon Jang and Betty Wong in Eddie Wong’s work (The Sound of Pleasure, 1990); Oregon born, Kaw/ Creek saxophonist, Jim Pepper, in work by Sandra Sunrising Osawa and Yasu Osawa (Pepper’s Pow Wow, 1997); and the incompara-

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ble, Central Avenue jazz legend, composer/educator/vocalist and trumpetist, Clora Bryant in Zeinabu irene Davis’s feature documentary (Trumpetistically, Clora Bryant, 1989). While Davis was shooting her documentary on Bryant, she also asked her to contribute original music for her narrative short, Cycles (1989). This practice of the UCLA filmmakers approaching local and usually activist oriented musicians/composers for scoring purposes frequently led to other circumstances where the same musicians were then asked to appear on camera as interview subjects or as the entire focus of the film, as was the case with both Horace Tapscott and Hiroshima, whose projects with UCLA filmmakers I will turn to now.6

Relational Filmographies of Rebellion Larry Clark’s work with Horace Tapscott is epic. His award-winning narrative feature, Passing Through (1977) is considered one of the greatest films ever made about the lives of multigenerational, working jazz musicians who insist on respect for their creativity and labor by any means necessary. Inspired by Horace Tapscott, and featuring his music with the Arkestra, one of the most stunning aspects of the film is the opening sequence of Tapscott on camera, playing piano, fingers flying across the keys and across a screen which is itself dancing with colour. Much work has been done on this film and the collaborations between Clark and Tapscott including a workshop of the film at Georgia State University, under the direction of Professor Alessandra Raengo and the liquid blackness research collective there.7 Less work has been focused on Clark’s first project with Tapscott, As Above, So Below (1973), considered by Allyson Field to be one of “more politically radical films of the L.A. Rebellion.” Larry Clark knew he wanted original music for his “really raw” student film about urban guerilla warfare, and a friend suggested he

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speak to Horace Tapscott, whose Arkestra he had seen playing in the community. Clark approached Tapscott about suggestions for musicians, and Clark remembers Tapscott chewing him out, “in a very nice way” about not directly asking him to do the score: “‘You don’t have to look outside of your community to find musicians that would like to score your film.’ That was how Screen shot from As Above, So Below (directed by Larry Clark, 1973). I met Horace. I knew he was right, absolutely right.”8 It is clear from the black and white, opening exterior shots of the film, where we follow protagonist, Jita Hadi (Nathaniel Taylor), shot gun in hand, advancing toward some unseen danger and accompanied musically by the most haunting, moaning flute solo, that Tapscott and his Arkestra were absolutely right to score the film. In a grand cinematic gesture, Clark switches from black and white to colour film as he flashes back to 1945 to show Jita Hadi as a child in Chicago. Clark deftly weaves the Tapscott score with sound design that includes a radio report the boy hears one morning announcing the release of Japanese internment camp inmates. Clark shows the young Jita Hadi at his kitchen table, head Screen shot from As Above, So Below (directed by Larry Clark, 1973). in hands, moisture in his eyes (saddened by the radio announcement or simply sleepy?). Moments later when the child is walking through his dilapidated neighborhood, we hear braided into Tapscott’s score a 1968 report to the House Un-American Activities Committee called “Guerrilla Warfare

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Advocates in U.S.” When I spoke with Clark about this layered sound design, especially the Japanese internment camp announcement, he described how impactful it was to see his Ethno-Communications classmate, Robert Nakamura’s first student film, Manzanar (1971), about the concentration camp where as a six-year-old boy he and his family had been imprisoned. Clark’s move in As Above, So Below to film a roughly six-year-old Jita Hadi visibly moved by the report of Japanese men, women, and children in the camps suddenly takes on a greater resonance. Clark also shared in our conversation that Nakamura and other film school classmates were organizing to repeal Title II of the “Internal Security Act of 1950,” dubbed the “Concentration Camp Law” which granted the government in times of “emergency” the power of “preventive detention.” Clark wanted to draw attention to how threats against Black radicals of the 1960s and 1970s paralleled what had happened less than thirty years earlier to Japanese Americans, including the families of his Ethno classmates. What better composer than Tapscott—whose own community of politically engaged musicians, men and women, “warriors all,” were consistenly under siege by the LAPD and other state agents—to understand this message of urgency and the need for solidarity.9 It is his subtle and skillful score here that first alerts us to pay attention to sound in this visually striking and politically provocative film. The other layers of “accompaniment” musical and otherwise, can be better appreciated when a more comprehensive understanding of the wider Ethno filmography and third world student activism surrounding Clark during his time at UCLA is undertaken.

Cameras, Koto Strings, and Cocreation Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble accompanied by George Lipsitz have described the act of accompaniment as an undervalued musical practice: “Accompaniment is an intrinsic part of improvisa-

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tion. In music, accompaniment makes the parts stronger than the whole . . . . We have been taught to elevate individual virtuosity over accompaniment . . . .”10 These notions of accompaniment serve our understanding of individual film projects and the way the musicians, cast, crew accompany each other in the cocreation of one particular project, but we can see how these notions also parallel the framework Bambara earlier suggested regarding listening for multiple voices and not just one virtuosic soloist or official story from a hero. Robert Nakamura, Duane Kubo, Eddie Wong and Alan Ohashi started the Asian American media arts organization, Visual Communications in 1970, while training and making their first films at UCLA in the Ethno-Communications program. At the height of the Vietnam War, these rebellious media makers intentionally and defiantly took on the acronym of the enemy Viet Cong, “VC,” and now approaching its 50th anniversary, the organization maintains its dedication to “the honest and accurate portrayals of Asian Pacific American peoples . . . understanding that media and the arts are important vehicles to organize and empower communities [and] build connections between peoples and generations . . . .”11 During this same early 1970s moment, June Kuramoto, Dan Kuramoto, and Johnny Mori were improvising with Koto, saxophone and Taiko drum, cocreating the groove universe of the band that would eventually be called Hiroshima. The Kuramotos were eventually invited to score one of the early VC productions, a short biographical documentary on Fresno-born poet, Lawson Inada. I Told You So (1974) beautifully reflects the innerworkings of accompaniment and improvisation of VC’s creative players; it also reflects a wider California-style sonic and visual stirring of Black, Chicana/o and Asian American cultural practices. In the film we learn about Lawson Inada’s life growing up in a Chicana/o neigh-

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borhood in Fresno, inspired deeply by African American music, especially jazz and blues, and working part time in his uncle’s fish market.12 Early in the film, we see Inada walk through the streets of downtown Fresno, clicking his heels to the funky cut of June and Dan’s original score, reciting the film’s namesake poem, “I Told You So.” Clave rhythms dance against Inada’s own repeated refrain: oh yes, I told you so, oh yes. While our eyes and ears are fixed on the virtuosic poet, there is no way to not consider his accompaniment, how the score, the shots, the strutting and the cutting, impact our engagement with the poem. That funky bassline and saxophone are themselves a mix of June Kuramoto’s Crenshaw District and Dan Kuramoto’s Boyle

Screen shot from I Told You So (directed by Alan Kondo, 1974).

Heights East L.A. musical inheritance.13 Then you have the percussive recitation of Inada’s poem (not to mention his percussive, vato strut). And Alan Kondo is cutting the hell out of that downtown Fresno footage.14 When I interviewed Dan Kuramoto, he described his and June’s excitement and anxiety scoring their first film project: Kondo said don’t worry about it—it’s all about Lawson’s poetry that has its own rhythm. It was like jamming. There was not a lot of time . . . so you can’t overthink it. Lawson has his own cadence. Kondo’s a really good editor, so the way it’s cut has its own cadence . . . . I give all the credit to Kondo cause that was his vision. And he was very supportive considering June and I sat there [exasperated/ confused look]. June said, “why’d you agree

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to do this?!” Because her thing is the standard . . . if you don’t feel like your standard is going to be here [gestures high] you have no business. Cause that’s how June does everything. She don’t play a note ‘til it’s cold blooded.

Speaking with Alan Kondo about the collaboration with Dan and June on several films, he said: “We understood each other, and we had the same goal. And each one [project] we were working on became stronger from the collaboration. That was a wonderful thing.”15 Kondo also said that the choice to feature Inada was important, not just because he was a “first,” but because of the fact that he was deeply connected to other communities of colour.16 In the following year, VC decided to turn their focus and camera on June and Dan themselves, for a short documentary on the early days of Hiroshima: Cruisin’ J-Town (1975). The footage of the musicians rehearsing and performing in Little Tokyo is intercut with insightful and deeply moving interviews with the young musicians. June Kuramoto, born in Japan and raised in a predominantly African American area of L.A., is known as one of the first traditionally trained classical Kotoists to dare to improvise on the instrument. As we watch June tune and set up her Koto (pulling strings with gloves that look more like a falconer’s than a musician’s), we listen to her musical and political journey, from receiving her instrument from her grandmother to the first time she was invited to “jam”: I think it’s a reflection of my personal search . . . I’ve come from a long life of confusion, identity crisis. I didn’t know what I really was . . . and then at the same time the Asian American movement began happening. And I knew that the Japanese music is a large part of me, but yet, it didn’t express the true experiences of here. In the beginning it was just . . . I was invited to jam, “Just bring down the Koto and let’s jam.” And I was very uptight because I

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never improvised before and I was very inhibited. But then once we started working then it just fit in. I guess everyone was kind of excited ‘cause it was something different and then it was definitely something Asian.

With the adjustments of her Koto complete, just at the moment when she speaks of this musical (and) identity synthesis, she strums a fully in-tune scale.

Screen shots from Cruisin’ J-Town (directed by Duane Kubo, 1975).

Later in the piece, Dan Kuramoto is interviewed about the experience of playing for multiracial audiences. The lines are also worth transcribing here: And the thing that’s really gratifying is we’ll play concerts and like Chicanos or whites, blacks, come up to us afterward, Native Americans, whoever, and they come and they say, “You know, I was really glad to see you cause it really changed my perspective of who and what Asian American people really are. I feel like I can relate to you now and before it was just a bunch of stereotypes running through my mind and I could never get next to any Asian American brothers and sisters. But now it’s different. Now that I see you and see what you’re trying to say, I feel like this (holds two fingers tight together) with you.” And that makes it all worthwhile.

Though these statements are made several years before the ‘78 festival at the Watts Towers, one can imagine a similar reception for Hiroshima taking the same stage as the Arkestra.

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Now that I see you . . . a “seeing” made possible by the sharing of live music.

Pass It On In Barbara McCullough’s feature documentary, Horace Tapscott: Musical Griot (2017), we learn that music was so important to Horace Tapscott’s family; the first day he and his mother arrived in Los Angeles from Houston Texas, his mother drove Horace to meet his new music teacher before taking them to their new home. In this phenomenal portrait, organized around a central Griot-like accounting by Horace of his own life story, we hear about the vibrant music scene in the clubs along Central Avenue. More importantly we hear tales of the music teachers who cultivated all that vibrancy and musical genius. Tapscott explains, “The idea was to teach you music so the music would preserve itself through the ages.” While legendary private instructors Lloyd Reese and Alma Hightower are mentioned by Tapscott, McCullough devotes the greatest time in her film to honoring Tapscott’s high school teacher and lifelong mentor, Samuel Rodney Browne. Many scholars of African American and Mexican American music in Los Angeles have nodded to Browne and the staggering roll call of musicians who studied and jammed on that Jefferson bandstand; McCullough’s emphasis on Browne in Musical Griot, breathes new life into his legacy.17 So, as Tapscott moves from autobiography to praise song for Samuel Browne, his praise is punctuated with accompanying archival photos of Browne, standing with luminaries such as W.C. Handy and William Grant Still and standing even more proudly with his Jefferson High School students. McCullough then cuts to footage of yet another of Browne’s students, a young Don Cherry, who, seated in a room with Tapscott and a third older gentleman, testifies: “The center of what was happening in creativity in Los Angeles

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was happening from Jefferson High.” When the camera pans to Cherry’s right it becomes clear that the older gentleman is Browne himself. He beams with joy sitting between his returning students and remembering the feeling of playing music with them. Traveling and arranging professional concerts for his students Browne explains, “That’s what made us all feel so good . . . it gave a student a chance to realize his self-worth . . . and that was so important at that time.” Cherry also mentions how Tapscott had become a soloist and arranger in Browne’s band by the time Cherry arrived. What you notice watching the scene is that the “lean griot” (as Kamau Daáood referred to him) lays back and lets his guests, Browne and Cherry, hold court; still, whenever McCullough points her camera on him, Tapscott looks overwhelmed with love for his mentor and his comrade. Elsewhere in the film Tapscott recalls of Browne, “He told me once, ‘Horace, I’ll give you this knowledge if you promise to pass it on.’ There’s so much knowledge that he has and he gave it all to this community.” With that we have an even deeper appreciation of all that Tapscott went on to create and give to his community, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (PAPA), the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA), and so much important film music. i am Horace Tapscott my fingers are dancing grassroots i do not fit in form, i create form my ears are radar charting the whispers of my ancestors i seek the divinity in outcasts, the richness of rebels . . .18

The richness of L.A. Rebellion filmmakers who participated with Barbara McCullough in the filming and recording of the Tapscott documentary, as listed in the credits from Charles Burnett and Julie

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Dash to Bernard Nicolas and Billy Woodberry, is staggering, not to mention the presence of Indian American filmmaker (and UCLA classmate of McCullough’s) Monona Wali, and other now veteran sound engineers, J T Takagi and George Leong.19 Julie Dash’s later collaborator on Daughters of the Dust, cinematographer and director, Arthur Jafa, is there too in the credits, as an assistant cameraman of a solo piano recital of Tapscott’s filmed at UCLA (shots of which certainly conjure the opening of Passing Through). Jafa, who studied with Haile Gerima at Howard University, often speaks of the need for Black cinema to reach the level of Black music. What I think about every time I hear Jafa and others mention this idea relates back to Browne and Tapscott . . . transmission is crucial and it takes the commitment of generations. Film for anyone is a new medium compared to music. And for people of colour in the U.S. one of the most important jumping off places for that process of transmission began with the Ethno-Communications Program at UCLA. So many of the Rebellion and Ethno alums went on to teach for decades at major institutions.20 I find it fascinating then that as soon as the Ethno students got hold of cameras in school, so many of the filmmakers sought out musicians in the community to learn from and pay tribute. As Dan Kuramoto suggests in the clip from Cruisin’ J-Town, the very presence of these musicians on stage demonstrating their musical excellence, epic creativity, and capacity to lovingly accompany one another, is itself a lesson (now that I see you . . . it really changed my perspective of who and what Asian American people really are . . . ). Capturing these moments on film as this work discussed above does, preserves these lessons through the ages. Oh, how I wish my Pops would have driven the family back up to Watts in 1978 to see that Arkestra/Hiroshima gig. Still, I know that his love for this music instilled in me the seeking ears and eyes that led me to this research, that led me to these films and filmmakers

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and the expansive scope of music and musicians their filmography honors. These films and the teaching musicians inside of them empower ears and eyes to more fully appreciate the multiracial spectrum of the rebel and rebellion musics way out west. And like the knowledge Mr. Browne gave to Horace Tapscott and countless West Coast musicians, this too must be passed on.

Endnotes 1. The epigram is from Daáood, “PAPA, the Lean Griot.” 2. Macias, “California’s Composer Laureate,” 44. 3. Haile Gerima’s short student film, Hour Glass (1971) includes the Elaine Brown, Horace Tapscott collaboration, “Seize the Time,” and Gerima’s second UCLA film, Child of Resistance (1972), is scored by a band called the People’s Quintet, featuring long time Arkestra member, bassist Roberto Miranda. Horace Tapscott wrote an original score for Larry Clark’s student film, As Above, So Below (1973) and Tapscott appears on camera as well as providing music for Clark’s first feature film, Passing Through (1977). Barbara McCullough began filming footage of Tapscott for her feature documentary, Horace Tapscott: Musical Griot (2017) as early as 1976 when she started UCLA film school. June and Dan Kuramoto first created original film music for Visual Communications’s short film portrait of poet Lawson Inada, I Told You So (1973) directed by Alan Kondo, they also scored Eddie Wong’s short, Pieces of a Dream (1974) and Robert Nakamura’s Wataridori: Birds of Passage (1974), and they were featured on camera with their band Hiroshima in Duane Kubo’s documentary, Cruisin’ J-Town (1974). 4. Remember for instance Bambara’s sisters of the yam, corn, plantain, and rice in her first novel, The Salt Eaters and her foundational introduction to This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. 5. Toni Cade Bambara, “Reading the Signs, Empowering the Eye: Daughters of the Dust and the Black Independent Cinema Movement,” 132-133. 6. A similar situation to this pattern happens with singer/songwriter, “Chicana First Lady of Song,” Carmen Moreno, who with her rebellious ranchera music appears on camera in the Esperanza Vasquez co-directed episode of La Raza: Celebration (a McGraw Hill Broadcasting Company public affairs series produced and written by Moctesuma Esparza, 1975) and then Sylvia Morales invites Moreno to write an original score for her trailblazing short, Chicana (1979). Also, Barbara McCullough selected a composition of Don Cherry’s for her short experimental film, Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979) and then interviewed him on camera for her Tapscott documentary, Horace Tapscott: Musical Griot. Cherry interestingly also turns up in Sandra Osawa’s documentary, Pepper’s Pow Wow as he was a frequent collaborator with Pepper and her film ends with Cherry speaking at Pepper’s memorial service. 7. See Widener’s chapter “Notes from the Underground: Free Jazz and the Black Power

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in South Los Angeles” in his book Black Arts West (pp.117–52) for an excellent discussion of Passing Through. See also the liquid blackness study, “Passing Through: The Art of the Jazz Ensemble.” 8. Isoardi, The Dark Tree, 155. 9. See Isoardi, The Dark Tree, 89–90. 10. Fischlin, Heble, and Lipsitz, The Fierce Urgency of Now, 235–36. 11. Excerpted from the Visual Communications mission statement on their organization’s webpage, https://vcmedia.org/mission-history. 12. For more about the roots of Inada’s connection to jazz, see the section called “Jazz” in his book Legends from Camp, 55–91. 13. See Kurashige, The Shifting Grounds of Race, for more on post war relocation of Japanese Americans leaving concentration camps and settling in Black and Chicano neighborhoods around the L.A. area. 14. Alan Kondo was a lone Japanese Canadian member of Visual Communications. Again, when the film was first made in 1974, VC did not list their individual names or credits. I consider this part of the wider Ethno filmography even with Kondo, who did not attend UCLA, as director, because the other UCLA Ethno/VC filmmakers cocreated this project with Kondo. 15. Alan Kondo, personal interview with author, August 11, 2016. 16. In 1971, Inada was the first Asian American poet to publish a sole author collection at a major New York house. See Inada, Before the War: Poems as They Happened. Kondo speaks about Inada’s connection to the Chicana/o and African American community also in Arthur Dong’s VC documentary, Claiming a Voice. 17. See Macías, Mexican American Mojo and Daniel Widener, Black Arts West. 18. Daáood, “PAPA, the Lean Griot.” 19. Monona Wali is the only non-Black UCLA film student included in the UCLA Film Archive’s list of L.A. Rebellion filmmakers: https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/la-rebellion/ monona-wali. 20. Haile Gerima, Julie Dash, and Zeinabu irene Davis for instance still currently teach (at Howard, Spelman, and UCSD respectively) as does Sylvia Morales at Loyola Marymount University. Robert Nakamura and Duane Kubo both recently retired (from UCLA and De Anza College), and Barbara McCullough also just retired from teaching and chairing the Visual Effects Department at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Alile Sharon Larkin recently retired from the L.A. Unified School District where for over 25 years she used media making as a teaching tool and won multiple Video-in-the-Classroom awards from KLCS-TV. Respect too must be paid to the alternative spaces of learning and longstanding media institutions created by Ethno alum, like Ben Caldwell’s community media lab, Kaos Network in L.A.’s Leimert Park, Sandy and Yasu Osawa’s Upstream Productions in Seattle, and of course Visual Communications which will celebrate fifty years as a community media arts organization in 2020.

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Works Cited Bambara, Toni Cade. “Reading the Signs, Empowering the Eye: Daughters of the Dust and the Black Independent Cinema Movement.” In Black American Cinema, edited by Manthia Diawara. New York: Routledge, 1993. ———. The Salt Eaters. New York: Random House, 1980. ———. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1983. Fischlin, Daniel, Ajay Heble, and George Lipsitz, The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. Daáood, Kamau. “PAPA, the Lean Griot.” In Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems of Kamau Daáood, PPP. San Francisco: City Lights, 2005. Kurashige, Scott. The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Inada, Lawson. Before the War: Poems as They Happened. New York: Morrow, 1971. ———. Legends from Camp. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1993. Isoardi, Steven. The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. liquid blackness. “Passing Through: The Politics of the Jazz Ensemble.” Accessed May 25, 2019. http://liquidblackness.com/passing-through/. Macías, Anthony. “California’s Composer Laureate: Gerald Wilson, Jazz Music, and BlackMexican Cultural Connections.” Boom: A Journal of California, 3, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 34–51. ———. Mexican American Mojo: Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles, 1935-1968. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Widener, Daniel. “Notes from the Underground: Free Jazz and the Black Power in South Los Angeles.” In Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

4 Singing for Justice: Oromo Women’s Musical Responses to Violence

Leila Qashu1

Ateetee, jaajaboo luka yoo jaabatellee maltuu siin morka. Ana Dhananii, jaajaboo lukaa yoo jaabatellee maltuu siin morka. Ana waamanii, jaajaboo lokaa yoo jaabatellee maltu siin moorka . . . illiillii . . . Waa maalii? Waa maalii? Fooyyee naa seete jetti? Ammaa waal-gaayyee . . . illiillii jedhe.

Let us become strong with Ateetee and stand to struggle (against others) with you.2 I was whipped,3 let us become strong, who will compete with you? They call me, to stand strong with them; who will compete with you? . . . illiilii . . . What is it? What is it? What is the solution for me? All (the women) come together . . . illiilii.

(Verses from an ateetee song sung by Gobane Ogeto, Langano, Oromia, Ethiopia, October 2010)

LQ: Ateetee jechuun maal jechuudha?

LQ: What is ateetee?

AS: Ateetee jechuun seeraa aadaa keenyattiiffi dubarttiin yookaan waa geexaan jechuun yoo waa xuqqaan kan mirga ofii arga ttu jechaadha

AS: In our culture, ateetee is a custom in which our women claim their rights if they are abused.

(Interview with Amariich Shubee, Langano, Oromia, Ethiopia, October 29, 2010)

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One day several years ago I arrived in a town in the Oromo region in Southern Ethiopia to find that a large ateetee dispute resolution ceremony had just taken place in the centre of town. Within hours of my arrival, I heard about the quarrel through friends and local government workers. A shop owner, Hailu, had verbally insulted a woman from a nearby district while they were arguing in his shop. The insulted woman, Ayantu, told the women’s council (saddeetta) members who then deemed the offense serious enough to merit the ateetee ritual process.

Ateetee women singing at a ceremony in Gaataa, Ethiopia. © Leila Qashu, 2012.

Two days later, Ayantu took her siinqee (spiritual stick) and put on the bonkoo (cowhide cape), ululated and then announced to the other women in her area: “Not only did he insult me. He insulted all women” (Ana bichaa hin arabsine, gaanyaa hunda arabee). Other women quickly gathered and began walking towards Hailu’s home, ululating, singing and calling for other women to come. The group of women stopped near homesteads to gather all the women possible. Most of the women who joined the group had heard the news and were ready. On the way they sang insults directed towards the offender. Though most Oromo songs are executed as call and response or antiphony, with two choirs and leaders responding, insults are

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sung in slight heterophony or a loose unison. Initially, most songs feel heterophonic because the women join in the song at different moments, and because of all the participatory divergences in the music that include ululations, yelled interjections, or, while gathering, women yelling out to bring other women over to the group. Over time the song and the voices become more solid in unison. Ateetee is the only time women can sing public insults in this manner. Slowly, as they walked, the women grew in numbers. They arrived at Hailu’s house, singing insults. When the women arrived at his door, Hailu fled in fear. The large group of women was terrifying for him as he was from a different ethnic group unaccustomed to the process. Over the course of two days, some two hundred women gathered, singing in front of his house. This is usual for an ateetee ceremony, which requires that any able-married woman demonstrate her public support of the woman who has been offended. Since Hailu’s shop was in town, according to the bystanders, large numbers of women took up all the space in the road between his shop and the one across the street. The women stayed there all day and slept overnight in houses and spaces offered to them by locals. While waiting for Hailu’s response, as is usual with ateetee, they gathered in a circle, singing in antiphony, with one choir and leader (afolee) responding to another. At the same time, they move counter clockwise, in time with the duple metre that is also the pulse of the music.4 Pairs of women would go into the centre of the circle to dance facing each other, playing (tabbachuu) until one would stop, usually laughing. Male elders sought Hailu out in the place to which he had fled. In general, elders take part in all ateetee ceremonies because offenders are often nervous, apprehensive, or querulous about the process. Hailu agreed to participate in the ceremony and provide what was needed to solve the dispute with the women. He did

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Ateetee women singing at a ceremony in Gaataa, Ethiopia. © Leila Qashu, 2012.

* ** This story derives from an ateetee ritual, a restorative justice process, through which Arsi Oromo5 women sing for justice in their communities. Arsi women respond to acts of violence with this sung ritual that is triggered when a woman has been abused or insulted. The process entails women traveling to the offender’s house singing insults, followed by prayers in front of the offender’s house until a reconciliation ceremony is held. Women’s council (saddeetta) members and elders negotiate during the ritual. The offender must offer a cow as compensation, and, at the end of the ceremony, the

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women bless the offender. Oromo women use music in different ways to fight for their rights and necessary social changes, examples of which show how women’s localized musical content and social justice intent can be adapted to very different contexts. These include: ateetee for dispute resolution when a woman has been abused; the use of everyday songs and poetry as a way to comment on quotidian life; playing and singing songs among women as an expression of collective and individual identity; and, on a national and international level, politically charged popular songs that contest persecution, widespread violence against women, oppressive power structures, and traditional gender norms. Women from local to national and international levels sing in different contexts and styles that contest a history of discrimination, ethnic and gender persecutions, landgrabs, and violence rooted in colonization. As we will see in this essay, Oromo women and their music have always played an essential part in these struggles and have used their musical culture to enact critique, resistance, and advocacy. In Arsi Oromo society, ateetee is the only dispute resolution ritual organized and conducted by women, and it is the only one that is sung. Arsi women hold a particular spiritual status in society. They are spiritually sacred, blessed, and highly respected (wayyuu), and they define their rights in terms of honour and respect: if someone disrespects a woman with insults or abuse, it is a moral and legal violation of women’s honour/respect6 so women can call for an ateetee ceremony to restore this honour/respect. For Arsi women, individual rights also represent the rights of the collective group. When one woman is insulted, she calls all women to join her for the ateetee ritual. By singing through a restorative justice process, ateetee allows women to come to an actual agreement with the offender, rather than only demonstrating resistance. Arsi women and

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girls wish to sustain these practices in the face of opposition from mainstream religions, political pressure, and the urbanization that goes hand in hand with the rejection of traditional practices like ateetee in Ethiopia. The ateetee process demonstrates a culturally specific example of how music deployed to achieve a specific social function can produce tangible results, not just for individuals, but for larger social groupings. Ateetee songs are seen as prayers by most. The two main categories of ateetee address dispute resolution and the prayers for rains when the rainy season has not yet begun or when there is a drought. They can also be used more generally for problems such as sickness, conception and childbirth, and war. In dispute resolution ceremonies, the women pray for resolution and prosperity. The ateetee texts and melodies vary from prayer to prayer, but they are all recognizable as part of the ateetee repertoire. Ateetee songs have the following common attributes: the texts refer to Ateetee, which depending on the individual, can be a female spirit; the ritual process itself; or a generalized concept with a range of interpretations. Ateetee rhythm is in duple metre, which corresponds to the dance movement of the women. If the women are not dancing, they clap their hands to the same duple pulse. The rhythm is also flexible, which facilitates adjustments when words have more or fewer syllables; and the songs are antiphonal involving two choirs, each with a leader who responds to the other during the song, though this is characteristic of all Arsi group songs. Ateetee melodies are in set a comfortable singing range using pentatonics with portamentos, thus allowing women to slide between approximate pitches—and the songs are frequently punctuated by ululations. Though ateetee songs follow a very recognizable structure, they allow for individual and group improvisations in order to facilitate the task of singing together. The ateetee repertoires are in a stan-

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dardized form, with verses that can be chosen from a larger repertoire of common verses. Though there are variations from region to region, the antiphonal and repetitive nature of the songs allows women to quickly join the group singing. If women are from very different areas, there tends to be much more repetition. In those situations, the women can stay on one or two verses for several minutes or more. Ateetee’s social power goes beyond Arsi Oromo women’s involvement in justice in the Ethiopian context, and models how their performative actions can be applied to contexts and policy-making in other communities, including North American societies. Music is intertwined with other mechanisms of social life and is thus an inevitable and necessary factor in effecting change. Singing as justice, singing to achieve restorative justice, challenges assumptions, perceptions, and normalized ways of enacting the struggle to achieve equitable rights for women. In the North American context, understanding alternative justice models in other countries, let alone in communities that have similar approaches to producing collective resolutions to injustice, as is the case in Indigenous communities throughout the Americas, provides ample examples of how to make space for aggrieved women to express complaints about violations and abuses of rights and to achieve heightened respect for their truths. Abuse towards Oromo women often involves domestic or other types of gender-based violence. In ongoing fieldwork, I have documented many accounts of different types of violence against Oromo women. James C. Scott has argued that traditional expressive forms, like communal singing, can serve as powerful “weapons of the weak”7 creating opportunities for subaltern resistances to oppression and abuse where other forms of political contestation do not exist.

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But ateetee is more than resistance: it is a powerful dispute resolution process that is effective precisely because the sung ritual itself constitutes justice. In and through the process, the victim’s truth is shown to be valued, and her truth is taken on by an entire community that sings it into reality. For those willing to participate, Indigenous or restorative dispute resolution processes8 are often more successful because they are relational—many members of the community, including the victim and offender, are involved in the resolution process. They have an overall focus on peacemaking and reconciliation rather than on punishment or retribution, as is more common in Western contexts. Singing ateetee is a means of working with the offender as a community and restoring respect individually and collectively to women in Arsi society. Ateetee is also a model of “doing” ritual as justice, a means to respond directly to violence women face in a largely patriarchal culture. Gender roles are changing, but in rural Arsi society, the patriarchal social structure still leads to acts of violence, varying from less obvious forms in the traditional men’s control of the land, livestock, and much of the family assets; to preference for girls to marry young and remain in the domestic sphere; and, in extreme cases, exercising control or directing harsh language or physical violence towards women. Although they have access to the Ethiopian court system, many Oromo women have told me they do not have the same support in the formal legal and court system as they do with the traditional ateetee process. In court proceedings women do not have evident community support through the formal legal process; and they must wait an excessively long time for a judgment that does not resolve the tensions between the opposing parties. The court system is also largely dominated by men, lacking the support of women that ateetee provides. And singing is an essential part of the ateetee process, where it has no place in the court system. Little wonder then that the way in which women resolve many disputes in a culturally

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appropriate manner that is effective in terms of its outcomes, is first through the act of singing, then through group negotiations where the case of a single woman becomes a stand-in for all women living in the community. This is a telling example of how music, song, and ritual are part of the legal fabric that is essential to dispute resolution in the Oromo region. Ritual singing, music, and other types of artistic expression are all ways to enact law as an expression of community-constituted values that, in turn, achieve concrete and localized expressions of social justice. For Oromo women, singing is a part of the everyday but is also profoundly connected to important rites of passage and, as I have already argued, to the assertion of rights, and the fight for justice and socio-cultural changes to women’s lives. Over the years I have spent in their company, Oromo women continue to tell me their stories, to sing their songs, and to teach me about their culture so as to share it with others. My first trip to Ethiopia was in late fall of 2002. When I was working on my master’s degree, I went to stay with an Arsi Oromo family in the rural area by Langano Lake in the Rift Valley. It was a very dry, dusty year, with a low corn production, and less grass near the lakes. Families had to take cattle further away to find grazing areas. Though it was a difficult year, family and clan members helped each other when needed. At the time, the road running south between the lakes was quiet, with only the occasional bus or truck. I welcomed the hot and dry climate of the area dotted with acacia trees, as it reminded me of the desert where I grew up. Kids ran around, families worked on the corn harvest, and while the men and children herded cattle and did other types of field labour, women assisted with the work, and did many of the daily chores like getting water, washing clothes, taking grain to the grinding mill, cleaning, and cooking. Though it is constantly changing, Arsi society is patrilineal and

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patrilocal, with women living within their husbands’ clans and identity and property being transferred along the hereditary lines of their husbands’ clans. For women, this means they do not have ownership of land and livestock, with the exception of a smaller amount attributed as a dowry. In the case of a divorce, children remain with their father and the women do not have the right to land ownership. While lineage and clan are at the core of society, gender roles are slowly changing. Even as women are strong leaders in traditional rural farm life, they are also studying, working, and changing previous perceptions of who they are and what they do. Many women do indeed face systemic challenges specifically tied to their gender. But they have also had an active, historical role not only as spiritual leaders but in managing their own women’s council that they can apply to when needed. What is consistent throughout the many ways in which they contribute to life in the Oromo is how women’s roles are articulated and enacted through singing. In that first stay in 2002, I spent several months learning the Oromo language, participating in everyday life, and eventually attending weddings and working on their music. I have fond memories of those first days learning the language, sitting next to Gobane, the great Aunt, as she tirelessly passed me grains of corn, one at a time until I could successfully count to 100 in Oromo without a mistake. Gobane sang songs for me that punctuated different parts of her day: working with the corn, rocking a baby to sleep, assisting with cooking, and just generally passing time. I remember being in the huts with Llamo, my Oromo mother, listening to stories or hearing her sing to her youngest late at night. I shared a small hut with Amina, my Oromo sister, who now has a degree and is working with me on my current project. These are connections with individuals, family, women, community members that weave us together, linking us so we stay connected.

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Music is a vital part of the everyday life of women in Oromo communities, but it is also a critical component of society more generally. Women, men, and youths have distinct social responsibilities and musical repertoires, and they sing songs to mark important events and rites of passage in their lives, as I found with wedding rituals. I have attended and participated in numerous weddings, including going on horseback with the men who “take” the bride while singing (hamoomota) and sitting with the women and the bride as they sing and cry the farewell song (baye-bayee). Wedding rituals reflect these gender- and age-related social structures and are a means by which these groups construct and enunciate their identities and values. Challenging cultural norms is one important aspect of the way in which music functions. As I will describe further, during the Oromo protests, a few female Oromo singers recorded new music videos dressed in men’s clothes and in the musical style of geerarsa, praise poetry usually sung by men who have killed a wild animal or a human. After years of living in and working with different Arsi Oromo communities and spending time with women in different contexts, I began to focus more on Oromo women’s daily struggles and the way they use and have been using music for social justice. Arsi society, as I have stated, is male-dominated, patrilineal, and patrilocal, with land passing between men in the same family and clan. Over time, I often heard women talk with frustration about their daily lives and the challenges and struggles they faced—yet I also observed how they managed to continue their lives with optimism and strength of spirit. With repeated, lengthy stays, I gradually began to know many more women than those in my immediate family and I participated in many women’s activities and events, resulting in enhanced trust between myself and women in the wider community. In conversations, women began asking me to work with them on their music and culture. They told me stories about the ateetee cer-

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emonies, sang the prayers, and demonstrated the ritual. Spending time with so many strong women led me to further question the position, voice, and sounds of women in a male-dominated society—where women are excluded from male spaces, activities, and political decisions, yet have their own mechanisms and spaces for addressing inequity and injustice. Some of the cooking fireside discussions alone with women ranged from accounts of ateetee participation to disturbing stories of forced female circumcision, abduction for marriage, and discontent with the relationship with their husbands or with the fact their husband had taken or was taking on another wife (or wives). All of these intimate discussions not only intensified my understanding of women’s lives and the way music weaves through the everyday, but also drew us closer together through the sharing of experiences, which gave me access to privileged cultural practices involving musicking as a means of achieving specific redress for injustices in local communities. I had always been interested in the arts as they are used for justice and meaningful social change—how the expressive arts, particularly music, are harnessed and used by people to unite in solidarity, to raise social consciousness, and to effect positive transformations where they are needed. And in the Oromo, I found a particularly resonant example of a culture where the active force of music was being applied by women as a means to achieve results, assert rights, and contest injustices.

Singing and Playing Music for Healing, Social Repair, and Social Change We were sitting around the fire preparing dinner when Ayantuu volunteered the story of her forced marriage. Walking to school one day, she was violently abducted by a group of men, carried on horseback to another village, raped by her husband-to-be, forci-

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bly circumcised, and then married. In another discussion, a seventeen-year-old woman told me how she was violently taken away from her home in a marriage her father had arranged without her knowledge. Girls have told me stories of being as young as ten and married off as a third wife to a man old enough to be a grandfather. The pattern is often the same: abduction, rape, thus marriage, kitaana (genital cutting), and time in oppressive conditions before an escape. One young woman had to wait seven months before she was able to flee successfully. I have heard many variations on stories similar to these young women’s, and butaa (marriage by abduction) and other forms of forced marriage persist in rural areas of Oromia, Ethiopia. But forced marriage is unfortunately only one of many challenges young women face—in addition to butaa, physical and emotional abuse, domestic violence, difficulties accessing education, being trapped in problematic relationships for economic reasons, unfair exercise of property rights, and general concern for rights with regard to autonomy and livelihood are all part of a women’s life experience in this part of the world. And I have heard over many years numerous accounts of violence against women in this region. In spite of the violence, Arsi girls and women reclaim their rights by singing, dancing, and telling stories.9 Though there are traditional musical cultural practices and repertoires that are shared and relatively standardized in Arsi society, there are also improvised variations in the ways that young women react to problems, in how they express themselves through the arts, and in the ways they re-interpret and contest traditional practices. In 2017, I began a collaborative project with young Arsi women, some of whom were survivors of abduction marriages and forced genital cutting (FGM). The project grew out of a series of open discussions I had had over several years with young Arsi women about their daily lives, their expressive outputs, their expectations, their hopes, and

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their interests in collaborative research processes that address their realities in meaningful ways. These conversations were inspired by discourses on participatory and collaborative research, the arts, and improvisation.10

Workshop on GoPro Cameras, with Amina, project assistant in Worqaa, Ethiopia. © Leila Qashu, 2017.

We have been using collaborative video methodologies to work with this younger generation of Oromo women (approximately 14-18-years of age) in order to examine the challenges that young Arsi women face, and their strategies in confronting these challenges—especially in the use of the expressive arts to question, resist, and change cultural practices that denied them their rights to be free of abuse, to control their own bodies, and to be treated equitably within a patrilineal culture. A small team of local Oromo project assistants and coordinators, including several survivors of forced abduction marriages, are also working for the project. The project is foundationally improvisational, as every step of the project design is extemporized, interpreted, and built upon by the youth participants/co-producers of the project. Though they do have many expressive forms of communication at their disposal, young Arsi women are not often asked to self-reflect, to express themselves, nor are

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their perspectives or opinions usually heard publicly. We give the young women cameras to film whatever they like and instruct them on how to use them in workshops. The groups of young women have been coming back with videos containing traditional songs and other videos with poetry and dramas about abduction marriage (butaa) and female genital cutting (kitaana). For the songs, they often choose the repertoires that they know, such as songs sung at weddings, or ateetee, which they learn by watching their mothers. In the feedback sessions and the video screenings many of the young women have been vocal about the project, the progress in their creations, and in the changes they would like to see in their communities. They’ve enjoyed showing the videos to their peers, laughing with them as they watch the videos, and using the videos as an opportunity to talk about both their culture and problematic issues in their communities.

Feedback session with project collaborators in Worqaa, Ethiopia. © Leila Qashu, 2017.

For these young women, laughing and sharing stories and songs creates community, while healing through community-supported, improvised dialogue and creating space to discuss social changes. I have seen the remarkable changes in some of the participants as

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they play through song and drama and sing their mothers’ cultural songs. Though different, both the women’s ateetee ritual and the young women’s collaborative arts-based project use expressive arts to enact respect for women’s rights and honour, and for the value of their stories within the wider community. While ateetee is a specific community justice process to remind offenders of women’s need to have their rights respected, in the girls’ video collaborations, singing, playing, and acting out specifically gendered issues leads to broader discussions of social repair and social change. These local, improvisatory, community expressive arts-based mechanisms have existed for years as a means of responding to violence by men against women in these communities. Listening to the women’s voices, offering truths, songs, and other expressions on their own terms, allows for a better understanding of relationality, community, and the empowered roles girls and women enact via the arts they use to tell their stories and in doing so changes the conditions under which they live.

A History of Colonization and Discrimination In order to better understand the struggles of Oromo women and the ways they’ve used music for change in times of protest, I need to offer a brief historical and socio-political framework of the Oromo struggle generally. Starting with early historical accounts, the Oromo were negatively stereotyped11 and were regularly referred to in racist terms. In the late 19th century, when the Ethiopian Negus (King) Menelik II sought to expand the Abyssinian kingdom, his soldiers engaged in fierce battles with the Oromo, killing entire villages, and eventually winning and taking over traditional territories.12 When the Oromo gradually began to be incorporated into the Ethiopian empire and state, they faced political, social, and cultural discrimination and persecution that has continued to this day. Discriminatory attitudes persist towards the Oromo—over the years

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when obtaining research permits to work in Ethiopia, for example, I have been asked many times why I would want to work with the Oromo.

Top and bottom: Screening at Allendu Elementary, Worqaa, Ethiopia. © Leila Qashu, 2019.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Oromo nationalist and cultural movement became a means for Oromo scholars to write about culture as a key component of national identity.13 Music has always been a means of both identity affirmation and protest in Oromo traditional and contemporary musicking. There has always been localized musical resistance in the region exemplified in the example of praise song lyrics (geerarsaa) that mock authorities or condemn

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injustices, while vaunting exploits involving the killing of wild animals or other men. The Arffan Qallo and the Biftuu Ganamo musical groups in the 1960s sang in Oromo and joined the Matcha Tulama intellectual protests that were seeking to advance Oromo political rights. After the Ethiopian revolution of 1974, during the beginning of the Derg, the new military regime, new freedoms generated a cultural resistance14 and renaissance15 that led to the creation of six cultural and musical groups representing six Oromo subgroups from different zones.16 These groups came together for the Oromo Cultural Show in Addis Ababa in 1977.17 Soon after, the military regime deemed these representations dangerous and began killing and imprisoning performers leading many others to flee to live in exile. In 1991, after the fall of the Derg, Meles Zenawi and ethnic Tigrayans (leader of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front) created the EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) government. Since 1995 a new constitution has been in place, establishing ethnic federalism, in which each ethnic region has a degree of autonomy and the right to teach and use their mother tongue in governance. These political and cultural freedoms have enabled many Oromo and non-Oromo authors to talk more openly about Oromo concerns. But these discussions are often scrutinized or moderated by government representatives. Discrimination and inequities, imprisonments, and human rights abuses continued, making the general rights situation generally untenable for the Oromo.18 The 1995 Ethiopian Constitution includes a section on freedom of expression, despite the fact that Ethiopia has been accused of human rights violations involving censorship for many years. Preceding the 2010 and 2015 elections, media programs were cut off in order to censor public criticism of the government—and when speech

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and songs were not directly censored, people often self-censored so as to not end up in prison.19 The Ethiopia Radio and Television Agency issued a music-related directive in 2006 that contained 17 articles intended to control and monitor the music played by the station. Of these articles, number 4(3) states that “the songs that our station transmits shall not go against the honor and reputation of children, youth, women and nation, nationalities and peoples of Ethiopia and have the effect of instigating dissent.”20 Being able to censor anything that is seen as generally “instigating dissent” contradicts the basic tenets of freedom of speech, but at the same time, these articles stipulating control at the radio station could have been used to prosecute anyone defying them. It is difficult to know if there were specific trials evoking this censorship, since many of the human rights abuses remain undocumented. While Gezahegen Teji Bahirtas only wrote about Amharic speaking radio stations, Shawn Mollenhauer’s research and informants’ testimonies give the impression that the Afaan Oromo censorship may have been even more severe.21 An Amnesty International report in 2014 also documented the government’s hostility towards open displays of Oromo cultural heritage dating back to 2010.22 Some of the government arrests and human rights abuses targeted include those wearing green and red clothes, colours that supported the Oromo national movement; those participating in Waaqeffanannaa (Oromo belief—literally followers of Waaqa [God]) ceremonies; those selling/ wearing traditional Oromo clothes; and those singing and writing about Oromo history and historic abuses towards Oromo. Amnesty interviewed a number of musician refugee claimants who had specifically been arrested or threatened with death. Starting in 2016, many musicians were held indefinitely without trial under the government’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP).23 This brief history sets the background for the protests that involved the substantial use of music and led to a public political

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change. Beginning in April 2014, Arsi Oromo students and concerned community residents began protesting a government development project that aimed to expand Addis Ababa, the capital, by appropriating individual Oromo farmlands. The Ethiopian government quickly repressed these protests. After an outcry from international communities, the expansion project was dropped. But in 2015, peaceful protests gained momentum in retaliation for foreign investment projects that relied on land-grabs; the historically discriminatory and unfair treatment to the Oromo; and response to an overwhelming mono-ethnic party’s majority representation in government. The peaceful protests were met with severe repression by the government, which used live ammunition that led to deaths, as well as arrests and jailings. According to the June 15, 2016 Human Rights Watch report, around 400 people died in the Oromo protests,24 before another 23 perished in a fire at Qilinto Prison, where many protesters were held.25 On August 21, 2016, while running over the finish line at the Olympics, Oromo long distance runner Feyisa Lelisa crossed his wrists above his head, imitating shackled hands as a symbolic protest against the Ethiopian government’s persecution of the Oromo and imprisonment of protesters. This created a media sensation that made a wider, international audience familiar with the Ethiopian situation. The symbol also came to Ethiopia, where Oromo protesters defied authorities by using the gesture. Though protests had been increasing in momentum abroad, Lelisa’s gesture offered hope for those protesting inside and outside the country. All of these protests, deaths, and jailings culminated in a tragic incident on October 2, 2016. At the Oromo Irreecha (spiritual thanksgiving ceremony) in Bishoftu, according to protester reports and the media, the military used tear gas and bullets to quell protest chanting, though officials and other attendees claimed no shots were fired. A stampede resulted in further deaths.26 This incident provoked yet more protests

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and damage to factory properties on encroached lands. Messages about the organization and aftermath of protests, including arrests, were circulated on social media and in Oromo media broadcast from abroad. On October 6, 2016, Ethiopia declared a six-month State of Emergency. The State of Emergency included, but was not limited to, censorship and prohibition of social media, as it could be used to contact “outside forces”; watching specific TV channels based out of the country; organizing/participating in protests; making political gestures, such as the crossed wrists gesture initiated by Feyisa Lilesa; and communicating political messages without permission.27 Though music was not directly mentioned, these rules applied because unauthorized political gestures or messages were illegal. Musicians who supported the Oromo protesters sang lyrics or made gestures that were political, including singing geerarsa (praise poetry for a hero returning from killing another person or a wild animal), singing about those killed in the protests, and showing images of groups of protesters or close-ups of wounded protesters. These prohibitions were only part of the government’s use of the State of Emergency to enforce broader restrictions and detentions of people voicing disagreement with the State. In a call for intervention and change, between 2014 and 2017, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch published multiple articles, reports, briefs and calls based on extensive interviews and field work that documented many human rights abuses of the Oromo. The reports called for a stop of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, excessive use of force and torture, and inhumane detention. They also called for freedom of expression and intervention on the part of international communities and various international human rights commissions.28 After a rocky government transition, including the resignation of the Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, on April 2, 2018, Dr. Abiy Ahmed Ali, of both Oromo and Amhara heritage, was elected Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Since his election, though

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conflict and protests are still present and there continue to be many vociferous critics of the government, Abiy has focused on key reforms, including opening up communication channels and expanding freedom of expression, which has led to there being many more public Oromo TV and radio channels available in Ethiopia and, in turn, a wider dissemination of Oromo musicking tied to struggles for social justice.

Oromo Women Singing in the Media for Change During the 2014–18 protests, many young Oromo singers began releasing protest songs on YouTube, which led to exiled and emigrant Oromos abroad becoming interested in “new Oromo musics” (sirba Oromo harra’aa). On a local level, music representations have been around for years in the form of traditional musics performed in cultural festivals and celebrations for local communities, and in the form of more codified and rehearsed traditional music presentations in cultural shows and competitions at both the regional and national levels. I have attended many productions of these different types of musical presentations in various areas of Oromia.29 At one such gathering, advertised as a tourism event, the only people attending were locals and participants from different Arsi regions. I will not describe this event in detail here, but will mention that it ended up being more of a government-sanctioned space for cultural representation than a tourism event, in a country where independent cultural expressions have historically been repressed. In offering a limited space for cultural expression, the government controls and monitors what is being expressed, while also offering the illusion of freedom of expression. In 2015 and 2016, during the Oromo protests, a number of popular Oromo musical artists were imprisoned for their protest

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lyrics and the graphic images in their videos of protesters that were killed or maimed. Musical iterations were central to the protests at both the local and international levels through different interlocutors, including popular music artists, local youth protesters, ritual ateetee women protesting, Ireecha pan-Oromo prayer ceremonies, and regional protests. Though young men (qeeroo) tended to lead the protests, women were also involved as singers and supporters, standing up to take rights, being imprisoned and tortured for their views, and challenging censure and authority. The most famous Oromo female singers in the protests were Ilfinesh Qannoo, Hawwi Tazaraa and Seenaa Solomon. In 2010, Ilfinesh was the first to record a video singing a traditionally male geerarsa (praise poetry) style protest song. She was imprisoned and tortured and had to flee the country. In 2015 and 2016, Seenaa Solomon and Hawwi Tazaraa each recorded protest videos that also used geerarsa and other warrior singing styles.30 In their respective videos, they describe traditional territories being taken while singing about Oromia as “our country” (Oromiya biyyaa keenyaa . . . )—that is the country of the Oromo that has been taken [from us]. The musical lyrics are intermixed with pictures of the protests, maps of the Oromiya federal district, and scenes of the singers in military attire, as with Seenaa Solomon in “Akamiin diina gombiisu?” (“How can an enemy be killed?”; see the image and song below). These young women were all arrested and tortured along with their fellow male singers who had their own protest songs. Not only was this form of protest extraordinarily courageous because it directly resisted government censorship that was culminating in the arrests and torture of artists at the time, but also because geerarsa-style singing is traditionally a male genre that boasts of killing. These gender-defiant female singers’ videos were frowned upon by men and women defending traditional Oromo gender divisions. They did not approve of women singing these repertoires and, in

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the case of Seenaa Solomon, cross-dressing as a man in the videos. For the young women singing in these videos, they saw it as their right to sing as they liked and for their music to be an active part of the battle against the government. The following is the song Ka’ii Qeeroo, “Qeeroo, Stand up,” by Hawwi Tazaraa.31 Mee ka’ee geeraruu ree quqaa garaa ? Koo jiru haafura bahaafadhu ree? Dubaartin hin geeraratuu enyuu jedhee murteesse dubaarti?

Can I speak my internal feelings out loud (geeraru)? Can I sing out although women are never supposed to sing (geeraru)? Who said women are not supposed to sing (geeraru)?

haadha dhiiraa goota fiinna deesse, yoo inni jiiksee loluu hin ilaaltu teesse (2*) Ilaa mee tiyyaa ijoollee yas ijoollee biyyaa kootti Kan hundeen oromootti finfinnee haandhurri Koo biyyaa Tufaa Munaatti

It is women who gave birth to the brave, male hero When he fights for his rights she doesn’t stay quiet (*2) Look at my motherland, guys That is originally Oromo Finifinne, our historical center, the land of Tufa Muna32

Diini hirribaa dhabee akka biyyaa abbaa dhabee, Oromiyaa nu dhalluuf waaliitti laalabee waaliitti laalabee (2*)

The enemies get no sleep, using Oromo land as if it had no owners. They plan to take our Oromiya; by telling each other (2*)

Finfinnee robsii cabbii, sulutaa robsii cab- bii, sabaata robsii cabbii, dukaam robsii cabbii, laga xafoo robsii cabbii, buraayyuu robsii cabbii, hoolota robsii cabbii, abbaan biyyaa oromoo dha irraa nu ansii rabbii abbaan biyyaa oromummaa irraa nu ansii rabbii (2*)

Finfinne, let it rain ice, Sululta let it rain ice Sabata let it rain ice, Dukem let it rain ice, LagaTafo letit rain ice, Holota let it rain ice (say no to any others except the Oromo for this place; this is the land taken from Oromo farmers) It is Oromo who belongs to the land, please help us God (2*)

Master plan keessan nutti feenu hin feenu lafa akaakooyyoo kiyyaa, lafa akkaakayyuu kiyyaa, hin mumuriina dhiissa, hin tuqiina dhiissa, goota akaakillee keenya loon keenyatu irraa ciissaa loon keenya irraa ciissaa (2*).

We never want your master plan on our ancestors’ land We also will never let you touch even its pieces. Don’t touch its prices. The land our fathers’ cattle lay on, it’s the land our cattle can be heard on (2*).

(2*) indicates the line is repeated twice.

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As can be seen in this song, Tazaraa begins by supporting the qeeroo (male youth) fighters’ movement, in geerarsa style, while acknowledging that traditionally women should not sing this style. But as she asserts, it is women who gave birth to these fighters/protesters, which justifies her right to fight through a geerarsa song. She also addresses the need for the Oromo to battle for their rights and for their lands, which have been taken. “Finfinne,” which she also references, is the Oromo word for Addis Ababa, and it is located on what are historically Oromo lands. At the end of the song, she reemphasizes the fact that most Oromo did not want the expansion of Addis Ababa into Oromo traditional lands. In “How can an enemy be killed?,” Seenaa Solomon begins the video to the song on horseback, like a warrior going to war against another group—or like a hero leading the clan into battle. She alternates the position of the warrior with scenes of traditional Oromo dances and also sings in geerarsa style to the land, the motherland of the Oromo. This song is much more violent in its address, as she requests the expulsion of enemies from this motherland that should belong to the Oromo and talks about different ways to kill the enemy. Though it seems violent, it is also in the style of geerarsa to talk about killing the enemy since these were songs traditionally used to memorialize a battle or war. The song and images imitate preparation for battle with the singer holding her spear on horseback, preparing to go to battle with other men on horseback. This is a fight to take back the lands and to not allow the desecration of the Odaa tree (Sycamore), which is a sacred tree for the Oromo. Akamiin diina gombiisu?

How can an enemy be killed?

Qubaa nyaacha jiraadha (2*) Yoom anaa haara galaafadhee? Buuse baase maadalee dhibbeen koos itti caalee dhibbeen koos itti caalee (2*) Kan bultum odaan (2*)

I have been suffering with anger (2*) When can I get relief? Now aware, my illness is getting worse (2*) It is the Bultum’s Odda33 (2*)

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Dambiin hoo gosaa Kam yaa Dambii yaa maxxaantuu ishee sanyii daabeessaa Akkamin dhaltee odaa mataa gubbaa irraa teessa? Amma alaabee dha ciirree hundee dhan sii buqiissa Jajaabee kormaa yaase mataa irraa sii deemissisa mataa irraa sii deemissisa Amma sii irraa bobaasa

You parasite (dependents) who do not know where you come from (from unknown origin). You coward! How dare you sit up on the Odda, with no root? I can cut you down completely By calling the jajjabe [OLF’s soldiers] 34 to hit your head, let them go at your head.

Amma sii irraa bobaasa eyyee Nu dhagaahi haadho xiqoo siif himaana lammiin keetif sabni kee: turuus ni bilisommaa Kan barrii irraa ansee ilaali ilmaa ormaa takka olii takka gadii jireenyi ilmaa nama jedhii Mee dabaalli Mee dabaalli Mee

Yes, I can just let them go at you right now. You, my dear motherland, listen to what we tell you: although it is delayed, freedom will come soon for our citizens and ethnic group. Look at those, to whom time provided opportunity; Human lives have ups and downs. Say now and then

Halkaan guyyaa yaada halkaan guyyaa yaada gubaadhe keessaa kootti Kan lafa irraa harkiifame Kan lafa irraa harkiifame reefa obbollaa kootti (2*)

I’m thinking day and night and burning down inside It is my brother’s dead body which was rolled on the ground (2*)

Barrii darbaa ibsiinan tufiin nutti hamaate jirti (2*) Bakkatti isiin galchiina dhadannoo godhaatti (2*) Nu dhagaahi haadho xiqoo siif himaana lammiin keetif sabni Kee turuus ni bilisom- maa Kan barrii irraa ansee kuno ilaali ilmaa ormaa takka olii takka gadii jireenyi ilmaa nama jedhii Mee dabaalli Mee dabaalli Mee

Our patience leads us to be ignorant (2*) We shall let you go back to your origin (2*) You, my dear motherland, listen to what we tell you Although it is delayed, freedom will come soon for our citizens and ethnic group. Look at those, to whom time provided opportunity. Human lives have ups and downs. Say now and then

Agaada . . . balaa sheeti adeemi asii balleessi asii Amma isheen maal nu seete Agaada . . . balaa sheeti adeemi asii balleessi asii Amma isheen maal nu seete?

Steam . . . Leave, cactus [Tigray political leaders], if the time comes you will be pushed out Steam . . . Leave, cactus; go away from here, how can you even consider us?

Akkamiin diina gombiissu? Rasaasan rasaasan diina gombiissu (2*) Akkamiin diina gombiissu? Rasaasan rasaasan diina gombiissu (4*)

How can an enemy be killed? . . . By bullet . . . by bullet . . . an enemy can be killed (2*) How can an enemy be killed? . . . An enemy can be killed by bullet (4*)

Oromoo ni obsaa kanumaaf obsiine obsiis dangaa qaba garaan nu fiinnine adeemi asii.

The Oromo are patient enough; that is why we are tolerant

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Amma isheen maal nu seete qeerroon Koo osoo lolee dhahee barbaadeessa Kan kutaate ka’ee diina akkamiin dhiissa adeemi asii Amma isheen maal nu seet.e Diimatee, diimaatus sibillii hin fiinninu ka’ii lolii oromoo meeshaan sii hin ciininuu adeemi asii. Amma isheen maal nu seete, deeman susukuu barsiisne millaa Koo diina argaan dheessuf barsiisu garaa Koo adeemi asii Amma isheen maal nu seete?

Patience has its limits; that’s why this situation is accelerating. How does cactus here see us if Qeeroo fight? If they stand up they will rush you from our land. You, my enemy, can no longer stay in my homeland. Oromo, stand up; get your weapons And fight for your freedom! Time favours you if you fight bravely How do they consider us?

Akkamiin diina gombiissu? Rasaasan rasaasan diina gombiissu (2*) Akkamiin diina gombiissu? Rasaasan rasaasan diina gombiissu (4*)

How can an enemy be killed? . . . By bullet . . . by bullet . . . an enemy can be killed (2*) How can an enemy be killed? . . . An enemy can be killed by bullet (4*)

Jabbaadhu qeerroo; Koo qabsoon; Kee itti haa fufuu jabbaatan lolaan maalee bilisni hin dhufu adeemi asii. Amma isheen maal nu seete yoo ilmii dhadaatu alaatti dubbaata. Ajeesse foon nyaata du’uuf isaa nyaata. Adeemi asii! Amma isheen maal nu seete?

Be strong my Qeeroo, keep fighting, be strong; with no fight there are no rights (no freedom with no war). Go away from here; how do you see us? When a son acts bravely, it sounds loudly. If you kill you can eat meat, if you are killed, the scavenger eats you. Go away from here! How can you even consider us?

Ergaa seechi nyaana yoomi nyaane foon maddii galmaa ga’uuf jira. Kan yaanne iddoo qabdii balleessi asii adeemi asii Amma isheen maal nu seete? Balleessi asii adeemi asii. Amma isheen maal nu seete? (2*)

We can eat them soon, we haven’t eaten the meat yet. We have a dream to realize. Let them leave here; they have nothing here . . . how can they consider us? Let them erode from here, let them go away. How do they consider us? (2*)

Akkamiin akkamin diina gombiissu? (4*) Rasaasan rasaasan diina gombiissu (4*)

How can an enemy be killed? (4*) An enemy can be killed by bullet (4*)

These examples all attest to the complicated web of politics, women’s rights, traditional values and local, national, and international representations involved in Oromo women using music in protest contexts. Further, there are many nuances to consider in these videos and the online representations associated with them. Some of these include the use of traditional Oromo culture associated with the love of the language, history, and arts, home and identity as part

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of Oromo nationalist discourses that project one Oromo nation—a national idea that never existed historically but had become so in the twenty-first century. That said, Oromo ethnicity, identity, and nationalism have been embedded for a long time in the politics of self-recognition, the struggle for autonomy, and protest that are part of a series of varied musical representations.

Top and bottom: Still images of Seenaa Solomon singing like a warrior in “Akkamiin Diina Gombisu.” © Yai Gullale Film Production, 2016.

The songs that inspired many youth protesters also have both traditional and new music characteristics. They include the use of synthesizers, computer-generated beats, and vocal styles with vibrato that are characteristic of a pan-Ethiopian popular music style. The geerarsa style, which I’ve already indicated has often been appropriated for use in protest songs, involves long phrases that

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are centered on a repeated melodic-rhythmic formula and that finish on repeated notes. Some singers then switch to a more upbeat call and response mode to which they dance. This is reminiscent of repertoires sung by youth in wedding rituals or the traditional group protest, war, and even cattle praising repertoires. Having musical and visual qualities that are recognizable in both traditional and popular music circles became a necessary way of reaching Oromo protesters and sympathizers of different socio-economic backgrounds and with varied knowledge of Oromo customs and traditions. Many youth in urban areas who have lived in assimilated conditions for years, and also many Oromo living in the diaspora, are not always aware of some of the cultural practices from their particular Oromo area. These musics and this musicking, disseminated across multiple media including online videos, created space for a pan-Oromo national and international identity that became a decisive force in the 2015–2016 protests. In addition to the creation and dissemination of these videos and the generalized outrage that resulted from musicians being imprisoned and tortured for their role in the protests, youth continued to sing traditional repertoires from their areas while also learning and singing the styles of traditional group repertoires from other Oromo areas. When I have observed groups of protesters, for example, they have often been in circles, jumping, in the style of Shewa or Raya Oromo cattle35 praising (faaruu loonii) and war preparation songs, an indicator that regional styles of song were crossing traditional boundaries in the service of political dissent. The audio files and music videos of these intra-regional protest songs were spread widely, in spite of the threat of arrest for having them in possession. In short, music has played an active role in generating some of the positive outcomes associated with the Oromo youth-initiat-

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ed protests, such as bringing international awareness towards the Oromo struggle, supporting and contributing songs and messages to the national protests, which in turn contributed to political change. As described in a Human Rights Watch report at the time, in spite of censorship and arrests, music was one of the media the government had significant trouble controlling, especially in how it mobilized students and made the general public aware of Oromo rights.36 As seen through these examples—rural and local to urban, national, and international—Oromo women in particular have found different ways to sing for their rights, and to achieve meaningful change and social justice for themselves. Women continue to fight for their rights in these varied ways, whether it be married women singing for justice in ateetee rituals, young women singing and playing as part of discussions around broader social and political change, or young women actively involving themselves in internationally disseminated music videos condemning oppressive politics that negatively impact Oromo women. Music understood in these specific cultural contexts is not only a mode of aesthetic expression, but a model of direct action that produces material results and needed changes for the women who use it in their ongoing struggles for social justice and equity.

Endnotes 1. I would like to thank the Oromo women and community members who have participated in and contributed to the projects in this article. This is for you. Thank you to Amina Araro and Tegenu Derersa for transcriptions and translations of the new music songs and to other Oromo colleagues and assistants for assistance with the other songs and research. I am also grateful for support from the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), Concordia University, University of Guelph, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). 2. The strength of ateetee helps women struggle against those who inflict abuse or other

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injustices on women. 3. Dhananii means, literally, to whip. Here it can be interpreted to mean that the singer was abused in some way. 4. See the following video clip I filmed at an ateetee ceremony in Dikki, Oromia: https:// vimeo.com/242384267. The video begins with insults, then the ateetee singing in a small circle, then larger circles. For a detailed description of this particular ceremony, see Qashu, “Singing as Justice.” 5. The Arsi are a subgroup of the Oromo ethnic group. See Qashu, “Singing as Justice” and “Toward an Understanding” for a more detailed analysis of ateetee. 6. For more on wayyuu and Arsi women’s respected status, see Kumsa, “The Siqqee Institution”; Østebø, “Respected Women” and Wayyuu; Qashu, “Toward an Understanding.” 7. See Scott, Domination and Weapons. 8. See Cayley, The Expanding Prison; Dembour and Kelly, Paths to International Justice; Lillies, “Circle Sentencing”; Downie and Llewellyn, “Relational Theory”; Napoleon, “Living Together”; and Zehr, Changing Lenses and The Little Book. 9. See Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments and Writing Women’s Worlds; Hussein, “The Functions of African Oral Arts”; Kumsa, “The Siqqee Institution”; and Qashu “Singing as Justice” and “Toward an Understanding.” 10. See Bloustien, “Play”; Caines, “Community Sound [e]Scapes”; de Lange and Mitchell, “Building a Future”; Miller, Little, and High, Going Public; Siddall and Waterman, “Introduction”; and Sillitoe, Indigenous Studies. 11. Ficquet, et al., “Les Peuples,” 55. 12. Gnamo, “Arsi Oromo.” 13. Kumsa, “The Siqqee Institution”; Jalata, Oromia. 14. Kumsa, “The Siqqee Institution.” 15. Jalata, Oromia. 16. Jalata, Oromia. 17. Kumsa, “The Siqqee Institution,” 157. 18. In 2014, Amnesty released an extensive report exposing the injustices. See Amnesty International, “Because I Am Oromo.” See also Human Rights Watch, “Ethiopia,” which published a recent article evaluating the unnecessary violence. 19. Mollenhauer, “Millions on the Margins.” 20. Bahirtas, Music Censorship, 28. 21. Mollenhauer, “Millions,” 165–66. 22. Amnesty International, "Ethiopia: 'Because I Am Oromo,'" 43-45. 23. Amnesty International, “Ethiopia: End of Counter-Terrorism Law.” 24. Human Rights Watch, “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown.’”

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25. BBC News, “Ethiopia Fire.” 26. Human Rights Watch, “‘Fuel on the Fire.’” 27. BBC News, “Seven Things.” 28. Amnesty International, “Ethiopia: After a Year”; Amnesty International, Ethiopia; Human Rights Watch, “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown.’” 29. See Qashu, “Staged Public Music” and “Toward an Understanding.” 30. See “Seenaa Solomon” or “‘Haati Dhiiraa Hin Boossee.’” See “Hawi Tezera.” 31. Transcriptions of these two songs by Amina Araro and translations by Tegenu Derersa. 32. Tufa Muna was a historic leader of an Oromo clan in Finfinne, before it became known as Addis Ababa. 33. Odaa is a Sycamore tree, and it is a sacred tree for the Oromo. Ceremonies are conducted under these trees, as they are seen as sites of blessings, fertility, and wisdom. 34. The OLF, the Oromo Liberation Front, is a political group for Oromo rights, and more radically, liberation and separation. It has been listed as a terrorist group by some governments (including the Ethiopian government) in recent years because of confrontational activism. But originally the group was one of the many ethnic political groups that worked towards throwing over the Derg, the military junta led by Mengistu Haile Mariam. In 2018, Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed participated in peace agreements with the OLF, which allowed for the return of fighters exiled from the country. 35. These are other Oromo subgroups. 36. Human Rights Watch, “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown.’”

Works Cited Abu-Lughod, Lila. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. ———. Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Amnesty International. “Ethiopa: ‘Because I Am Oromo’: Sweeping Repression in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia.” London: Amnesty International, 2014. http://bit.ly/Amnesty-1. ———. “Ethiopia: After a Year of Protests, Time to Address Grave Human Rights Concerns.” Amnesty International, November 9, 2016. http://bit.ly/Amnesty-2. ———. “Ethiopia: End of Counter-Terrorism Law to Persecute Dissenters and Opposition Members.” Amnesty International, June 2, 2016. http://bit.ly/Amnesty-3. Bahirtas, Gezahegen Teji. Music Censorship in Contemporary Ethiopia: The Case of Ethiopian Radio and FM Addis 97.1. Saarbrucken, Germany: VDM Verlag, 2009. BBC News. “Ethiopia Fire Kills 23 at Prison ‘Holding Oromo Protesters.’” BBC News, September 5, 2016. https://bbc.in/2MoIAh1. ———. “Seven Things Banned Under Ethiopia’s State of Emergency.” BBC News, October

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17, 2016. https://bbc.in/2H8scNq. Bloustien, Geraldine. “Play, Affect, and Participatory Video as a Reflexive Research Strategy.” In Handbook of Participatory Video, edited by E-J Milne, Claudia Mitchell, and Naydene de Lange, 115–30. Plymouth, U.K.: AltaMira Press, 2012. Caines, Rebecca. “Community Sound [e]Scapes: Improvising Bodies and Site/Space/ Place in New Media Audio Art.” In Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity, edited by Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman, 55–71. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. Cayley, David. The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives. Toronto: Anansi Press, 1998. de Lange, Naydene and Claudia Mitchell. “Building a future without gender violence: rural teachers and youth in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, leading community dialogue.” Gender and Education 26, no. 5 (2014): 584–99. Dembour, Marie-Bénédicte, and Tobias Kelly, eds. Paths to International Justice: Social and Legal Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Downie, Jocelyn and Jennifer Llewellyn. “Relational Theory and Health and Law Policy.” Health Law Journal (Special Edition) 193 (2008): 193–210. Ficquet, Éloi, Arnaud Kruczynski, François Piguet, and Hugo Ferran, “Les Peuples d’Éthiopie.” In L’Éthiope contemporaine, edited by Gérard Prunier, 37–88. Paris: Karthala, 2007. Gnamo, Abbas Haji. “Arsi Oromo Political and Military Resistance Against the Shoan Colonial Conquest (1881–1886).” Journal of Oromo Studies 2, nos. 1–2 (1995): 1–21. “‘Haati Dhiiraa Hin Boossee’ Eliyaas, Seenaa, Heenook J & Keeyeroon / NEW OROMO MUSIC /.” YouTube video. 5:53. Posted to YouTube by Yai Gulalle Film Tube, December 10, 2015. https://youtu.be/SpBeWCTL52M. “Hawi Tezera - Ka i Qeerroo #OromoProtests 2015.” YouTube video. 6:09. Posted to YouTube by MegaBlacky2010, December 16, 2015. https://youtu.be/mIkYYRtulhk. Human Rights Watch. “Ethiopia: Lethal Force Against Protesters.” Human Rights Watch, December 18, 2015. http://bit.ly/HRWEthiopia. ———. “‘Fuel on the Fire’: Security Force Responses to the 2016 Irreecha Cultural Festival.” Human Rights Watch, September 19, 2017. http://bit.ly/HRWFuel. ———. “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown’: Killings and Arrests in Response to Ethiopia’s Oromo Protests.” Human Rights Watch, June 15, 2016. http://bit.ly/HRWBrutal. Hussein, Jeylan. “The Function of African Oral Arts: The Arsi-Oromo Oral Arts in Focus.” African Study Monographs 26, no. 1 (2005): 15–28. Jalata, Asafa. Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1886– 2004. Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 2005. Kumsa, Kuwee. 1997. “The Siqqee Institution of Oromo Women.” The Journal of Oromo Studies 4, nos. 1&2 (1997): 115–52. Lillies, Heino. “Circle Sentencing: Part of the Restorative Justice Continuum.” Plenary talk

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Rebel Musics presented at “Dreaming of a New Reality,” the Third International Conference on Sentencing Circles and Other Restorative Practices, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 9, 2002. http://www.iirp.org/library/mn02/mn02_lilles.html.

Miller, Elizabeth, Edward Little, and Steven High. Going Public. The Art of Participatory Practice. Vancouver & Toronto: UBC Press, 2017. Mollenhauer, Shawn Michael. “Millions on the Margins: Music, Ethnicity, and Censorship among the Oromo of Ethiopia.” PhD diss., University of California, Riverside, 2011. Napoleon, Val. “Living Together: Gitksan Legal Reasoning as a Foundation for Consent.” In Between Consenting Peoples, edited by Jeremy H. A. Webber and Collin Murray Macleod, 45–76. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010. Østebø, Marit Tolo. “Respected Women: A Study of Wayyuu and its Implications for Women’s Sexual Rights among the Arsi Oromo of Ethiopia.” MA thesis, Faculty of Medicine, University of Bergen Centre for International Health, Norway, 2007. ———. “Wayyuu—Women’s Respect and Rights among the Arsi-Oromo.” In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (July 2–6, 2007, Trondheim, Norway), vol. 3, edited by Svein Ege, Harald Aspen, Birhanu Teferra, and Shiferaw Bekele, 1049–60. 2009. http://bit.ly/RMOstebo. Qashu, Leila. “Singing as Justice: Ateetee, an Arsi Oromo women’s sung dispute resolution ritual in Ethiopia,” Ethnomusicology 63, no. 2 (2019):247-278. ———. “Staged Public Music Performances of the Oromo of Ethiopia.” In Territoires musicaux mis en scène, edited by Monique Desroches, Marie-Hélène Pichette, Claude Dauphin, and Gordon E. Smith, 75–92. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2011. ———. “Toward an Understanding of Justice, Belief and Women’s Rights: Ateetee, an Arsi Oromo Women’s Sung Dispute Resolution Process in Ethiopia.” PhD diss., Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2016. Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. ———. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. “Seenaa Solomon “Akkamiin Diina Gombisu” New #OromoProtests Music Video.” YouTube video. 6:25. Posted to YouTube by Yai Gulalle Film Tube, January 23, 2016. https://youtu.be/O0hvLn9shdk. Siddall, Gillian and Ellen Waterman. “Introduction: Improvising at the Nexus of Discursive and Material Bodies.” In Negotiated Moments. Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity, edited by Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman, 1–20. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. Sillitoe, Paul. Indigenous Studies and Engaged Anthropology: The Collaborative Moment. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Zehr, Howard. Changing Lenses: Restorative Justice for Our Times. [1990] Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2015. ———. The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2002.

5 “Welcome to the Dance”: FandangObon as a Polycultural Anti-Racist Remix

George Lipsitz

Near the end of his remarkable, passionate, insightful, and intensely political memoir, Confessions of a Radical Chicano Doo-Wop Singer, Rubén Funkahuatl Guevara pays tribute to the newly invented tradition of the FandangObon with a poem. Written in the style of a Japanese haiku, Guevara’s poem hails the fusion of the Mexican son jarocho Fandango practice with the Japanese Obon ceremony as a moment for “Angelino souls, Transforming ethnic borders, Birthing a new world.”1 The FandangObon came into being when son jarocho musicians and Fandangueros Quetzal Flores and Martha Gonzalez invited Nobuko Miyamoto, the founder and artistic director of Great Leap, a multi-cultural arts organization rooted in the Asian American community, to a Fandango class they were conducting at the Plaza de la Raza in East Los Angeles. The Fandango is a participatory event in which expert and novice players, singers, and dancers learn to improvise and produce a convivial experience together. It revolves

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around the African-derived son jarocho music of Veracruz, Mexico. Participants sing traditional lyrics and compose new ones. They play small handmade guitars called jaranas and other instruments, while women who dance on a small wooden box known as the tarima beat out complex rhythms that respond to and guide the singers and players. Miyamoto immediately noticed the ways in which the Fandango resembled the Japanese Obon festival, a Buddhist ritual ceremony held every year to honor departed ancestors. Both Fandango and Obon entail dancing, singing, and playing instruments in a circle. Both draw on ancestral traditions in communities reviled and despised as “other” and “forever foreign” in the United States. Both forms emphasize rhythmic playing and dancing, collective and collaborative co-creation. Both forms require people to become participants rather than mere spectators. When the class concluded, Miyamoto suggested to Flores that they put Fandango and Obon together, and thus a new polycultural anti-racist remix came into being. As the co-creators of FandangObon began to fuse together their different cultures, they discerned that Fandango and Obon served parallel purposes. Musical genres that originated in Mexico and Japan become the basis for performances in the U.S. that invite people to recognize a linked fate by moving together in dances that honor ancestral traditions, playing and singing songs that register the displacements of crossing borders. Yet Fandango and Obon look forward as well as back, adapting traditional moves, sounds, and sights to serve new purposes. They document change as well as tradition, recording the ruptures of history as well as its continuities. Fandango and Obon in the U.S. are not the same as Fandango and Obon in Mexico or Japan; they are filled with musical figures, forms, and devices learned in their country of arrival as well as their countries of origin.

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The son jarocho music at the center of Fandango practices has been embraced enthusiastically in recent years as a symbol of Mexican identity in the U.S., in part because it reveals the hidden history of Africa in Mexico: a revelation that rebukes the hidden investments in whiteness that permeate official and popular culture in that country and its diaspora. At the same time, gesturing toward one of Mexico’s most powerful Afro-diasporic traditions enables Mexican Americans to savor their solidarity with the Black communities with whom they interact in the U.S., despite the many ways in which the labor market, the prison system, and many other social institutions pit the two groups against each other. Son jarocho music contains Afro-Cuban and African retentions that stem from the enduring consequences of the importation of Africans as slave labor in Mexico, the Caribbean, and the U.S. Performances of son jarocho music draw on the affective pleasures that emanate from bodies moving and being moved to the cadences of dance beats and heart beats. Their particular and specific musical and lyrical figures and devices have a political meaning as they register a shared social location and announce and give voice to a people whose culture has been continuously distorted and silenced. Although the particulars differ, these same dynamics that shape the Mexican son jarocho in the U.S. pervade the performances of Obon in Japanese American life as well. The Obon tradition is rooted in Buddhism. It arrived in the U.S. when Japanese immigrants and their children danced to songs they brought with them from their home villages, songs that recounted stories of fishing, coal mining, and the blossoming of cherry trees. Over the years, some Obon songs were written in the U.S. But it was not until 1984 that the first Obon song with English language lyrics came into being. Mas Kodani, a Minister of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism in Los Angeles, invited Nobuko Miyamoto to write it. In crafting her lyrics, Miyamoto immersed herself in Buddhist principles and remained faithful to the rhythms, sounds, and styles of traditional Obon. Over the years, she has found ways to draw on

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her own wide-ranging musical instincts while remaining true to the essence of tradition. This essence includes distinctly musical practices, figures, and devices, but it involves as well a repository of radical principles of collective recognition, respect, and reconciliation. The Obon Festival and the son jarocho Fandango are not identical, but they are similar. Both forms are shaped by the hurts of history; both enact ideals of co-creation born, nurtured and sustained through struggles for survival and social justice. Seeing similarities between Mexican American and Japanese American forms of self-expression and self-activity makes it possible to connect the specific, particular, and discrete experiences of each group, with broader patterns of domination that these groups (and many others) confront. Both Japanese Americans and Mexican Americans have endured cultural demonization, residential segregation, and labor exploitation, yet both groups have also nurtured and sustained powerful forms of positive affirmation and mutual recognition. Recognizing families of resemblance between Fandango and Obon activates a focus on the general experiences attendant to oppression, not merely on the identity of the oppressed group. This quality of moving from the particular to the general led the creators of FandangObon to add a third culture to the mix: African music and dance. In their long histories of art and activism along with their extensive experiences as music listeners, dancers, and performers, Miyamoto, Flores, Gonzalez, and Guevara have all been powerfully influenced by Black people and Black culture. Flores and Gonzalez consistently acknowledge and honor the Afro-diasporic elements in son jarocho music. As a rhythm and blues and rock’n’roll musician, Guevara immersed himself in the mechanics and meanings of soul, blues, and jazz. Miyamoto encountered African influences in the modern dance classes she took, the Broadway shows in which she

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performed, and the political coalitions that she joined. Miyamoto, Flores, and Gonzalez invited practitioners of West African music and dance from the Nigerian Talking Drum Ensemble and Le Ballet Dembaya to become co-creators of the FandangObon, allowing music from three continents to come together in this event. To ensure cultural respect and sensitivity, the organizers of FandangObon brought their plans to the attention of Reverend Mas Kodani whose history included founding Kinnara Taiko, the second taiko group formed in the U.S. When Japanese taiko players came to the U.S. and encountered Kodani’s group, they discerned rhythms to which they were unaccustomed, rhythms that members of Kinnara Taiko forged in part—and often unconsciously—from their lifelong immersion as music fans, consumers, and creators inside the music made by rhythm and blues drummers, bass players, and dancers. He understood intercultural communication and creativity. Meeting with Kodani helped Miyamoto, Flores, and Gonzalez to select a title for their event. They called their first piece Bambutsu – no tsunagari, which means ten thousand things all connected. Noting both the promise and pitfalls of this multi-cultural collaboration, Reverend Kodani advised its creators not to think of themselves as forming a fusion, but rather as creating a conversation in which each form can remain true to itself while engaging with others.2 Bambutsu fulfilled this mission, staging a dialogue among distinct styles and rhythms. Its diffuse elements cohere smoothly in drumming, dancing, and singing, and in the intent and content of lyrics that proclaim the importance of an intersubjective oneness. This theme in FandangObon resembles the Mayan phrase “In Lak’ech,” which has been memorialized in film and poetry by Luis Valdez and embraced by Mexican American activists. It means “I am the other you, you are the other me.”3 The FandangObon has been performed in Washington, D.C.

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at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and it has served often as the final performance of the annual Nisei Week festival at the Japanese American Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The ritual as performed annually in Los Angeles starts with a procession to the performance space. Giant puppets tower above the participants while flowers, fruits, seeds, and multi-coloured streamers are placed as ofrendas (offerings) on altars constructed by Chicana artists to honor the dead and to celebrate life. West African drummers beat out rhythms for dancers who welcome Fandangueros and Obon participants onto the plaza. Everyone joins in the mixtures of dances from West Africa, Mexico, and Japan. The ceremony is live streamed back to Veracruz, Mexico. In What Can a Song Do? Miyamoto’s eloquent, astute, moving, and infinitely generative in-progress memoir about her life as an artist and arts activist, she reflects on the FandangObon and its significance. Miyamoto asks Are we creating a new Angeleno tradition? I hope so. What I do know is this: In an age where we observe the world through our various rectangular devices, to step into the circle of FandangObon is a potent communal act. In this circle we reclaim our power, our creativity. We make music with our own hands, our own voices, our heartbeats become synchronized. We circle the earth with our own feet and remember we belong to it. In this circle everyone is equal, everyone is seen, everyone has a place to be. In this circle there are no borders, no us or them, there is room for everyone. In this circle we are intergenerational, pluralistic, interdisciplinary. We share across cultures our food, our seeds, our stories, our recipes, our music, our ways of growing and caring for the earth. In this circle we are weaving our roots, creating relationships that can change the world around and beneath us. In this circle, we are enacting now, the world we want to live in. In this circle . . . in this circle . . . 4

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The creation of FandangObon by Miyamoto, Flores, and Gonzalez—and the importance of their invention to Guevara— presents an opportunity to reassess the nature, purpose, and significance of the politics of music making. All of the musicians central to the creation and celebration of FandangObon have had complex engagements with both commercial culture and expressly political musical production. Miyamoto was pulled away from her previous careers as a dancer in Broadway shows and Hollywood films and as a cabaret singer to become a founding member of A Grain of Sand. This folk trio played an indispensable role in articulating and facilitating the emergence of the anti-racist and anti-imperialist Asian American movement in the 1970s. A Grain of Sand did much to shape that movement’s subsequent aims, ideologies, and affective appeals. Guevara made his mark initially as a doo-wop group singer in the 1950s, as a solo rock’n’roll artist in the 1960s, and as the front musician in the Frank Zappa-backed band Ruben And The Jets in the 1970s. He went on in 1983 to become the composer and performer of “C/S,” an Afro-Latin rock prose poem that connected the anger and willful defiance of present day Chicanx youths in Los Angeles to the centuries-long histories of Indigenous dispossession, labor exploitation, and political repression faced by aggrieved communities of colour in that city. Gonzalez starred as a child performer in Spanish language vaudeville shows and with Flores formed Quetzal, a Grammy-winning band that toured commercially as an opening act for mainstream rock stars. Gonzalez and Flores began to view their histories of successful performance in commercial venues in a new light when they met with representatives of the Mexican Zapatista movement in Los Angeles. This encounter inspired them to explore new forms of community-based art making grounded in the needs and aspirations of their people.

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These histories of expressly politicized music making might appear to make the musical and poetic involvement and investment in FandangObon seem like a move away from politics and a move back to traditional folk forms concerned more with enduring unjust conditions than with changing them. In Mexico and its diaspora, traditional Fandango gatherings generally serve as focal points for celebrating births and weddings, for marking baptisms and mourning deaths, and for honoring patron saints. Within the traditions of Japan and its diaspora, the Obon festival has been a Buddhist observance that entails a return to ancestral sites and a ritual cleaning of grave sites. The circular dance known as bon odori serves as a way for the community to acknowledge, honor, and welcome the return of ancestral spirits. These practices revolve around the life cycle and its continuities across generations. They can appear to do more to reconcile people to unjust conditions rather than promote challenges to them. They might seem to encourage resignation to historical continuity rather than resisting oppression. Yet the elements of tradition that permeate the practices of FandangObon have important political resonances of their own. Their discovery of families of resemblance residing within the cultural practices and political aspirations of three different communities of colour, echoes and augments the possibilities for pan-ethnic anti-racist opposition to the ever increasing ravages of racial capitalism. The well-established traditions and the newly invented ones shaping FandangObon, testify to the deep wellsprings of persistence, resistance, and resilience in aggrieved communities of colour, to the ways in which mutual respect and recognition have enabled aggrieved groups to survive and thrive inside systems structured to demean, disadvantage, and dispossess them. In recombinant form within the FandangObon, they underscore the potential power of intergroup affirmation, affiliation, and alliance. Diasporic African ring shouts and dance circles, the circular move-

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ments of Japanese bon odori, and the perpetual convening of groups to play, sing, and dance son jarocho music deploy collective acts of co-creation and identify already existing repositories of collective memory, sites of moral instruction, and mechanisms for calling communities into being through performance. As people learn to make music together, they learn to be attentive to one another, to “read” movements of heads, hands, and bodies as invitations to respond. Awareness of the pitch, timbre, speed, and rhythm of songs deepens a collective capacity for learning to listen, to being alert to the possibilities of existing patterns and imagining ways to create new ones. FandangObon requires a group constituency and a group consciousness. It cannot be done alone. It turns listeners and watchers into singers, players, and dancers, transforms spectators into participants, and replaces art created by “me” with an art created by “we.” FandangObon both honors and moves beyond tradition. It recognizes the truths that reside in ancestral wisdom as preserved in collective and cumulative social practices. But it returns to the past not with the intention to remain there, but to bring its lessons into the present and adapt them to new circumstances. As the brilliant Dena’ina musicologist Jessica Bissett Perea notes about her own people’s culture, nothing is more traditional inside aggrieved communities than innovation and improvisation, than adapting old forms to new uses because of changed circumstances. In addition, by staging a conversation among Fandango, Obon, and West African cultural forms, FandangObon magnifies the families of resemblance that link aggrieved communities of colour to one another. What W.E.B. Du Bois insistently called the common cause of the darker races moves beyond one-at-a-time bilateral relations with a putatively white power structure, but it also resists undifferentiated polylateral relations across group lines that would make specificities disappear. There are times to be together, and times to

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be apart, times to attend the unique, specific, and particular forms of domination and resistance of each group, as well as times to recognize the affinities, affiliations, and identifications out of which a polylateral anti-racist politics might emerge. The FandangObon allows participants to discern differences without domination, to savor unities without demanding uniformity. It cultivates the capacities for struggle that reside in both the dynamics of difference and the solidarities of sameness. Struggles for social change have complex causes and consequences. Labor exploitation and political domination lead logically to labor-management battles at the point of production and to efforts to secure rights and resources through litigation, legislation, organization, and mobilization. Wins and losses at these public sites of struggle do not completely encompass the work of social movements. For social change to take place, people need to develop elevated levels of clarity, courage, and conviction, to find inside themselves qualities of character that their previous lives may have done little to prepare them for. Individuals must learn ways to overcome fear, self-doubt, and secret wishes for private and personal escapes from shared social problems and conditions. A radical divisiveness permeates the experiences of oppressed communities as people compete with one another for scarce resources, social recognition, and the sparse number of positions within the dominant system that the power structure doles out to maintain and legitimate its rule. Members of aggrieved groups are perpetually pitted against each other and against members of equally powerless communities. Under those circumstances, FandangObon enables people to see that they do not need to be divided, that their differences can be sources of strength, and that they are more similar to their rivals than the system leads them to believe. In a world that can make people unlovable, it can be difficult

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for individuals to find something left to love in themselves and in others. Social mobilizations require practices and processes that enable activists to engage in collective work according to the exigencies of time and place, to affirm a collective identity that addresses a specific problem from a particular point of view, and to make demands that deepen future capacities for democratic deliberation, debate, and decision making. Music and dance are among the sites where those capacities are nurtured and sustained. Social movements emerge when large numbers of people realize that they cannot become the people they wish to be unless social relations change markedly. They cannot wait for institutional change to become those people, however. They must transform themselves and others inside the society that already exists in order to become the kinds of people capable of envisioning and enacting new social relations. Thus, struggles for social change transpire on many different levels. Public contestation depends upon personal transformations that take place collectively, that produce new ways of knowing, being, and understanding, that reconfigure the public and private spheres in new and generative ways. Politicized and socially conscious musical practices do much more than provide textual illustrations of the struggle, more than moments of inspiration that make people wish to join or remain in activist groups. Songs with political lyrics compress complex ideas and understandings into phrases that help participants frame their place on earth and their need for social change. They help shape the contours of collective identity. Singing together creates through sound visceral and affective confirmations of the ways that mass mobilizations rely on strength in numbers. Singing and playing instruments at high volume can fend off fear and make the powerful seem vulnerable. Running sounds and words through bodies in song, swaying to common rhythms, and blending different voices together enact in real time the virtues of collectivity that social

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movement manifestos routinely envision for the future. Politically conscious composers and lyricists create songs that serve the needs of struggles for social justice. But even more important than these cultural products are the ways in which music making entails processes that enable people to transform themselves. As Karl Marx contends in The German Ideology, workers need revolutions not only to seize power, but to shake off “the muck of ages” in order to become fit to found society anew.5 Even overtly insurrectionary public politics often possess personal origins and intentions. The emergence of FandangObon enables us to see that it is less a disruptive departure from the politics of Miyamoto’s history with A Grain of Sand, Guevara’s composition of “C/S,” and the acts of solidarity with the EZLN performed by Gonzalez and Flores than a smooth continuation of them. In 1973, Miyamoto joined with Chris Iijima and Charlie Chin to form A Grain of Sand as an expressly political folk music ensemble. They took their name from the ways in which a small grain of sand inside the body of an oyster host could become a pearl. Miyamoto, Iijima, and Chin envisioned Asian Americans as that grain of sand, seemingly small and insignificant in the present, but on the way to becoming powerful collectively. They named one of their songs the “Yellow Pearl,” a phrase they adopted as a symbol of their collective identity, as a play on words challenging the white supremacist fear of Asian people articulated as the “yellow peril,” seeing themselves instead as the yellow pearl. Emerging in the midst of the ferment of the Asian American movement and its affiliated work with African Americans, Latinx, and Native Americans in struggles waged under the banner of the Third World presence inside the U.S., A Grain of Sand performed songs that had revolutionary intents and effects. Miyamoto, Iijima, and Chin used music as a form of education and agitation through song lyrics that proclaimed “Imperialism is Another Word for Hunger,” and that announced that “we are the

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children” of the low wage immigrant Asian laborers who built the railroads and worked the mines that made the nation wealthy. Although always steeped in Asian American perspectives and politics, A Grain of Sand never allowed itself to be only about Asian Americans. For example, the group sang about their solidarity with Black activist Jonathan Jackson who was shot to death in a desperate kidnapping attempt that he hoped would lead to freedom for his incarcerated older brother, George Jackson. A Grain of Sand celebrated their ties to the movement for Puerto Rican independence and self-determination through the Spanish language lyrics of a song that proclaimed Somos Asiaticos (We are Asians). Musically, A Grain of Sand adopted a folk and folk-rock format because of that music’s pervasive presence among the social movement singers of the day, especially the ones who read and contributed to Sing Out! and other left wing and anti-racist publications. But they also chose that form in response to the ways in which the Japanese internment and other acts of cultural suppression combined with the parochialism of the U.S. mass culture industry to deny them access to their own Asian musical traditions and hence their need to improvise with the forms they found available to them inside the folk music revival. Young Asian Americans in the years immediately following World War II had generally not been exposed to Japanese or Chinese musical instruments. Government repression made their parents learn to be ashamed of the vinyl records they brought with them from their countries of origin. The internment treated the possession of Japanese language books and records as a crime, as evidence of disloyalty to the U.S. As a result in the postwar period, most Japanese American parents feared teaching their children about their ancestors’ language, culture, and history. Anti-communism and U.S. wars in Asia in the 1950s made it dangerous for young Americans of Chinese or Korean descent to be too immersed in their own cultures. As a result, the members of

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the generation that formed the Asian American Movement often did so with vocabularies, grammars, and cultural forms borrowed from other groups. They tried to master the symbolic cultural capital of the nation that excluded them. For example, Nobuko Miyamoto trained to be a dancer. She appeared in the Broadway production of Flower Drum Song and the film version of West Side Story. Her singing talents later secured her a career as a cabaret singer specializing in jazz and pop standards. Charlie Chin enjoyed commercial success as a blues and rock musician, performing on vocals and guitar as a member of the rock group Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys. Chris Iijima was a skilled songwriter, singer, and musician who idolized Black blues singers, but would never commit to a career in music, working ultimately as a lawyer and law professor. Inside A Grain of Sand they mixed together these diverse elements of their lives to create a recombinant music and politics made up of sounds and statements that resembled those of other politically conscious artists. The lyrics of the songs performed by A Grain of Sand were clearly political. They addressed public struggles against racism and for power by aggrieved communities of colour. But they also recognized that struggle has interior dimensions: that public commitments need to be connected to personal aspirations and intentions. The vision of politics advanced by A Grain of Sand did not imagine activists to be decontextualized and one-dimensional instruments of historical change, but rather as people whose complex personhoods contained contradictions, anxieties, and injuries that could lead them in many different directions. “Something About Me Today” sung by Miyamoto marks the moment where the narrator looks in the mirror and no longer wants to be included in the mainstream, to be anyone else, the moment when she sees herself as part of a collective movement by people of Asian origins in alliance with other communities of colour. In “Yellow Pearl,” the narrator observes that the

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Asian Americans who make up only a tiny minority of people inside the U.S. are part of a global demography in which “we are half the world.” The group’s tribute to Jonathan Jackson does not celebrate its Black militant protagonist’s decision to pick up a gun and hold hostages in an attempt to free his brother from unjust incarceration, but instead focuses on the internal turmoil that would lead a young man to this action, on his personal recognition that to “keep on trying” is necessary because it is “better dead than a living dying.” In assessing the successes of A Grain of Sand, Miyamoto looks back with justified pride on the bold and insurrectionary lyrics the group wrote and performed, but she savors, as well, the exhilaration of being among other Asian Americans enjoying being themselves without apology, convening in recognition and appreciation of common experiences and aspirations. Rubén Funkahuatl Guevara wrote his song “C/S” in 1975 and recorded it in 1983. It placed a funky Afro-Latin beat beneath a prose poem that connects the willful defiance and refusal of an unlivable destiny by present day Chicanx to long histories of conquest, colonization, repression, and suppression. The song-poem that Guevara composed came into being while he was visiting Mexico and had a variety of awkward experiences that made him feel neither fully Mexican nor fully “American.” He decided to turn himself into a revolutionary Chicano artist and teacher, to become what he terms “a radical Chicano culture sculptor.” “C/S” presented a radical anti-racist account of the history of Los Angeles, an account steeped in a deep sense of connection with his ancestral spirit mixed with the need to reveal the untold history of social injustice in Los Angeles. The title of the song comes from the popular practice of placing the letters c/s as a graffiti symbol and talisman at the bottom of a placa (tag). In that context, and in Guevara’s song, c/s expresses willful defiance, it means that anything you do to this writing will come back to you.6 Adoption of that symbol expressed Guevara’s admiration

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for and solidarity with the ferocious determination of barrio youths to defy authority and affirm their dignity. “C/S” resonates with the radical politics of the Chicano Movement. It describes Los Angeles as a colonial settlement imposed on the land of the Indigenous Tongva people. It refers to Mexican Americans as descendants of Maya, Aztec, Olmec and Toltec people. Guevara’s song delineates the struggles of Mexicans who came north to work “fields of plenty” but got paid only pennies. His narrative exposes how Anglo settler colonialists on stolen lands exploited native and immigrant knowledge. The penultimate verse recalls the “zoot suit riots”—the state sanctioned vigilante and police attacks on Mexican American youths in 1943. The song concludes by asking listeners to read the writing on the walls, to see the graffiti written by young people as their coats of arms, as their signatures to a new Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, that declare “Yo Soy” (I am somebody), as a determination to fight until all the walls come down. Guevara’s “C/S” is one of the most effective, moving and overtly political songs ever written. But it is something of an anomaly in his oeuvre. Although deeply sympathetic to the goals of the Chicano movement, Guevara was frequently disappointed with the ways activists carried on the struggle. To be sure, he favored the radical redistribution of resources and rights that the movement championed, but he saw the need for a deeper change as well, for the creation of pan-ethnic anti-racist political and cultural movements capable of creating a new society based on untapped human potential, not just reallocating resources and opportunities inside the society that already exists. He felt a special kinship with Japanese Americans, because when growing up in a variety of neighborhoods he had lived among them and shared their aspirations. He admired their imagination and artistry, and felt that his own grievances about

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the persecution of Mexican Americans during the World War II zoot suit riots should also include recognition of the injustice that sent Japanese Americans off to concentration camps. In the years immediately before the FandangObon came into existence, Guevara routinely accompanied Japanese American friends on pilgrimages to the Manzanar Relocation camp. He felt that honoring the struggles of the people interned there became especially important after September 11, 2001 when the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center left Muslim Americans vulnerable to treatment similar to that meted out to Japanese Americans during World War II.7 In 2012, the year that the first FandangObon took place, Guevara accepted an invitation from Nobuko Miyamoto and Great Leap to participate in a performance piece titled “Yellow Pearl Remix” directed by Dan Kwong partially as an homage to the concept and song “Yellow Pearl” that had been created and performed in 1973 by A Grain of Sand. A particularly moving part of this production for Guevara was its tribute to the group of Japanese Americans from Los Angeles who in 1973 accepted an invitation from the American Indian Movement to join their struggle for self-determination and survivance at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Guevara read a haiku poem that he composed for the occasion and sang a duet with Miyamoto, once again enacting the pan-ethnic polylateral anti-racism that he envisioned as a core component of his work as a Chicano culture sculptor.8 FandangObon co-founders Quetzal Flores and Martha Gonzalez have been art activists who have long created evocative and moving songs with expressly political lyrics. Emblematic among these is “Estoy Aqui” (“I Am Here”) that appears on their 2011 album Imaginaries. The title of the album refers to the call by scholar Emma Perez for decolonial imaginaries as tools for the self-defense, self-determination, survivance, and sovereignty of aggrieved communities of colour.

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“Estoy Aqui” points to the people in Mexico and the U.S. who are struggling against the unlivable destinies meted out to them by neoliberalism. Living in huts made of cardboard and tin, they recognize that no one will do for them what they fail to do for themselves, that no governmental unit or private power entity will provide. Although impoverished, they declare themselves rich in hope and they vow to remain, to struggle, to survive, to announce to the world “I am here.” Layering these words above an energetic cumbia beat and playing in a band that includes an Asian American, an Anglo American, and an African American, Quetzal established itself as clearly but not only Mexican American, as rooted in a particular tradition of struggle but also as part of a broader global critique of racial capitalism as well. As individuals and as a group, the members of the band Quetzal had histories of commercial and critical success as stage performers and musicians. Yet their personal goals came to revolve around something greater than that. In 1997, they were part of the group that hosted a meeting titled the Encuentro Cultural Chican@/Inidgena Contra el Neoliberlaismo y Por La Humanindad. This convening brought to Los Angeles activists from the small Chiapas village of Oventic, one of the Zapatista “caracoles”—protected sites where decisions are made in a collective manner. The meeting proved to be transformative, and it led the members of Quetzal to become committed to experiencing music through collaborative cultural co-creation and art-based community making. Since that time, they have been prominent in the Fandango movement which has had an electrifying impact on Latinx youths and adults and their allies all across the U.S. and in many places around the world. Branching out to create the FandangObon was thus not an artificial or apolitical innovation for them, but rather an extension of their experiences with a kind of politics that changes individuals as it seeks to change society, that honors the discrete and separate experiences of individual groups yet envisions paths toward accompaniment for social justice enabled by acts of improvisation and performance.9

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The FandangObon is a new form of performance that produces new politics and new polities. It differs from some of the previous forms of “Rebel Music” created by its founding musicians, yet follows their trajectory in logical and productive ways. The FandangObon conceives of politics as affective as well as ideological, as physical as well as figurative, and as collective and cumulative rather than as individual and episodic. In the words of Rubén Guevara, it says to people struggling for social justice: “Welcome to the dance, hold my hand dear ancestor, Dance! Dance! Laugh! Spin! Rise!”

Endnotes 1. Guevera, Confessions, 244. 2. Miyamoto, “What Can a Song Do?” 3. Broyles-Gonzales, El Teatro, 125; Fregoso, The Bronze Screen, 35. 4. Miyamoto, “What Can a Song Do?” 5. Marx, The German Ideology, 193. 6. Guevera, Confessions, 111–12. 7. Guevera, Confessions, 246–52. 8. Guevara, Confessions, 253–56. 9. Tomlinson and Lipsitz, Insubordinate Spaces.

Works Cited Broyles-Gonzalez, Yolanda. El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Fregoso, Rosa Linda. The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Guevara, Rubén Funkahuatl. Confessions of a Radical Chicano Doo-Wop Singer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018 Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. Excerpted in The Marx-Engels Reader (second edition), edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978. Miyamoto, Nobuko. “What Can a Song Do?” Draft manuscript in author’s possession. Shared by Miyamoto in 2018. Tomlinson, Barbara and George Lipsitz. Insubordinate Spaces: Improvisation and Accompaniment for Social Justice. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019.

6 “I Sing of Difference”: Violeta Parra’s Testimonial Songs for Justice

Martha Nandorfy Yo canto a la chillaneja si tengo que decir algo y no tomo la guitarra por conseguir un aplauso. Yo canto la diferencia que hay de lo cierto a lo falso, de lo contrario no canto.

I sing Chillán style1 if I have to say something and I don’t pick up my guitar to get applause. I sing the difference between what’s true and false Otherwise, I don’t sing.2

(“Yo canto la diferencia” [“I Sing of Difference”], Violeta Parra)3

Prelude The many Chilean refugees who arrived in Ottawa after the coup d’état in 1973 first introduced me to the music of Violeta Parra, Victor Jara, and other Chilean groups, like Inti-Illimani and Quilapayún. In this essay, I return to the songs of Violeta Parra and the nueva canción [new song movement] after many years of working on literatures of decolonization with a strong focus on indigeneity. Most of the Chileans I met in Ottawa stayed in Canada, and struggled to make sense of a life that, despite its material advantages, safety, and small successes, resembled basic survival—not the full collective life that they had envisioned and worked for in Chile. This depressing

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realization was not limited to their reality. It implicated, and continues to implicate, all those who believe, like the Guaraní Indians of Paraguay,4 that the world wants to be born again, since the current state of affairs is not a fulsome reality—even for those of us who live in the privileged pockets of the first world. And that we are still a long way from any democracy that ensures dignity, and human rights for all, contained in what the Mapuche call küme mogen, living well together on the animate earth. I focus specifically on the Mapuche people-nation (also called Araucanos as early chroniclers named them) because they comprise roughly 80% of Indigenous people in Chile. The Mapuche forced the Spaniards to withdraw from their territory during the conquest of South America, managing to keep them at bay for approximately ten years. Their ancestral territories in southern Chile and Argentina extend from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts. They continue to suffer persecution at the Violeta Parra, Chile, 1917-1967 hands of landowners, but have organized themselves in peasant unions since 1928 in order to resist exploitation and demand basic necessities for their communities like potable water and electricity. Nueva canción singer-songwriter Victor Jara was once asked by a Mapuche community to represent their history and the terrible massacre that took place in their community six years after forming

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their union and attempting a rebellion. His widow Joan Jara relates how “Victor was taken to the place where the river Ranquil converges with the great Bio-Bio, a rocky gorge which the peasants had named ‘the slaughter house’ because it was there that, one by one, their leaders had been shot, their bodies falling straight into the icy water below.”5 Victor did not live long enough to realize this project as he too was brutally assassinated during the US-backed military coup in 1973.6 What nobody knew until recently was how extensively Violeta Parra had studied with a machi, a woman shaman, recording songs and interpretive stories that were archived and lost until 2014. Song in Mapuche culture transmits knowledge, memory, ritual, and prophecy, like storytelling in many other Indigenous cultures. After waves of Indigenous uprisings across the Americas since the 1990s, and recent discoveries about Violeta’s7 assumption of her Mapuche family roots in the last decade of her life, we can now begin to understand the significance of the forms of indigeneity that were systematically silenced during her time, and that she gave voice to in the last phase of her life.

Contexts In Latin America, La Nueva canción [The New Song] has played a role in every major revolutionary movement the area has undergone in the last fifty odd years. And at its very roots, there was a cognitive process that involved the local in its most humble clothes. Violeta Parra walking patiently from home to home, tape recorder and guitar in hand, brought on folklore of unsuspected revolutionary power which would feed the revolutionary fires of several generations of musicians and those in the movements that they played for and from. Paradoxically, it was the fierce struggles against imperialism that motivated the local cultural manifestations to fight for a space being disputed by a homogenizing pop

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culture, and that would in turn, become a universal and enduring voice for struggles all over the world.8

While Violeta Parra was one of the most prominent founders of the nueva canción and a major contributor to consolidating its musical affect with revolutionary politics, her recordings are also strikingly different from those of the mostly male musicians of the succeeding generations. This essay examines where some of those differences lie, differences that point to ways in which music as used by Parra sharpened political critique in relation to indigeneity. Nueva canción musicians like Victor Jara worked closely with Salvador Allende’s political campaign and, after his election to the presidency, as advocates of intense social reorganization during 1970–73 until the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet. The essay I originally wrote for volume one of Rebel Musics compared Violeta Parra’s music to that of Victor Jara, who started out being mentored by Violeta and performed to acclaim at the hugely popular Peña de los Parra founded in 1965. The word “peña” refers to the “cultural evenings organized in the homes of workers and in trade union branches during the twenties and thirties,” and is also the Argentinian word for an informal gathering of friends to sing songs.9 As I stated then, once I started to research and write about these two Chileans, I was struck by the significant differences in their visions of the social role of artists and the power of music to liberate. Further, I found myself struggling to resist setting these two musicians up in a contrastive, reductive way: Anarchist versus Marxist; woman versus man; feminist versus patriarchy in the nueva canción movement; outcast and independent versus representative of the Left in general and Allende’s government specifically. There are so many factors to complicate such simplistic schemes. Times of political crisis and social upheaval demand forms of music that rally people to take urgent action against specific forms of injustice, as did

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many of Victor’s songs. And while Violeta Parra’s art was powered by the same kind of outrage against injustice, her vision of social change was too wide-ranging, and perhaps too culturally different to align with a specific political movement like Popular Unity, whose “monolithic character” was praised by Victor Jara.10 There were serious political and cultural tensions between leftist movements and the Mapuche during the 1960s and 1970s as noted by contemporary critics who have the benefit of a postcolonial lens: . . . not all the Chilean left were able to reckon with the roots of dispossession and violence against the Mapuche nation. Class analysis was often blind to the Chilean state’s constitutive colonial violence. The consequent imposition of extremely racist forms of neoliberal extraction, precarization, and oppression against the Mapuche during Pinochet’s dictatorship and its democratic aftermath illustrate how coloniality is reproduced despite the ideological orientations of the regimes of Left or Right. It is only recently that colonialism as an adapting and historical technology of political, economic, social, cultural, and religious power against Indigenous peoples utilized by empires and nation-states has been fully integrated and theorized in studies about the interactions between the Mapuche nation and the Chilean and Argentine nation-states.11

Violeta’s regular incursions to rural areas in search of regional folk songs, together with her deep interest in Mapuche culture may have factored into distancing herself from a monolithic party, and the left’s lukewarm appreciation of her contribution to socially engaged music. While the nueva canción movement has been tied to protest, its range of themes and combination of traditional rhythms and original creativity invite multidisciplinary, historicized responses. Such labels as “protest music” tend to evoke lyrical and sonic effects associated

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with that genre in the specific context of the US, especially during the student protests against the war in Vietnam.12 A historicized approach to the context of Chile in particular, and Latin America in general, requires that clear distinctions be drawn, relating to power politics and hegemony. Protest meant one thing in the most powerful, affluent, and economically and culturally dominant country in the world. And it means quite another in a culture that differs radically in its racial and ethnic features, as well as in the precarious status of its economic dependence and political subordination to neocolonial powers. What Victor Jara preferred to call “revolutionary” as opposed to “protest” music was a response to right-wing politics and economics that divided the country between the few who benefitted from selling its resources to foreign powers, and the vast majority who were thereby impoverished. With the military coup Chile became a terrorist fascist state that lasted nearly three decades, and whose legacy remains refashioned as globalized neoliberalism, a reality from which Violeta exited when she took her own life in 1967, after the first defeat of Salvador Allende and before his short-lived victory from 1970–73. There was always a marked difference in Latin American understanding of popular versus mass culture. “Popular” in Latin American socio-cultural contexts modifies el pueblo, that is, a majority but marginalized population made up of campesinos and workers. Popular culture is created by the pueblo while mass culture is produced for the masses by an élite that controls mass media. Looking critically at the leftist movement in Chile also requires asking whether its members respected this difference. In a telling example of how some forms of didacticism can belie condescension, “a record album detailing the UP (Unidad Popular [Popular Unity]) program in song was released [1970]. To produce Canto al Programa, classically trained Chilean composers Sergio Ortega and Luis Advis collaborated with the New Song group Inti-Illimani as part of an effort to use

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‘all available means of communication’ to present the UP program in a language and style that were accessible to the people.”13 This concern about accessibility is telling because it is at odds with the equality inherent in the Indigenous (Mapuche) concept of living well together, and signals the underlying tensions between Mapuche grassroots organizations and government. One of the pieces on Canto al Programa, “Canción de la reforma agrarian” [Song of Agrarian Reform], clearly fails to differentiate Indigenous from other campesinos, or to consider whether modern science has anything to learn from traditional knowledge of the land: Ya se acaba el latifundio, el campo al que lo trabaja.

The latifundio [large landed estate] has ended, the land goes to those who work it.

Se hace la reforma agraria. El momento es importante– nadie se ponga adelante. Y los técnicos agrarios ya se ponen al servicio del campesino chileno que ha encontrado su destino.

We’re carrying out agrarian reform. Timing is important– don’t jump the gun. And the agrarian technicians are now at the service of the Chilean peasants who have found their destiny.

With a bit of twenty-first century hindsight, we might question how the government’s technicians will serve those peasants who consider themselves members of ancestral nations, and who furthermore have farming practices based on thousands of years of traditional knowledge through observation, and a distinct worldview in which agriculture also has spiritual dimensions that escape most technicians. Non-Indigenous farmers also have such traditional knowledge and shouldn’t be represented as being solely on the receiving end of top-down reform. The detail that classically trained musicians collaborated with folkloric ones also belies a prejudice about Western-style education. When she first started performing,

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Violeta was criticized by similarly prejudiced listeners for her idiosyncratic and untrained voice. Here we see an unexamined continuity of that élitist perspective by people supposedly of the pueblo who, nevertheless, implicitly set themselves above the pueblo for the betterment of the pueblo. In a more recent expression of this Eurocentrism, production companies have remastered some of Violeta’s Indigenous and campesino instrumentation by adding saccharine orchestral accompaniment to songs like “El Guillatún [Mapuche ceremony],” whose steady beat, played by her on the Venezuelan cuatro, aurally recreated the ceremonial beat of a song whose original musical context has been completely demolished by Western orchestral sounds associated with élite, bourgeois culture. Also crucial to understanding the difference between Anglo and Latin colonization are the myths of national identity. In Latin America, the élites do not entertain myths of having drawn themselves up by their bootstraps—unless one means boots made for military goose-stepping. Among right wing white supremacists, privilege and entitlement are unabashedly admired as aristocratic values, diametrically opposed to both indios salvajes (savage Indians) and comunistas inmundos (filthy communists). What received less consideration during the 1960s and 1970s was how the political left viewed and related to Indigenous communities, the crux of Violeta’s difference from the Unidad Popular program animated by the nueva canción. Violeta’s political affiliations to community grassroots organizations and her eminence as a socio-political icon are more ambiguous. While her artistic production far exceeded that of most other musicians, she was seen as an outsider by both the upper class and the leftists, as Victor Jara’s assessment of her indicates: None of us could say, while Violeta lived, that she was an artist of the people. We even criticized her. But time and the people themselves will recognise her. She lived the best years of her life

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among them—the peasants, miners, fishermen, craftsmen, the Indigenous people of the Andes in the north, the islanders of Chiloe in the south. She lived with them, shared their lives, their skin, their flesh and blood. Only in that way could Violeta have created songs like ‘¿Qué dirá el Santo Padre?’ or ‘Al centro de la injusticia’ [What Will the Holy Father Say? . . . At the Centre of Injustice] and others which will remain in the history of our country as the birth of a new type of song . . . 14

In light of the poverty Violeta lived in, together with her expression of traditional roots and commitment to human rights, it seems strange not to consider her as an artist of the people. It is also unclear who “us” and “we” refer to in the first two sentences of this quotation, since many people expressed the impact Violeta had on their lives through both her art and her generosity. Furthermore, several of her acquaintances left accounts of how she even managed to gain acceptance in Mapuche communities where she traded her own songs or clothing in exchange for their music.15 We may also ask why recognition of her by the people would be deferred to some future time, when it is clear that she interacted successfully and genuinely, especially with rural people, perhaps begging the additional question of who exactly Jara refers to as “the people.” While Joan Jara’s biography is written in English, it is likely that Victor would have used the term el pueblo in the sense of “working class and peasants,” again begging the question of whether Indigenous communities were adequately recognized as being an important component in a democratic society of majority rule. In contrast, Violeta’s experience of cultural difference was more deeply influenced by specific communities—rural campesino, mestizo, or Mapuche—giving rise to sounds and lyrics whose intention is not to organize ‘the people’ to act in concert through homogenizing their specific and distinct realities.

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Contra la guerra (Against War), from Décimas de Violeta Parra16

Cultural and Political Polarization In one of the many anecdotes that reveal how disengaged the universities and other cultural institutions were from Chilean popular culture, Alfonso Alcalde tells how Violeta had gathered and recorded hundreds of stories and song lyrics in the countryside. She then brought these to the highest spheres of the University of Concepción where, as Violeta herself recalls “una vieja descocada le dijo con desprecio que a ella le cargaban los viejos. Son muy aburridos, le bostezó como un caballo” [a crazy old woman told her with contempt that the old songs bugged her. “They’re so boring,” she yawned like a horse].17 Her biographer goes on to lament, “Así también se perdió para siempre el esfuerzo de muchos años

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de investigación y sacrificio. Las cintas magnéticas fueron borradas como más tarde borraron su incipiente Museo Popular desdeñando las cerámicas, las pinturas, los instrumentos parchados de los pobres músicos chilenos. Lo reemplazaron por cerámicas cultas y composiciones de más alcurnia” [The magnetic tapes were erased, the same way that later on her growing Popular Museum was erased, in an act of scorn for the ceramics, paintings, the patchedup instruments of poor Chilean musicians. They replaced it all with high-class ceramics and compositions of “better lineage”].18 Worldrenowned writers like Pablo Neruda and José María Arguedas applauded Violeta Parra’s artistic creativity and integrity, while cultural institutions treated her as an outcast.19 The institutional mentality of the leftist circles duplicated this prejudice, seemingly rejecting Violeta because she was of the people instead of being engaged in party politics in order to become a representative of the people. In general terms, then, Chilean politics were polarized between right wing parties that exclusively defended the interests of the moneyed ruling class, and left wing parties that challenged the power structure and defended majority interests. Party politics did not involve all segments of society and even alienated portions of the lower class who, like Violeta, distrusted politicians and institutions. Leftists did not attend to the realities and aspirations of Indigenous communities. A critical feature shared by many of those communities across the Americas is to conceive of their bonds in transnational terms, given that the borders were drawn by nation-states irrespective of Indigenous nations’ territories. The Mapuche culture is also at significant odds with Chilean patriarchal society, reflected in the male dominant nueva canción groups, in that their shamans (machis) are predominantly women—and women’s decision-making is central to their communities. Alfonso Alcalde draws explicit connections between all realms

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of hegemony in Chile when he says: “Es que en Chile por esos años y por muchos más el arte estaba en manos de unos pocos. Como la tierra y la banca. No había espacio para la hija de una campesina y un profesor primario” [In Chile during those years and for many more, art was controlled by few hands, like land and money. There was no space for the daughter of a peasant and a grade school teacher].20 Violeta was the first Latin American artist to be featured at the Louvre in Paris, where she had an entire hall of the Museum of Decorative Arts to exhibit her visual art, comprising large embroidered tapestries, paintings, sculptures and ceramics. Alcalde notes the irony of how the Chilean upper class and culture managers ignored the huge international successes of their own artists while importing everything, including ideas from France. In vivid contrast, Violeta’s art indicts false official histories that glorify the past, which she contradicts by setting the record straight through circulating popular memory tied to culturally marginalized groups like the Mapuche. One of the most striking features of her lyrics is their popular, poetic quality, free of any officious or propagandistic tone. The emotional/intellectual (sentipensante) power of these verses depends on the uncompromisingly individual/collective force of expression, and the fact that such expression resists narrow partisan co-optation. At the same time, her lyrics expose the injustices propagated by the upper classes, thereby being offensive to them. Violeta’s performance practice—her voice often wavering, slightly off-key, harsh, shrill or sweet but always expressive of genuine, raw emotion—also fails to conform to professional norms, and identifies her as a cantora, as opposed to a cantante, a distinction that will become clearer to her after her immersion in Wallmapu, Mapuche territory. This distinction is difficult to translate but the following description gets at the richer dimensions of being a cantora: “Con absoluta certeza, su arte será desde este momento en función comunitaria y social,

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muchas veces ritual, multiartístico y en los límites de cualquier clasificación. Se autodefinirá como cantora, en oposición a la imagen de la cantante moderna del espectáculo” [It is absolutely certain that her art from that moment on serves a communitarian and social function, often ritualistic, multiartistic and beyond the limits of any classification. She comes to self-identify as a cantora, in opposition to the image of the modern singer of spectacle].21 Despite referring to her own voice as “voz de tarro” [tin can voice] with self-deprecating humour, she also defends it, insisting on singing the parts in a ballet she was envisioning called “El Gavilán” [The Hawk]: “Este canto tiene que ser cantado incluso por mí misma. Porque el dolor no puede ser cantado por una voz académica, una voz conservatorio, como lo es la mía que lleva cuarenta años sufriendo” [These songs have to be sung by me. Because pain cannot be sung by an academic voice, a conservatory voice; for my voice carries forty years of suffering].22 The advice given by Violeta Parra to the writer and composer Patricio Manns speaks to creativity as a search for freedom especially relevant to music: “Escribe como quieras, usa los ritmos como te salgan, prueba instrumentos diversos en el piano, destruye la métrica, libérate, grita en vez de cantar, sopla en la guitarra y tañe la corneta. La canción es un pájaro sin plan de vuelo que jamás volará en línea recta. Odia la matemática y ama los remolinos” [Write however you want, use rhythms as they come to you, try out different instruments on the piano, destroy meter, free yourself, shout instead of singing, blow into the guitar and strum the horn. Song is a bird without a flight plan that will never fly in a straight line. It hates mathematics and loves whirlwinds].23 Violeta’s poetic vision of the relationship of music to freedom suggests that musical freedom is born of experimentation and improvisation—and that music also liberates the spirit and the imagination.

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Violeta’s lyrics denounce the military government’s abuse of all poor people in Chile, though she represents them as concrete individuals with specific circumstances and stories. Besides identifying the government as military and anti-popular, she also positions nation—state, army, and church—against the people, who in these verses are never represented in abstract terms as “the masses,” but as individuals, especially women and children who, in many cases, are directly named. Before the rise of Popular Unity, Violeta was already actively involved in voluntary work, distributing food to the poor organized by the Frente Popular [Popular Front].24 Despite the distance she kept from party affiliations, her lyrics often made assertions about being a Communist and even summoned guerrillas to fight for justice. “Los hambrientos piden pan” [The Hungry are Asking for Bread] closes with the verses “Por suerte tengo guitarra / para llorar mi dolor, / también tengo nueve hermanos / fuera del que se m’engrilló, / los nueve son comunistas / con el favor de mi Dios, sí” [Luckily I have a guitar / to express my pain, / I also have nine brothers and sisters / besides the one that they shackled, / all nine are Communists / with God’s blessing, yes.]25 In the song “Yo canto la diferencia,”26 Violeta derides comandos importantes [important commandos], who swear allegiance to the flag, and señor Ministro [Mr. Minister], and el señor Vicario [the Vicar], for their hypocrisy in pretending to be patriotic while ignoring and even working against the people. She then asks the Vicar in an ironic tone “¿Podría su majestad /oírme una palabrita? / Los niños andan con hambre. / Les dan una medallita / o bien una banderita” [Could your majesty / listen to one little word of mine? / Children are hungry. / They give them a little medal / or a little flag]. In the next stanza, a woman named Luisa is giving birth, but nobody pays attention because while her screams reach the sky, they are drowned out by the fiesta nacional [festivities of the national holiday]. Violeta inserts herself into the song as midwife and witness to

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Luisa’s miserable conditions: No tiene fuego la Luisa ni una vela ni un pañal. El niño nació en las manos de la que cantando está. Por un reguero de sangre va marchando un Cadillac. Cueca amarga nacional . . .

She doesn’t have fire Luisa a candle or a diaper. The child was born into the hands of the one who is singing. Along a trail of blood a Cadillac passes. Bitter national cueca . . .

The last ambivalent verses of this stanza juxtapose the blood of birth with bloodshed resulting from violence represented obliquely as committed by the rich. Modifying the national song of Chile as bitter, and in the final verse of the song as “Cueca larga militar” [Long military cueca] expresses, in highly condensed language, the appropriation of popular music, made manifest in the cueca, Chile’s national dance, typically trotted out by the government only in the month of September during Independence Day celebrations. Less overt but expressed in terms of her role as cantora is the metaphor of Violeta as intercultural midwife helping to birth this form of testimonial through her song.

Violeta Parra’s Transformative Return to Mapuche Culture In the essay I wrote for the first volume of Rebel Musics, I circled around Violeta’s affinity to Indigenous culture, noting that some of her song lyrics describe these peoples’ struggles and practices, based on first-hand experiences she gained during her travels to different regions in search of popular folk music. Since that work was completed I have become more aware that some of her rhythms are also markedly different from the predominant folklore performed by groups whose music took on a pan-American scope borrowing from a wide array of Indigenous and Afro-Latino cultures. They were even different from her other songs based on traditional Chilean folk

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rhythms like the cueca and tonada, or the many borrowed rhythms like corridos and boleros of her earliest performances and recordings. But like many other listeners and critics who intuited something culturally other in her music, I had nothing more to go on. This has changed with the recent discovery, by Chilean literary scholar Paula Miranda, of a box containing four tapes of 39–40 songs together with commentary by Mapuche singers and elders. This is a major contribution to understanding Violeta’s difference, or the critical “missing link” in her biography, as noted on the Mapuche nation’s website mapuexpress.org. There seems to be a fifth tape with the recording of the machi María Painén Cotaro still missing.27 An interviewer once asked Violeta if she was an india (Indian), adding that he hoped the question didn’t insult her. She responded by asking why this would be an insult, explaining “no, mi abuela era india, mi abuelo era español: así yo tengo un poquito de india. Estoy enojada con mi madre porque no se casó con un indio. De todas maneras, ves tú cómo yo vivo . . . un poco como los indios” [no, my grandmother was an Indian, my grandfather was Spanish: so I have a bit of Indian in me. I’m angry at my mother for not marrying an Indian. In any case, you see how I live . . . a little like the Indians”].28 It is well known that Violeta spent over fifteen years traveling from one end of the country to the other recording the songs and stories of campesinos, many of whom were Indigenous. In his prologue to Libro Mayor de Violeta Parra, Victor Casaus insists on the importance of this other side of Violeta’s creative genius: “esa vocación firme, indoblegable, de rastrear raíces musicales en un pasado que no se detenía en la canción del siglo XIX, sino se remontaba mucho más allá, a las fuentes ancestrales de la rica herencia indígena” [that steady untiring vocation to track down musical roots from a past that didn’t stop in the nineteenth century but went much further back to the ancestral origins of our rich Indigenous heritage].29 This reference to the nineteenth century is significant in

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that political élites preferred an “easy listening” bourgeois version of what they considered to be their “traditional” folklore, a preference that conveniently erased more ancient Indigenous musical roots together with the continuity of Indigenous music and influences that long preceded the nineteenth century, let alone centuries of colonial intervention. The content of these tapes, also interpreted by Miranda based on her knowledge of Violeta’s poetry and Mapuche poetics, has been translated by Elise Loncon, a linguist and fluent speaker of Mapudungun (or “Mapuzugun”), the language spoken by the Mapuche, and historicized by Allison Ramay, an academic who works in both Chile and the US. Together, these three scholars wrote Violeta Parra en el Wallmapu: su encuentro con el canto mapuche [Violeta Parra in Wallmapu: her encounter with Mapuche song] published by Pehuén, a small press devoted to Indigenous peoples and the multicultural heritage of Chile. Wallmapu, also known as Araucanía in Spanish, is the ancestral territory of the Mapuche people, a cross-border nation, straddling the Andes that is currently being reclaimed through decolonization struggles, largely against extractive industries supported by neoliberal and neocolonial governments. Violeta Parra en el Wallmapu examines how Violeta’s songs decolonize knowledge, while the book enacts intercultural decolonizing research, as noted by mestizo Mapuche historian Fernando Pairican at the launch, his only lament being that the publication doesn’t include a CD or an online link to the recordings it interprets.30 In their individual presentations at the book launch “Violeta Parra en el Wallmapu: Tres reflexiones desde la interculturalidad y la interdisciplina” [“Violeta Parra in Wallmapu: three reflections on intercultural interdisciplinarity”] the authors detail how, to date, their research results were presented in Millelche and Lautaro, two

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of the main sites where Violeta interviewed and recorded singers, providing a good example of the ethical practices of decolonizing research that returns results directly to the communities where they originated. A surviving elder don Nicasio López and his son Bernardo lamented never knowing what had become of the tapes that Violeta recorded, but this was because she had decided to treat these differently from all her other fieldwork with campesinos that she disseminated through performances, publications, and conferences.31 While Violeta did compose, perform, and record songs clearly influenced by Mapuche music and worldview, she had not revealed these recordings for three reasons identified by these researchers. The first is the linguistic obstacle posed by songs in Mapudungun, a language that Violeta did not understand, though she borrowed key words where they were pertinent to her lyrics. The machi—shaman/healer/teacher—María Painén Cotaro was bilingual, so able to teach and converse with Violeta in Spanish, thus providing an intercultural bridge that allowed Violeta to learn from Mapuche culture even as she maintained her own distinctive musical voicings and aesthetics. The second reason is that her extended encounter with the Mapuche inspired her to create her own pieces instead of trying to replicate what she heard in Wallmapu, and the third suggests that she understood the risks of appropriation. By contrast, during this same period white men routinely donned Indigenous clothing, and played Indigenous music on Indigenous instruments, without ever considering the implications. As Violeta told her brother “No es el tiempo todavía para difundir el canto mapuche porque no se va a entender su valor y prefiero esperar a que representantes de su pueblo lo den a conocer” [It is not yet the time to disseminate Mapuche song because its value won’t be understood, and I prefer that representatives of their own community be the ones to make it known].32

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In her presentation during the launch of Violeta Parra en el Wallmapu, Miranda speculated that the recordings Violeta made in Mapuche territory (1957–8) triggered in her the most creative and experimental stage of her career.33 Miranda connects specific compositions by Violeta to Mapuche values she had been taught by the machi Maria Painén Cotaro, with whom she spent an intensive month forging a close and powerful relationship in which, according to Miranda, Violeta discovered her own identity: “artística y de mujer popular, moderna e indígena. De ser plena” [artistic, woman of the people, modern and Indigenous. Full being].34 The values or themes Miranda sees in both Mapuche song and Violeta’s songs are “new images of love and of women made manifest in ‘El Gavilán,’ ‘Que pena siente el alma’ or ‘Volver a los 17’ [The Hawk, What Pain the Soul Feels, Being 17 Again]; ritualistic functions in ‘El Guillatún’ and ‘Gracias a La Vida’ [In Gratitude for Life]; compassionate vindication in ‘Levántate, Huenchullán’ [Rise Up, Huenchullán] (also titled ‘Arauco tiene una pena’ [Arauco Has a Sorrow]) and ‘Según el favor del viento’ [Up to the Wind’s Favour]; vitalism and deep connection to nature in ‘Es una barca de amores” [It’s a boat of love]. The guiding principle for drawing these connections between Mapuche values and Violeta’s songs is their social function, by which Miranda means that this kind of song, “realiza acciones sobre el mundo: enamorar, conmemorar, festejar, sanar, agradecer” [acts upon the world: to enamour, commemorate, celebrate, heal, to feel/ express gratitude].35 In Wallmapu, Violeta discovers that her singing has the same worldmaking significance that the Mapuche give their songs, “Que es una función siempre social, que el canto sirve para algo. No es mero artificio lingüístico, ni adorno, ni suntuario como en el arte moderno, sino que ese canto, esa palabra, tiene que servir para algo, para hacer llover, para que deje de llover, para agradecer, para siembra, para enamoramiento, para hacer dormir una guagüita” [There is always a social function; the song serves

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some purpose. It’s not a linguistic artifice, ornament, luxury as it is in modern art, but rather that song, that word has to do something, make it rain, stop the rain, express gratitude for the sowing of crops, for falling in love, for helping the baby to fall asleep].36 Miranda’s claim that this poetry capable of worldmaking doesn’t exist in the Hispanic tradition seems overstated given that all cultures have lullabies to help babies fall asleep, for example, and that the nueva canción in support of workers and peasants also strove to bring about change—to make a different world. Perhaps the difference is not so stark and yet there is a difference between how a singer of didactic lyrics or propaganda thinks about making social change through persuasion, and the incantatory power of Indigenous ceremonial songs that speak to spirits, and call down ancestors, while recognizing the worth of an ancient and permanent world that is known to pass through cycles of upheaval and balance, in the course of cosmic changes.

Reclaiming Indigeneity in Violeta’s Last Songs Violeta’s best-known composition “Gracias a La Vida” [In Gratitude for Life] has been described as a hymn to life in which she thanks specific manifestations of truth, beauty, and justice all intimately associated with her beloved.37 Each stanza opens with the singing of praises to some aspect of life and a giving of thanks for how it has blessed her personally. Each stanza closes with an image related to the man she loves, giving an intimate tone to a song that nevertheless celebrates the gifts of the senses that Violeta connects to consciousness and the capacity to envision social justice: Gracias a La Vida que me ha dado tanto. Me dio dos luceros, que cuando los abro Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco, Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado

Thanks to life, which has given me much. It gave me two shining stars, and when I open them I perfectly distinguish black from white,

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Y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo ... Gracias a La Vida que me ha dado tanto. Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto, así yo distingo dicha de quebranto, los dos materiales que forman mi canto, y el canto de ustedes que es el mismo canto y el canto de todos que es mi propio canto. Gracias a La Vida que me ha dado tanto.

and high in the sky its starry depths and in the crowds the man I love ... Thanks to life, which has given me much. It has given me laughter and weeping, this is how I tell bliss from breakdowns, the two materials that form my song, and your song, which is the same song, and everyone’s song, which is my own song. Thanks to life, which has given me much.

The emphasis on the ability to distinguish good from evil, truth from falsehood, joy from misery, is reminiscent of the song “I Sing of Difference” quoted in the epigraph to this essay. A striking feature of both song lyrics is the art with which Violeta interweaves personal experience and feeling with her own place in community, even when that place constantly eluded her, leaving her in solitude. Fernando Sáez’s interpretation of “Gracias a La Vida” stresses the negative, perhaps as a result of concentrating too closely on the autobiographical dimensions of Parra’s work: “compuesta luego del intento de suicidio de enero del ‘66, que lejos de ser un himno a la vida, es un recuento poético de sus pérdidas” [composed shortly after attempting suicide in January of ‘66, far from being a hymn to life, it is a poetic recounting of her losses].38 The fact that this song belonged to a collection that Violeta chose to name Las últimas canciones de Violeta Parra [Violeta Parra’s Last Songs] seems to support Sáez’s interpretation (though “últimas” can also mean “latest”). Returning to this song now that I understand more about Violeta’s transformative time in Wallmapu, it is clearly about feeling and expressing gratitude, an important affective value across Indigenous cultures. Not only is gratitude expressed in thanksgiving ceremonies, individuals are taught from an early age to culti-

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vate this feeling as a daily practice in relation to the animate earth. “‘Gracias a La Vida’ es mucho más que una canción, es un acto ritual de gratitud y sanación . . . Agradecimiento, respeto y reciprocidad son la base para una convivencia plena en comunidad. De ahí que esta canción se deba imaginar más bien como una ética de comportamiento, como una ecopoética, que ha encontrado en el canto ritual mapuche su sentido fundamental y definitivo . . . ” [“In Gratitude to Life” is much more than a song, it is a ritual act of gratitude and healing . . . Gratitude, respect and reciprocity are the basis of full coexistence in community. Hence, this song should be imagined more as an ethics of behaviour, an ecopoetics that finds in ritual Mapuche song its fundamental and definitive significance . . . ].39 The song represents the senses as the sources of knowledge, in accordance with Mapuche epistemology based on direct observation and interaction with other living beings, including the animate earth. The first principle of this epistemology, the Mapudungun language, was out of Violeta’s reach. Since according to Mapuche cosmovision, the earth speaks — “Las Hablas de le Tierra” (the sayings of the earth/land)40 the people of the land, which is the meaning of “Mapuche,” think that their language originates from the land and has an ongoing relation to all it contains beyond mere representation.41 Direct observation—inarrumen—as the basis of knowledge is explained in more complex and less purely empirical terms by Mapuche scholar Juan Ñanculef Huaiquinao, who breaks down the word to reveal its ancillary meaning as “pasar la orillita de un camino muy angosto y que está al borde de un precipicio” [to pass along the edge of a very narrow path bordering a precipice]. This visual and visceral account of consciousness is especially suggestive in relation to Violeta’s sensual observations, perhaps tainted by her fixation on one individual who will diminish her will to live.42 inarrumen es “observar”, es la preocupación consciente y per-

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manente del ser humano mapuche de cada paso que da, ya que cada día que pasa hace inarrumen; observa el día, la noche, el movimiento del sol, de la luna, de todo los detalles en su vivir. El vivir imbuido en el medio, en la naturaleza plena constituye algo así como un peligro de muerte constante, y si se quiere vivir, entonces se debe hacer inarrumen . . . observer para descubrir qué pasa, qué hay detrás de algo, pues siempre hay algo más de lo que nuestros ojos ven o creen ver . . . el concepto inarrumen es una epistemología del darse cuenta del mundo, del universo total.43 [inarrumen is “to observe,” it is the conscious and permanent preoccupation of Mapuche human beings at every step, since each day that passes they practice inarrumen—they observe the day, the night, the movement of the sun, of the moon, all the details of one’s life. To live immersed in one’s environment, in the fullness of nature constitutes something akin to the constant danger of death, and if one wants to live, then one has to practice inarrumen . . . observe to discover what is going on, what there is behind something, because there is always something more beyond what our eyes see or believe they see . . . the concept of inarrumen is an epistemology of being aware of the world, of the whole universe.]

This hyper-awareness and deep recognition of surroundings and environment, coupled with the constant nearness of death might also characterize the poet’s openness and vulnerability, recalling the pain Violeta said to have suffered in hearing some of the songs she recorded in marginalized and isolated communities. Such a community is Arauco, an administrative region of Chile whose name clearly relates it to the Mapuche territory also known as Araucanía. The song “Arauco tiene una pena” [Arauco has a sorrow] (also appearing with the title “Levántate, Huenchullán” [Rise Up, Huenchullán]) expresses collective pain or sorrow but it is also a

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call for Indigenous rebellion. Arauco tiene una pena que no la puedo callar, son injusticias de siglos que todos ven aplicar, nadie le ha puesto remedio pudiéndolo remediar. Levántate, Huenchullán.

Arauco has a sorrow that I can´t silence, it´s the injustices of centuries that everyone sees being done, no one has remedied this even though it could be remedied. Rise up, Huenchullán.

Un día llega de lejos Huescufe conquistador, buscando montañas de oro, que el indio nunca buscó, al indio le basta el oro que le relumbra del sol. Levántate, Curimón. ... Adónde se fue Lautaro perdido en el cielo azul, y el alma de Galvarino se la llevó el viento sur, por eso pasan llorando los cueros de su kultrún. Levántate, pues, Callfull.

One day came, from far away a thieving conqueror looking for mountains of gold that the Indians never looked for. To the Indian, there is enough gold Shining on him from the sun. Rise up, Curimón ... Where did Lautaro go lost in the blue sky, and Galvarino´s soul was carried away by the southern wind, that´s why, crying, pass the leather skins of his drum Rise up, then, Callfull

Del año mil cuatrocientos que el indio afligido está, a la sombra de su ruca lo pueden ver lloriquear, totora de cinco siglos nunca se habrá de secar. Levántate, Callupá

From the year 1400, the Indians are afflicted, in the shadow of his tent you can see him cry softly 500-year old totora that will never dry up. Rise up, Callupán.

Arauco tiene una pena más negra que su chamal, ya no son los españoles los que les hacen llorar, hoy son los propios chilenos los que les quitan su pan. Levántate, Pailahuán. ...

Arauco has a sorrow blacker than its waistcloth, it´s no longer the Spaniards who make them cry. Now it´s Chileans themselves who steal their bread. Rise up, Pailahuán ...

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This song is significantly different from the nueva canción repertoire in its implicit linking of capitalism to colonization presented from the Mapuche perspective. Violeta was largely alone in this historical consciousness influenced by her gathering sense of the importance of Indigenous epistemes, especially since leftists had divided the world according to a Marxist interpretation of European history and capitalist exploitation of workers and undifferentiated peasants. The knowledge of her own mixed identity, and her awareness of the specific injustices done to Indigenous people must have left Violeta in an in-between place, called “xampurria” in the huilliche language,44 meaning belonging to neither Mapuche nor white Chilean culture and community.45 Xampurria also signifies “este desarraigo territorial y simbólico, [que] evidencia la negación y menosprecio por los orígenes mestizos del individuo” [this territorial and symbolic deracination, proof of negation and contempt toward the mestizo origins of a person].46 Despite the injustice and neglect experienced by the Indigenous people in this song, the closing line of each stanza not only commemorates a Mapuche lonco or leader but calls upon him to rise again. This calling upon the dead to continue the fight is not mere fancy as a Western interpretation might lead one to think. There is a long history of Indigenous belief in the eternal presence of warriors who fought and died defending their territories against colonizing armies. The spirits of these ancestors are thought to return, inhabiting or inspiring new warriors in the ongoing struggle.47 My own interpretation of this song diverges significantly from that of Paula Miranda: El arquetipo heroico del mapuche (o araucano como lo bautizaron los cronistas), esgrimido como gesto identitario en los discursos nacionalistas de izquierdas y derechas, aquí no tiene lugar y sí, en cambio, prevalece la imagen de quien ha sido derrotado para

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siempre, pues la sangre indígena se ha derramado persistentemente sin testigos ni deudos, convirtiéndose incluso los propios chilenos en los agentes de la neocolonización. Así la canción, lejos de remitir a una proclama de alzamiento indígena, es el suspiro final de quien ha caído en la desesperanza más absoluta e irreversible: “totora de cinco siglos, nunca se habrá de secar.48 [The heroic archetype of the Mapuche (or Araucano as the chroniclers baptized them), wielded as a gesture of identity in nationalist discourses of leftists and rightists, has no place here; instead, the prevailing image is of one who has been defeated forever, since Indigenous blood has been spilt persistently without witnesses nor relatives, with even Chileans turning into the agents of neocolonization. Therefore the song, far from referring to a proclamation of Indigenous uprising, is the final sigh of one who has fallen into the most absolute and irreversible despair: “500year old totora, that will never dry up.”]

Violeta softens her voice for the closing line of each stanza instead of belting these out in the heroic tone of a rallying cry, but I interpret this gentle refrain—“rise up”—not as a final sigh. I hear the will for resurgence against the clichéd heroic discourses Miranda correctly identifies with nationalistic appropriations of the Mapuche warrior image. The identification of Arauco with the “500-year old totora / that will never dry up” (a bulrush-type plant native to Chile) suggests that despite the centuries of colonial rule, the totora-Mapuche will continue to survive through a combination of radical patience and rebellion.49 As Miranda herself notes in her contradictory reading, “Lautaro y Galvarino mueren, pero reencarnarán en el cielo azul y en el viento sur, ellos serán eternos en/ con la naturaleza.”50 [Lautaro and Galvarino (assassinated Mapuche leaders) die, but will be reincarnated in the blue sky and southern wind, they will be eternal in/with nature]. Miranda’s interpretation of this song lyric becomes fatalistic because she subsumes Indigenous

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memory-prophecy into a Western understanding of history. The assassination of leaders and defeat of the Mapuche in specific battles need not be read as the fatalistic story of the vanishing Indian, that other nationalist and self-serving cliché. Rather, as is implicit in a recent book review essay titled “Wallmapu Rising,” a string of defeats can be followed by resurgence through intergenerational histories. The widespread belief among Indigenous peoples of the Americas that the Europeans turned the world upside-down, far from being a final state of affairs, is one that awaits its reversal back to a state of balance in which the animate earth is liberated from colonial and capitalist exploitation. The song “El Guillatún” also comes from Violeta’s experience in Wallmapu and represents an important ceremony to bring about collective wellbeing. In this instance the song is performed to stop rains devastating wheat crops.51 Millelche está triste con el temporal Los trigos se acuestan en ese barrial Los indios resuelven después de llorar Hablar con Isidro, con Dios y San Juan con Dios y San Juan, con Dios y San Juan

Millelche is sad about the tempest The wheat lies down in the mud The Indians decide after crying To talk with Isidro, God and Saint John God and Saint John, God and Saint John

Camina la machi para el guillatún Chamal y revoso, trailonco y kultrún Y hasta los enfermos de su machitún Aumentan las filas de aquel guillatún de aquel guillatún, de aquel guillatún

The machi walks to the guillatún Cloak and shawl, headband and kultrún52 And even the sick ones of this machitún53 Fill out the rows of that guillatún of that guillatún, of that guillatún

La lluvia que cae y vuelve a caer Los indios la miran sin hallar qué hacer Se arrancan el pelo, se rompen los pies Porque las cosechas se van a perder se van a perder, se van a perder

The rain that falls and falls again The Indians watch it without knowing what to do They tear out their hair, break their feet Because the crops will be ruined They’ll be ruined, they’ll be ruined

Se juntan los indios en un corralón Con los instrumentos rompió una canción

The Indians gather in a big corral With the instruments a song broke out

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La machi repite la palabra sol Y el eco del campo le sube la voz le sube la voz, le sube la voz El rey de los cielos muy bien escuchó Remonta los vientos para otra región Deshizo las nubes después se acostó Los indios la cubren con una oración con una oración, con una oración

The machi54 repeats the word “sun” And the countryside echoes her voice, echoes her voice, echoes her voice The king of the heavens heard very well Turns away the winds to another region Scattered the clouds and went to bed The Indians cover her with an oration with an oration, with an oration.

Arriba está el cielo brillante de azul Abajo la tribu al son del kultrún Le ofrece del trigo su primer almud Por boca de un ave llamado avestruz llamado avestruz, llamado avestruz

Above is the brilliant blue sky Below is the tribe to the sound of the kultrún They offer their first almud of wheat55 Through the mouth of a bird named ostrich named ostrich, named ostrich

Se siente el perfume de carne y muday Canelo, naranjo, corteza e’quillay Termina la fiesta con el aclarar Guardaron el canto, el baile y el pan el baile y el pan, el baile y el pan

You smell the aroma of meat and muday56 Cinnamon, orange, bark of quillay57 The festival ends with dawn They put away the song, the dance and the bread the dance and the bread, the dance and the bread

This song, like others composed and sung by Violeta, gives a glimpse of life that was subaltern at the time and also un- or underrepresented in the repertoire of most artists. The condensed verses and ritualistic beat of the song enact rather than represent the ceremonial significance of the guillatún. Again, the lyric perspective is tied to the Mapuche in important ways: “Esta mirada se inscribe en la lógica de la plena vigencia de las culturas indígenas, que tiene que ver ya no con los indigenismos integracionistas y desarrollistas, sino con la ‘autonomía’ y la ‘autodeterminación’ de esos pueblos, que han conservado y renovado su caudal de conocimiento y tradiciones, y que gracias a ellas podrán seguir sobreviviendo” [This gaze inscribes itself in a logic that fully validates Indigenous cultures, related not to assimilationist and developmentalist indi-

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genisms but to the sovereignty and self-determination of these peoples who have conserved and renewed their flow of knowledge and traditions, thanks to which they continue to survive].58 After discovering Violeta’s work in Wallmapu, Miranda makes the connection between the places where Violeta grew up and the Mapuche culture she experienced at a young age. Violeta might not have been fully aware of this cultural difference at the time, and it is unclear at what point in her life she understood the significance of her grandmother being Indigenous. What is clear is that her immersive research in Mapuche territory forty years later is a return to what she appreciates in adulthood as her collective and cultural roots. “ . . . ella visitó al menos en tres oportunidades Lautaro, lugar donde vivió su infancia, entre los años 1921 y 1927, y donde se enamoró del ülkantufe Juan López Quilapan y de Juanita Lepilaf, según testimonio de don Nicasio López. Lo mismo le sucedió con otras dos cantores de la zona y con tres cantoras de Labranza” [she visited Lautaro at least three times, the place she lived as a child between 1921–27, and where she fell in love with the Mapuche traditional singer Juan López Quilapan and with Juanita Lepilaf, according to the testimony of don Nicasio López. The same thing happened to her with another two male singers of the area and with three female singers of Labranza].59 Violeta’s decision to not disseminate Mapuche song “because its value would not be understood,” indicates that, by extension and association, she must have felt that the value of her field-work, her newly-gained insights, her establishing of a new peña modeled on a traditional Mapuche ruca,60 would suffer the same fate. Risking the clichéd judgement passed on many artists—that they weren’t understood because they were ahead of their time—I would add that in Violeta’s case this lack of understanding was not just due to her artistic style, but to the deep contempt toward indigeneity held

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by Chileans of European and mestizo backgrounds across the political spectrum. As the verses of “Arauco tiene una pena” accuse: “it´s no longer the Spaniards / who make them cry. / Now it´s Chileans themselves /who steal their bread.” Perhaps artists who are “ahead of their time” are not only great innovators creating new languages that will only be understood later, but they also valorize forms that are ancient and ongoing in marginalized cultures. Two Mapuche writers who spoke at the public launch of Violeta Parra en el Wallmapu, each recognized the historical, cultural, and ethical significance of finally disseminating the songs and stories Violeta had gathered among the Mapuche. Their words offer us the best understanding of Chilean culture in relation to Violeta’s, until now, hidden contributions. Elicura Chihuailaf noted that the book explores Chileans’ troubled identity, what he calls “el lento camino de la chilenidad hacia la ternura por sí mismo . . . una chilenidad, una bella morenidad, que no quiere asumir el buen vivir que está contenido en las páginas del libro” [the slow path of Chilean-ness toward affection for itself . . . a Chilean-ness, a beautiful brownness, that doesn’t want to take on the living-well contained in the pages of this book]. Fernando Pairican asserts “Violeta Parra dialoga con el siglo XXI, al reposicionar el rol de la mujer en la toma de decisiones, revirtiendo el racismo contra los Pueblos Originarios y mostrando el tránsito que la sociedad no indígena no ha hecho en reconocer nuestra ‘bella morenidad’ . . . Violeta piensa en una sociedad multicultural e intercultural, con la transmisión de la palabra como un valor en el ámbito social y comunitario, sanador y liberador. Un llamado a escuchar los orígenes” [Violeta Parra converses with the twenty-first century by repositioning women’s roles in decision-making, reversing the racism against First Peoples, and showing the journey that the non-Indigenous society has not undertaken to recognize our beautiful brownness . . . Violeta envisions a multicultural and intercultural society, circulating the word as value

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in the social and communitarian circle, healing and liberating. A call to listen to origins].61 As new cultural expressions in music, film, literature, and political thinking and actions attest to across Chile and the Americas, people are listening to the consciousness of the very difference sung by Violeta, even as the Mapuche rise to reclaim their traditional territories and ways of life.62 Today, Mapuche and others continue to sing Violeta’s songs, a sure test of time validating the prodigious creativity that flowed from her intensive listening to the voices in Wallmapu and elsewhere to which most urbanites were unresponsive. As the interpreters of these formative experiences affirm “Su immersión en el Wallmapu, le permitió saber de qué estaba hecha su voz y palabra, pero también, y sobretodo su ser. Las últimas canciones y su proyecto de la Carpa de la Reina, son la culminación de ese sentido que le otorgó a su palabara: social, comunitaria, sanadora, y liberadora” [Her immersion in Wallmapu allowed her to know of what her voice and word were made, but also, and above all her own being. The last songs and her project The Tent of La Reina are the culmination of the meaning she gave to her word: social, communitarian, healing, and liberating].63 Like the chain of defeats Violeta chronicles in “Arauco tiene una pena,” these are fleeting by comparison to the perpetuity of the insights and ideas animating her final peña project, to create a kind of pluriversity of folklore based on a Mapuche understanding of education and relationships, “Aquí levantaré un Centro de Arte Popular. Aquí se escucharán las canciones desconocidas, las que brotan de las mujeres campesinas, las quejas y alegrías de los mineros, las danzas y la poesía de los isleños de Chiloe” [Here I’ll raise a Centre of Popular Art. Here will be heard unknown songs that sprout from campesina women, the laments and joys of the miners, the dances and poetry of the Chiloe islanders].64

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Despite knowing that people were not ready for this radical paradigm shift to value cultural and social differences, Violeta lived as if the world were already a just and inclusive place. When asked which of all the artistic media—music, poetry, painting, sculpture, fibre art—she practiced she preferred the most, her response suggested that, for her, art was no longer the supreme value it is in Western culture. Elisa Loncon, one of the three authors of Violeta Parra en el Wallmapu, offers a visual illustration of küme mogen, the Mapuche concept of living well, called “Flor de la Palabra” [Flower of the Word], a flower image with nine petals representing “being wise; communitarian space; valuing biodiversity; nature is spiritual; observe and experience; resolve problems; become aware and change; the word; and dreams.”65 Art does not figure as a petal on this flower illustration of küme mogen in the Mapuche universe of values. Violeta wanted only to be in close contact with people, relationality being the core principle of Indigenous wellbeing. Her ruca tent was conceived as a meeting place for all people, especially the most disenfranchised and marginalized. But after a while nobody came. Time is not linear though and her intention to create solidarity and connection through songs that recuperate lost knowledges and cosmovisions, carries on, speaking to new generations of people ready to enact the profound social and spiritual changes she envisioned through the resistant, utterly unique creative expressions she left us.

Endnotes 1. Violeta Parra was believed to have been born in the city of Chillán, but in reality, her birthplace was the small village of San Carlos on the road to Chillán where her family did eventually settle for a time. This reference to singing ‘a la chillaneja’ is an idiomatic expression that relates her style to her roots and regional traditions, which until recently were not understood to have Indigenous significance. 2. All translations from the Spanish originals are my own. 3. The songs of Violeta Parra are readily available online and in numerous books. There is

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ongoing collaborative work on websites where people discuss how to translate her lyrics into several languages. A simple search of specific song titles will lead to numerous sites including translations, videos of performers singing her songs, and regularly held festivals featuring her music. 4. This belief, that the world wants to be born again, is referenced by Eduardo Galeano, who wrote incessantly about his and others’ visions of justice. See Fischlin and Nandorfy. Eduardo Galeano: Through the Looking Glass. 5. Jara, Victor, 201. 6. See ReMastered: Massacre at the Stadium, a film released in 2019 as part of Netflix’s ReMastered Series. 7. It is customary in Latin American criticism to refer to Violeta Parra by her first name. This is not a sign of disrespect based on gender but rather an expression of affection even by those who had never met her. It might also reflect a practice carried over from testimonial writing, since many of the elders and their descendants speak to academics about their direct contact with her or transgenerational memories of this woman who was informal but respectful. When doing fieldwork recording and interviewing campesinos and Indigenous people, she never adopted the demeanor or methodology of a social scientist. Instead, she approached people as equals and managed to befriend even the most recalcitrant among them. 8. Vettner, “Violeta.” 9. Cabezas, “The Chilean,” 32. 10. Jara, Victor, 172. 11. López Veraga and Lucero, “Wallmapu Rising,” 50. 12. In the biography of Victor Jara entitled Victor: An Unfinished Story, his wife Joan Jara relates how Victor tried to communicate his social views musically on the campuses of Berkley and UCLA, and how despite the hippies’ sympathy towards the problems of Latin America, they were most concerned with the war in Vietnam and protesting the draft; “they had their own fight and their own cause. Victor felt that politically they tended to be very naïve, that they would never achieve a revolution, not even of ‘flowers’—the drugs would take care of that, defusing what might have been a powerful movement of rebellion” (Jara, Victor, 111). Victor commented on how “commercial tripe” was disseminated by mass media that “ . . . have taken certain measures: first, the commercialisation of so-called ‘protest music’; second, the creation of ‘idols’ of protest music who obey the same rules and suffer from the same constraints as the other idols of the consumer music industry—they last a little while and then disappear. Meanwhile they are useful in neutralising the innate spirit of rebellion of young people” (Jara, Victor, 121). 13. Morris, “Canto,” 121. 14. Jara, Victor, 105. 15. In his biography La Vida Intranquila [An Agitated Life], Fernando Sáez addresses the difficulty of being accepted into an Indigenous community and how Violeta overcame the reticence and suspicion of the Araucano, which she never managed to do in the non-native context:

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Siempre había que disponer de un tiempo largo, propicio para alcanzar la entrega. Una canción de ella, cantada por ella, o el intercambio de conocimientos podían bastar. Hasta llegó a usar la vieja costumbre del trueque para resolver su cometido, así lo hizo para entrar en los reductos araucanos, llevando una maleta con ropa que cambiaba por canciones. Así eran los primeros contactos que casi siempre terminaban en una amistad sincera, porque con todas estas gentes Violeta tenía la calidez de los que la conocían bien, quedando postergados y cuidadosamente reservados su mal humor y sus rabietas para quienes no lograran entender lo que ella hacía y representaba. (Sáez, La Vida, 60) [A long time always had to be dedicated to getting them to “deliver.” In some cases, one of her songs, sung by her, or the exchange of information would be enough. She went as far as to use the old custom of barter to gain access into Araucanian territory, taking a suitcase of clothes to exchange for songs. These first contacts almost always developed into sincere friendships, because with all these people Violeta showed the warmth that she gave freely to those who knew her well, saving her bad moods and fits of anger for those who did not comprehend what she was doing and what she represented.] 16. “Significativo resulta en esta última, que entre todos los personajes que aman la paz (ella misma pintadad de color violeta, un amigo argentino y una amiga chilena), se incluya un cuarto personaje indígena, ubicado estratégicamente al lado derecho del fusil que divide la escena y que su color sea de un azul profundo. De cabeza de cada uno de los personajes surge un ramo de flores, que retrata sus almas, bajo la idea mapuche de una humanidad que es como un jardín de flores de distintos colores y esencias. Además, en todas las arpilleras hay un elemento que destaca sobremanera, y es la expresión de un cielo bordado, cargado de sentidos y volúmenes, lo que se corresponde con la enorme importancia que tiene el cielo en la cultural mapuche, comprendido como la ‘tierra de arriba’ o wenumapu, lugar donde se leen los signos que regirán la vida ritual y cotidiana de este pueblo” (Miranda et al. 69). [Suggestive in this last piece is that among all the characters who love peace (she herself painted violet, an Argentine male friend and a Chilean female friend), there should be a fourth Indigenous character, strategically placed to the right of the gun that divides the scene and that this one should be a deep blue. The head of each of the characters sprouts a bouquet of flowers, portraying their souls, according to the Mapuche conception of humanity as a garden of flowers of different colours and essences. Furthermore, in all these tapestries there is a highlighted element which is an embroidered sky, laden with volumes of meaning, corresponding to the enormous importance the sky holds in Mapuche culture, understood as the “earth above” or wenumapu, place containing the signs that rule the ritual and everyday life of this people. 17. Alcade, Todo, 43–44. 18. Alcade, Todo, 43–44. 19. The Peruvian novelist José María Arguedas suffered similar circumstances to Violeta Parra’s in that he was traumatically torn between Indigenous and white culture and committed suicide while writing a novel entitled El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo [The Fox from Above and the Fox from Below] which deals precisely with the cultural violence

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rooted in class and racial conflicts. Arguedas said about Violeta that she was “lo más chileno de lo más chileno que yo tengo la posibilidad de sentir; sin embargo, es al mismo tiempo, lo más universal que he conocido de Chile” [the most Chilean of Chileans that I had the opportunity of listening to; she is, at the same time however, the most universal of Chileans] (Alcalde, Todo, 49). 20. Alcade, Todo, 47. 21. Miranda et al., Violeta, 67. 22. Miranda et al., Violeta, 71. 23. Alcade, Todo, 39. This representation of song as freedom of movement and sound liberated from its conventional source to produce an orgy of synesthesia is strongly reminiscent of García Lorca’s artistic vision and language. For instance in the poem “Standards and Paradise of the Blacks,” Lorca describes their vision in the same love/hate terms: “They hate the bird’s shadow / on the white cheek’s high tide / . . . / They hate the unbodied arrow, / the punctual handkerchief of farewell, / . . . / They love the deserted blue” (García Lorca, Poet, 25). 24. In a chapter entitled “Ayudar a los necesitados” [Helping those in Need], Alonso Alcalde remembers how much time and energy Violeta Parra sacrificed whenever her help was required: “El Partido fue el que le dio esa tarea y ella se levantaba antes que apareciera el sol y ya abría su almacén y les vendía a esa gente a precio de costo, sin ganar ni un centavo. Porque eso es lo que le dictaba la conciencia de ella. Ayudar, ayudar a los más necesitados, sobre todo cuando la soberbia de los poderosos se ensañaba contra los pobres, contra los más indefensos como era ella misma” [The Party assigned her this task (to run some of the food distribution centres) and she would get up before sunrise to open her shop and sell to people at cost, without earning a cent for herself. Because that is what her conscience dictated to her. To help, help the most needy, especially when the arrogance of the powerful was leveled against the poor, against the most helpless people like herself] (Alcalde, Todo, 31). There are numerous accounts of how Violeta would literally give all her clothes to poor women who came begging at her door, and that this generosity was one of the factors in her own poverty and her rundown appearance. These testimonies support the ethical tone of her lyrics, which express Violeta’s commitment to participatory politics and activism. 25. Alcade, Todo, 120. 26. The title of this song is part of a sentence that says “I sing the difference/between what’s true and false” but in Spanish “yo canto la diferencia” can also stand alone to mean “I sing difference, I sing of/for difference” and given Violeta’s appreciation of cultural difference ignored by colonists and neocolonists alike, this title and verse fragment invites plurivocal play. 27. Cazenave, “Violeta.” 28. Parra, El Libro, 38. 29. Casaus, “Prologue,” 13. 30. Pairican, “Presentación.” 31. Miranda, et al., Violeta, 58. 32. Miranda, et al., Violeta, 21.

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33. Palabra Pública, “Violeta Parra.” 34. Miranda, et al., Violeta, 18. 35. Miranda et al., Violeta, 17. 36. Cazenave, “Violeta Parra,” elaborating on Miranda et al. 37. It is interesting to note the significant differences between those songs of Parra and Jara that have been referred to as hymns. In Violeta’s case, “Gracias a La Vida” has often been referred to as a hymn to life and love, while Victor’s “Venceremos” [We Will Win / We Shall Overcome] “became the ‘hymn’ of Popular Unity” (Jara, Victor, 145). 38. Sáez, La Vida, 159–60. 39. Miranda, et al., Violeta, 83. 40. Readers of Spanish can find an in-depth presentation of Mapuche epistemology and Wisdom in Tayiñ Mapuche Kimün: Epistemología Mapuche–Sabiduría y conocimientos by Mapuche scholar Juan Ñanculef Huaiquinao. 41. Readers of English can find similar thinking about the relationship between land and language in the work of Okanagan storyteller and scholar Jeannette Armstrong. 42. Violeta’s tumultuous love affair and musical relationship with Swiss flute player Gilbert Favre is documented through the publication of her letters to him in Libro Mayor de Violeta Parra. While these only reveal her side of the dialogue, it is clear that she felt that he could not reciprocate her passion and deep love for him. She repeatedly admonishes him for not fully expressing his feelings and thoughts, and for being lukewarm in his communications with her. Their relationship is central to the biopic Violeta Se Fue a Los Cielos [Violeta Went to Heaven] based on a book by the same title by her son Angel. As actual letters and the film show, instead of helping Violeta with her peña, La Carpa de la Reina, Favre goes to Bolivia and invites her to give it up to join him at the peña he was starting there. It seems that she agrees, but shoots herself shortly after in her peña, modelled on a Mapuche ruca [traditional dwelling] to house her ambitious intercultural projects. 43. Ñanculef Huaiquinao, Tayiñ, 22–23. 44. The Huilliche, Huiliche or Huilliche-Mapuche comprise the southern partiality of the Mapuche macroethnic group of Chile and the principal Indigenous population of Chile from Toltén River to Chiloé Archipelago. 45. “Xampurria” is very similar to the concept of “Nepantla” more familiar in North America given its roots in the colonization of Mexico: “The term, Nepantla is a Nahuatl (Aztec language) term connoting in between or a reference to the space of the middle” (https://www.chicanoart.org/Nepantla.html). 46. Schwenke, “El desarraigo.” 47. See a discussion of this concept in relation to Tupac Amaru in Fischlin and Nandorfy’s Eduardo Galeano: Through the Looking Glass. 48. Miranda et al., Violeta, 73. 49. The concept of radical patience is central to the work of Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko and other Indigenous storytellers whose cosmovision integrates cyclical change at its core. Mapuche cosmovision is based on cycles dominated by water or land

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alternately usurping each other over long temporal cycles. In Silko’s vision, deeply influenced by the Maya calendar, Indigenous tenacity makes current injustices bearable in the knowledge that European domination will disappear, that Europeans themselves will either disappear or be spiritually transformed to turn from exploiters of land, to belonging to the land. 50. Miranda, et al., Violeta, 74. 51. The Guillatún is a Mapuche ceremony to create wellbeing and strengthen community. Readers of Spanish can find an in-depth interpretation of this ceremony in Tayiñ Mapuche Kimün: Epistemología Mapuche–Sabiduría y conocimientos by Mapuche researcher Juan Ñanculef Huaiquinao. 52 Mapuche ceremonial hand drum. 53. Ceremony to diagnose and heal. 54. The machi is a shaman-healer-teacher, and in this specific case refers to the machi María Painen Cotaro with whom Violeta spent a month of immersive learning of Mapuche cosmovision and küme mogen (good living in relationships with the animate earth). 55. An almud is an ancient unit of measure originating in the Middle East, and brought to the Americas by the Spanish and Portuguese. 56. Fermented drink made of corn or wheat. 57. A tree native to Chile. 58. Miranda, et al., Violeta, 77. 59. Cazenave, “Violeta.” 60. The ruca is a traditional Mapuche dwelling that Violeta imitated using a circus tent, arranging the central hearth, and other features in accordance with the traditional layout. She called this musical venue ‘La Carpa de la Reina’ [The Tent of La Reina]. “La reina” means “the queen” but here refers to an administrative subdivision like a county containing cities and rural communities, in this case, the county where Violeta decided to raise her tent. Given its location on the outskirts of the city, the audience dwindled not willing or able to make the trip. 61. Centro de Estudios Interculturales e Indígenas, “Violeta Parra.” 62. See for example the detailed account of the aspirations and activism of Mapuche youth in “Territorial dreaming: youth mapping the Mapuche cross-border nation” by Sarah D. Warren. 63. Miranda et al., Violeta, 83. 64. Parra, El Libro, 141. 65. Miranda et al., Violeta, 49.

Works Cited Alcalde, Alfonso. Todo Violeta Parra. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1975. Cabezas, Miguel. “The Chilean ‘New Song.’” Index on Censorship 6, no. 4 (1977): 30–36.

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DOI: 10.1080/03064227708532674. Casaus, Victor. “Prologue.” In El Libro Mayor de Violeta Parra, 9–23. Madrid: Ediciones Michay, 1985. Cazenave, Michel. “Violeta Parra y su vínculo con la cultura Mapuche.” Mapuexpress. Accessed June 24, 2019. http://www.mapuexpress.org/?p=10977. Centro de Estudios Interculturales e Indígenas UC. ‘Violeta Parra en el Wallmapu: un diálogo intercultural de excepción.’ July 18, 2017. Accessed June 24, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMCentro. Fischlin, Daniel, and Martha Nandorfy. Eduardo Galeano: Through the Looking Glass. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2001. Galeano, Eduardo. Memory of Fire: III. Century of the Wind. Translated by Cedric Belfrage. New York: Pantheon, 1988. García Lorca, Federico. Poet in New York. Edited by Christopher Maurer. Translated by Greg Simon and Steven F. White. New York: Noonday Press, 1988. Jara, Joan. Victor: An Unfinished Song. London: Jonathan Cape, 1983. López Vergara, Sebastián, and José Antonio Lucero. “Wallmapu Rising: New Paths in Mapuche Studies” Latin American Research Review 53, no. 3 (2018): 648–54. https://doi.org/10.25222/larr.298. Miranda, Paula, Allison Ramay, and Elisa Loncon. Violeta Parra en el Wallmapu. Su encuentro con el canto mapuche. Santiago, Chile: Pehuén Editores, 2017. Morris, Nancy. “Canto Porque Es Necesario Cantar: The New Song in Chile, 1973-1983.” Latin American Research Review 21, no. 2 (1986): 117–36. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/2503359. Ñanculef Huaiquinao, Juan. Tayiñ Mapuche Kimün. Epistemología Mapuche – Sabiduría y conocimientos. Santiago, Chile: Universidad de Chile, 2016. http://bit.ly/ RMNanculef. Pairican, Fernando. ‘Presentación Violeta Parra. Su viaje en el Wallmapu y su encuentro con el ül mapuche.’ Taller de letras 61 (2017): 139–41. http://tallerdeletras.letras. uc.cl/images/61/P02.pdf. Palabra Pública. “Violeta Parra en el Wallmapu: Tres reflexiones desde la interculturalidad y la interdisciplina.” Palabra Pública, July 18, 2017. Accessed June 24, 2019. http:// bit.ly/RMPalabra. Parra, Isabel. El Libro Mayor de Violeta Parra. Madrid: Ediciones Michay,1985. Parra, Violeta. Décimas de Violeta Parra: Autobiografía en Versos. Introduction by Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, and Pablo de Rokha. Barcelona: Editorial Pomaire, 1976. ReMastered: Massacre at the Stadium. Part of the Netflix Remastered Series and directed by B.J. Perlmutt. 2019. Sáez, Fernando. La Vida Intranquila: Biografía Esencial. Santiago: Editorial Sudamericana, 1999. Schwenke, Gonzalo. “El desarraigo de lo ‘Xampurria’ y el menosprecio por el origen mes-

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Warren, Sarah D. “Territorial dreaming: youth mapping the Mapuche cross-border nation.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 14, no. 2 (2019): 116–37. https://doi. org/10.1080/17442222.2019.1611214. White, Judy, ed. Chile’s Days of Terror: Eyewitness Accounts of the Military Coup. Introduction by José Yglesias. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1974.

7 A Hand on the Mic and a Fist in the Air: Sampling the Civil Rights Era in Holy Hip-Hop

Alyssa Woods and Robert Michael Edwards

Hip-hop’s history is marked by a continuity of concepts, community, and resistance. Although the movement and culture would barely be middle-aged by the standard of a lifetime, members of the hiphop community participate in a vast culture of shared expression, experience, and significance that is marked by a struggle against racism and oppression in America. The historical development of hip-hop signals an intermediary period between what is understood to be the end of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, thought to have been brought to a close with the Civil Rights (Fair Housing) Act of 1968, and the present fight for equality and bodily security on the part of African-Americans in contemporary American culture. In continuity with the movements that preceded and informed it, hip-hop music and culture have been an important location for ongoing protest. In particular, the spread of hip-hop out of its place of origin in economically depressed urban environments and into mainstream culture has created further space for sustained protest against racism, economic discrimination and disparity, police bru-

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tality, and other elements of systemic oppression. This became particularly visible with the music of Public Enemy and NWA in the late 1980s, where dissent against injustice, inequity, and murderous law enforcement practices took center stage in their performances and recordings. At the 2015 BET awards, rapper Kendrick Lamar drew a metaphorical line in the sand, performing his song “Alright” while standing on top of a police car. More than simply a prop, the police car was a stark visual reminder of the ongoing struggles, not only for equality on the part of African-Americans, but also for the simple sense of safety in interactions with front-line authority figures. The previous year, tensions between police and the African-American community came to a head following the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri. What happened in Ferguson was part of a larger epidemic of institutional violence in the United States that led to the Black Lives Matter movement. Beginning with a modest hashtag, Black Lives Matter represents the scope of what is possible when using social media as a tool for activism and change.1 A resurgent Black activist movement that has grown exponentially, Black Lives Matter provides a Black-led, inclusive, intersectional space through which Americans are fighting against ingrained power structures.2 Music has played an integral role in disseminating messages of social justice, and providing a “thematic soundscape” for Black Lives Matter, “flooding the airwaves and heralding a new period of activism.”3 When Kendrick Lamar stepped onto the police car, he associated himself and the song “Alright” with the continuing fight for equality in the American context of intergenerational systemic racism. Following his performance, the refrain “we gon’ be alright” was taken up as a hope-filled battle cry chanted by protesters at Black Lives Matter rallies.4

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The new millennium has seen a renewed wave of protest-centered hip-hop based on the traditions of “conscious rap” that “is socially aware and consciously connected to historic patterns of political protest and aligned with progressive forces of social critique.”5 In conjunction with this movement we can observe direct and overt resistance to hegemonic power structures in the United States, exemplified in the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as viral songs like YG and Nipsey Hussle’s “Fuck Donald Trump” (2016). In this climate, Lamar’s explicit commentary on contemporary events underscores the aforementioned sense of continuity with earlier generations of African-American civil rights advocates and protesters who, while belonging to an earlier generation, are seen as having fought different battles in the same ongoing war for equality and security.6 Many conscious rap artists ground their work in faith-based traditions, leading them to highlight idealized associations with earlier oppressed peoples (such as the ancient Israelites) in their work. This is not surprising given the role that religious institutions (the church, the mosque, the temple) play as locations for wider mobilizations of community identity, solidarity, and protest.7 Hip-hop’s prevalence in the mainstream means that messages such as Lamar’s claim that “we gon’ be alright” are ingrained within the consciousness of the populace at large, providing not only an outlet for protest but also a reception for discourse. Also, unlike earlier civil rights era discourse, new technology and media outlets allow hip-hop artists the opportunity to instantaneously transmit a message that draws together music, samples, lyrics, and visual elements, with immediate access to a vast and engaged audience. This essay examines a recent wave of protest-based hip-hop that quotes civil rights era leaders’ speech and religious imagery to connect the contemporary African-American lived experience to the

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struggles of earlier generations. Through an exploration of songs by Jay Electronica and Kendrick Lamar, we map the diverse ways that rappers engage in social and political protest as an integral component of hip-hop in the new millennium. In particular, our essay focuses on the specific uses of sampled and referenced materials that tie hip-hop’s resistant politics to the longer history of civil rights activism. Ultimately these examples demonstrate the contribution that conscious hip-hop artists make on the level of social protest. Their artistic contributions illustrate music’s potential to encapsulate and move beyond the moment of protest, disseminating their messages to mainstream music audiences, and sparking discourse, debate, education, and action amongst listeners.

Hip-Hop Politics and Socially Significant Sampling Mark Anthony Neal suggests that “there is something inherently political about hip-hop music . . . . It has changed the sonic landscape of urban communities and the recording industry.”8 Hip-hop offers an alternative space for personal expression and public resistance, challenging “urban exclusion, violence, and exploitation.”9 While hip-hop’s resistant potential gained mainstream attention in the late 1980s with Public Enemy, hip-hop, we would argue, has always been resistant: “‘B-girls’ – rappers, graffiti artists, break dancers – have been dealing with and challenging police repression, the media’s criminalization of inner-city youths, and the ‘just-us’ system from the get-go.”10 Tricia Rose’s foundational work on hip-hop’s cultural politics continues to resonate, as these ideas have helped shape our understanding of how hip-hop’s resistant practices go deeper than lyrical expressions of protest. According to Rose, “the politics of rap music involves the contestation over public space, expressive meaning, interpretation, and cultural capital . . . . it is the struggle over context, meaning, and public space.”11 These same

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struggles continue to be negotiated in contemporary hip-hop by the current generation of rappers who have been active post-2000 and, most recently, into the Trump era, marked as it is by the rise of populism characterized by a visible resurgence of white supremacy and racism.12 Overtly politicized discourse has mostly thrived in “conscious” hip-hop (or message rap), which has served as a location for the critique of social, political, economic, and racial concerns. The genesis of conscious rap can be found in Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” (1982), considered to be the first recorded hip-hop track to focus specifically on the socio-economic factors of urban inner-city communities. However, as Murray Forman notes, “while the music of hip-hop serves as a powerful means of articulating complex social issues, it must also be understood as just one facet within a much wider system of cultural practices through which political ideologies are processed and proposed in immediate and urgent contexts.”13 Over the past decade, as race relations in the U.S. have taken center stage in the media, rappers exploring conscious themes have been more visible in the mainstream, allowing for further commercial viability.14 The artists discussed in this paper illustrate the extent to which conscious rap can be both “inside” (Kendrick Lamar) and “outside” (Jay Electronica) commercial mainstream rap. In the production of socially conscious music, rap artists and producers have often relied on sampling and quotation to convey their messages. Hip-hop as a genre has developed multiple artistic practices wherein the interpolation of materials from a variety of sources has become an integral part of the musical, lyrical, and visual landscape. It is a highly referential, intertextual art form where historical and cultural cues are often mobilized for social and political commentary.15 As Justin Williams has illustrated, the musical

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text can illuminate aspects of social cultures and contexts such that sampling and quotation “becomes a framework with which to analyze hip-hop music and wider cultural trends.”16 Samples of, and references to, civil rights era speeches and images have been prevalent in hip-hop for many years. Public Enemy’s sample-based musical backdrops, for instance, create the effect of a city in chaos, but also rely on spoken word samples to frame their messages of political militancy. This can be seen on the track “Fight the Power” (1990), featuring a sample of a 1967 speech by civil rights activist Thomas ‘TNT’ Todd, and “Bring the Noise” (1988) which opens with a sample of Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grassroots Speech” (1963). “Bring the Noise” is a call to social protest that is framed by the opening sample of Malcolm X stating, “Too Black . . . too strong.” The sample is repeated twice, accompanied by the crackle of the original recording, acting as a precursor to the sonic assault of the Bomb Squad’s sample-laden backing track.17 In Malcolm X’s speech, he compares race to a cup of coffee that is “too strong” if it is “too black.” Public Enemy’s focus on the key words “Too black . . . too strong” links Malcolm X to the concept of Black Power that was first articulated by Stokely Carmichael in 1966, a year after X’s death, highlighting his work in laying the foundation for further social protest.18 Civil Rights era references continue to be relevant within contemporary hip-hop with newer artists such as Kodak Black sampling the voice of Malcolm X on his track “Malcolm XXX” (2018). In contrast to Public Enemy, we see Malcolm X used here to suggest non-violent alternatives. Black’s song, released in the wake of the murder of rapper XXXTentacion, explores the issues of violence and criminality that are often glorified in hardcore rap narratives and are a daily reality within the urban landscape of the United States. The song’s title shows an overt conflation of the names

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of Malcolm X and XXXTentacion in order to highlight the ongoing issues of violence faced by African-Americans. By conflating these two figures (Malcolm X and XXXTentacion), while also incorporating elements of his personal narrative, Black is showing an understanding of inter-generational continuity that occurs on two levels: 1) the comparison between Malcolm X and XXXTentacion who were both young, Black, influencers, killed through gun violence in the prime of their lives; and 2) the identification between Black and Malcolm X based on shared Christian upbringing and jailhouse conversion to an alternative form of African-American religion (Nation of Islam and Hebrew Israelite).19

Religion, Race, and the Hip-Hop Paradigm In addition to civil rights era imagery, samples, and news footage, other undercurrents of protest are becoming prevalent in contemporary hip-hop. From its foundational point, hip-hop artists have represented the varieties of African-American lived religious experience and identities. This includes, but is not limited to, Black Protestant Christianity, African-American forms of Islam (Nation of Islam, Nation of Gods and Earths/Five-Percent Nation), as well as more recent conversions of rappers to the Hebrew Israelite movement.20 Of interest to the present discussion is that there are common themes in the lyrics of rappers who identify with all three of the aforementioned expressions of faith.21 Understanding the movements in question as syncretic is a key aspect of their lived context. In defining these movements, we should consider their syncretic nature to be the result of a blending of elements from cultures in dialogue, and sometimes conflict, to create a new cultural product.22 This is certainly the case with the Nation of Islam (NOI) and the Hebrew Israelite movement, both of which developed in a context of reaction to Christianity as a religion that reinforced problematic social norms. In both cases, elements of Christianity are retained and blended

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with unique interpretations of other religious traditions (Judaism, Islam). Through their associations with earlier generations with whom they perceive a common kinship, these groups have further defined themselves and their contemporary struggles. Our focus in this essay is on the intersection of resistant political discourses—evident in the use of footage and samples taken from civil rights era leaders in conscious hip-hop—and religious discourses taken from a Biblical context employed through identification with a faith-based/in-group perspective. The faith-based references, as well as the civil rights era referents, challenge the dominant paradigms of American race relations and are intended to provoke a sense of discord with the world around them, while also underscoring the continuity of circumstance(s) that hip-hop artists see between themselves and earlier generations of African-Americans who used religious texts, spaces, and belief systems as part of a wider vocabulary of protest.

Jay Electronica’s “Better in Tune with the Infinite” Jay Electronica, at the time of this writing, is the most successful and influential hip-hop artist to have never released an album. Even so, he has been the subject of critical acclaim and widespread success within the hip-hop community, including being signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation in 2010. Much of his success is based on his interaction with mainstream rappers and featured verses on their tracks, including Big Sean’s “Control” (2013), and Chance the Rapper’s “How Great” (2016). Even a casual reading of Electronica’s work reveals a deep engagement with themes of religion and social discord (disparate elements that often overlap). Although many rappers reference their faith in their work, Electronica goes beyond this. His work seems to be almost solely engaged with exploring his worldview

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as shaped by both his Christian upbringing and his conversion to Islam. Raised as a Baptist, he cites the influence of the Bible, stating “It’s New Orleans, it’s the South. My mom would ask me, ‘What does this scripture mean?’ I didn’t look at it as boring. A lot of times, it scared me. For a long portion of my childhood, I was afraid at night. It wasn’t the boogeyman; it was, like, the Devil. That kind of shit. Religion had me scared.”23 Electronica’s worldview would begin to change in 1995 when he came into contact with members of the Nation of Gods and Earths (Five Percent Nation). His association with, and knowledge of, the teachings of Five Percent Nation (FPN) are evident throughout his lyrics and some of his key public performances, including his appearance with Jay-Z at the 2014 Brooklyn Hip-hop Festival dressed in the Fruit of Islam uniform.24 Much of Electronica’s work is experimental, moving away from mainstream hip-hop norms. He often raps over classical or film scores that lack the beats generally understood to be a fundamental characteristic of hip-hop. Many of his tracks create a connection between seemingly disparate samples, rapped, and sung passages. For example, “Better in Tune with the Infinite” (2014) weaves together two spoken word samples, a rapped verse, and a Gospel vocal passage by LaTonya Givens. The backing track is a sample of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s piano trio “Bibo No Aozora” from the movie Babel (1996) and does not have a “beat” or a “hook.” The lack of a beat forces the listener to engage further with the samples and the vocal passages. The use of samples in “Better in Tune with the Infinite” is significant from a historical perspective. The first sample the listener encounters is taken from a 1964 interview with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. In the clip he responds to the interviewer’s question: “Where did he [God] go and where is he now?” stating, “If one would open up truth, such as the truth of God to the

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people, I do think that He’s within his rights to stay out of the sight of the people until He has won everything to Himself.”25 This statement of God’s separation from the world is layered over a sample of Sakamoto’s piano trio. The musical sample is repetitive in a minor tonality, striking a serious tone that is at the same time also meditative and reflective. After Elijah Muhammad, 1964. “Interview: this 50-second sample, ending with The History of the Nation of Islam.” Note the similarity between this “So I think that’s a pretty good an- image and the still from The Wizard of Oz, below. swer,” a round of applause signals the section end while transitioning to a spoken word sample from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. This sample is taken from an early scene where Dorothy runs away from home and encounters Professor Marvel. In the film, Marvel (portrayed Dorothy and Professor Marvel in The by Frank Morgan) is a travelling fortune Wizard of Oz, 1939. teller, who, while being portrayed as a charlatan, employs the tricks of his trade in a manner that might be described as ethical. In the sampled scene, Professor Marvel uses his “mystical powers,” which involve sneaking a peak in Dorothy’s basket (where he finds a picture of her and her aunt), to “read her fortune” and describe how much she is missed. He accomplishes this by telling Dorothy that she needs to close her eyes “in order to be better in tune with the infinite.” The two samples at first seem to present disparate viewpoints, with one relaying the voice of a religious leader and the other a roadside fortune teller. Their use acts as a deliberate commentary on the role of the leadership of NOI during the civil rights era. By comparing Elijah Muhammad to

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Professor Marvel, Electronica is highlighting, however subversively, the similarities between the methods and purpose of the two. In both cases, Electronica understands that Muhammad and Marvel rely on sleight-of-hand and fantastic stories, with the intended purpose of perpetuating the greater good.26 Electronica seems to acknowledge that Elijah Muhammad is not entirely genuine while also showing the purpose and outcome of the deception served to further the struggle for racial equality. Jay Electronica uses his music as a platform for exploring his religious worldview, which, due to his deep association with NOI, he views as being synonymous with the civil rights struggle.27 He focuses on his own self-reflection and conversion to Islam, as well as the continuing struggles with oppressive systems that reinforce racism experienced by African-Americans. Lyrically, he explores this throughout his verse, reconciling the necessity “to stand exposed and naked, in a world full of hatred / Where the sick thoughts of mankind control all the sacred,” and proselytize to those who have not been awakened to his message. This interpretation of his lyrics is supported by Electronica’s active role within the Nation of Islam, where he engages in proselytism. In a 2017 interview, he states, “It’s our [the Nation of Islam’s] job to make sure we keep pushing the knowledge out there.”28 In the same interview, he reflects on the role of civil rights era religious figures, admitting that prior to his conversion to Islam, “I didn’t know much about Martin Luther King,” but that “they was fighting the same war with my mama that we still fighting today.”29 Electronica goes on to show the connection of the present-day civil rights struggles and current leadership of NOI to the fight during the civil rights era. In response to being asked, “How does the mission of Martin Luther King relate to the mission of ours in 2017?,” he suggests: “Martin Luther King, the Nation of Islam was standing right there, they’re still standing right here right now . . . . It’s still the same fight now that it was then.”30 This

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clear connection to past struggles situates Electronica’s work within the ongoing history of the civil rights movement, demonstrating the continuity of past civil rights struggles with present articulations of resistant hip-hop practices.

Kendrick Lamar’s “ELEMENT” Unlike Jay Electronica whose music has yet to establish a strong mainstream presence, Lamar’s popularity moved beyond the hiphop world when he won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2017 for the album DAMN. Prior to that, the critically lauded To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) focused heavily on social justice issues, entrenching Lamar within the traditions of conscious hip-hop. Public discourse situated that album as an expression of radical Black consciousness, an association further reinforced when the previously mentioned song “Alright” was taken up as a chant and an unofficial anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement.31 DAMN. continues to explore issues of ongoing racial oppression while also expressing Lamar’s attempts to reconcile this with his combined religious and political ontologies. In this way, the album is constructed as a complete concept that interrogates the expression of Lamar’s worldview—both religious and secular. The listening audience is confronted with a cycle of sin and redemption that includes themes of vice/virtue; private/public life; race; status; and belief. DAMN.’s conceptual framework includes Transgressions (“BLOOD,” “PRIDE,” “LUST,” “FEAR”), Virtues (“LOYALTY,” “LOVE”, “HUMBLE”), and Lineage and Religious/ Prophetic Identity (“DNA,” “YAH,” “GOD,” “DUCKWORTH,” “ELEMENT,” “FEEL,” “XXX”). As a whole, DAMN. tells the story of Lamar’s struggles for ontological meaning as a religious seeker.32 Throughout this cycle, the tracks are informed by Lamar’s engagement with the Hebrew Israelite interpretation of Deuteronomy 28

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and the idea that the current generation of African-Americans are the heirs to the Lost Tribes of Israel who are still wandering in the desert prior to reaching the promised land. The connection to Deuteronomy 28 is stressed at numerous points on the album. For example, the song “YAH” refers directly to the book of Deuteronomy: “My cousin called, my cousin Carl Duckworth. Said know my worth. And Deuteronomy say that we all been cursed.” The connection to the Hebrew Israelite tradition and Deuteronomy 28 invokes the perception of a relationship between the current and ongoing civil rights movement and the history of the Hebrews who are considered to represent the archetype of an oppressed people in Western historical perspectives. Identification with the Lost Tribes of Israel is not a recent concept in African-American religious expression, having emerged in the late nineteenth century with the first Black Jewish movements founded by Frank Cherry and William Saunders Crowdy.33 Connections between Lamar’s worldview, his African-American identity, and the civil rights movement are evident in “ELEMENT,” particularly when viewed through the lens of the music video directed by Jonas Lindstroem and the Little Homies.34 The song’s lyrics provide an introspective look at Lamar’s life, connecting his lived experience to the African-American inner-city context, as well as to the hip-hop sphere. The stripped-down musical backing track provides room for Lamar’s reflective lyrics, dropping in and out to create points of emphasis and build. The music video reflects a series a “flashbacks” by bringing a number of historical photographs to life, most notably, those of civil rights era photographer Gordon Parks.35 In the following analysis, we highlight the ways in which the images, music, and lyrics work together to construct a narrative cycle of violence that connects Lamar’s lived experience to the oppression of his predecessors.

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Interpretation of Gordon Parks, “Untitled” Segregation Stories (1956) in “ELEMENT.”

The opening sequence of the video seems to reflect a return to consciousness or a reawakening that frames the video. Musically, the song begins with an electronic swell that leads into the opening statement by Kid Capri, “New Kung Fu Kenny. Ain’t nobody prayin’ for me. Y’all know, what happens on Earth stays on Earth.”36 These lyrics are treated to high levels of echo and reverb, each line ushered in by an electronic swell that is taken over by the voice. The combination of the echo and swell create an otherworldly feeling, suggesting a return to consciousness. The music video sets this passage to a live action recreation of Gordon Parks’ 1963 untitled photograph from Fort Scott, Kansas of a hand emerging from water. The setting appears to be the still water of a lake, with the hand pointing toward the sky in a manner reminiscent of rising up after baptism. This interpretation is reinforced by Kid Capri’s voice (ushered into the musical texture by a sonic swell) that brings to mind the voice of God during the baptism of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 1. Another possibility is that the protagonist is drowning and struggling to resurface for air. The other-worldly voice could then be understood as the sound of the person seen standing above in the next frame, as heard through

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the water. This interpretation would be supported by later images of Lamar standing bloodied against the backdrop of a blue sky. The opening sequence is vague enough that both interpretations are possible while leading to an experience of transition and rebirth. The connotations of the positive experience of baptism and the negative experience of drowning alternately frame the context of the rest of the narrative.

Interpretation of Gordon Parks, “Harlem Gang Leader” (1948) in “ELEMENT.”

These opening lines by Kid Capri lead into Lamar repeating the line “I don’t give a fuck” in a manner that mimics a record being scratched by a DJ. The scratch effect corresponds to a series of images in the video that are presented as a flashback: 1) somebody recording a present-day gang fight; 2) a recreation of Parks’ 1956 untitled photo of three Alabama children standing together while one points a toy gun at a car;37 and 3) a recreation of a photo from Parks’ 1948 photo essay for Life magazine entitled “Harlem Gang Leader.” The “scratched” repetitions of Lamar’s lines each coincide with a shift to a different image, giving the impression of a series of

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memories or scenes, which are revisited over the course of the video. Lamar’s verse then begins over low synthesized organ chords, set to an image of people gathered around a burning house. As the images shift between a bloodied Lamar set against a blue sky and recreations of vintage photographs of both children and adults (including Parks’ “Boy with June Bug,” 1963), Lamar’s verse presents a generational commentary on his family’s relationship to violence and crime. The images intensify with the entry of a synthesized bass drum mimicking a heartbeat. The viewer is confronted with a child looking for their parents, a man in handcuffs, and a recreation of Parks’ 1963 image of Elijah Muhammad’s daughter Ethel Sharrieff. This photo was featured in Parks’ photo essay “The White Man’s Day Is Almost Over” about Black Muslim life and depicts Sharrieff in the center of a group of women wearing the traditional cotton headpiece associated with the Nation of Islam.

Interpretation of Gordon Parks, “The White Man’s Day Is Almost Over” (1963) in “ELEMENT.”

We see a further intensification of violence as the rest of the beat enters the texture, and Lamar raps “I’m willing to die for this shit . . . I’ll take your fucking life for this shit.” The accompanying images include a person drowning, a person fleeing from the police, Lamar slapping a man kneeling on the ground, and a recreation

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of Parks’ photograph of Muhammad Ali teaching a young boy to fight.38 In recreating the photograph, the directors problematize the hegemonic male norms of fathers teaching their sons how to fight, or “be tough.”39 In the recreation, a young boy shows hesitation and is forced by his father to learn to fight. The image is juxtaposed with Lamar aggressively slapping a man who is kneeling before him as an adult. Brought to life in this way, the innocuous image of Muhammad Ali becomes the starting point for normalizing cycles of violence for young boys.40 Images of youth are prominent in the “ELEMENT” video, juxtaposed to show innocence and violence, as well as generational connections. In addition to the scenes depicting a young boy being taught to fight, we see allusions to gun violence through two other photographic recreations. Documentary photographer Elliott Erwitt’s 1955 photograph “Cracked Glass with Boy” is recreated near the end of the video. In the original, Erwitt shows a Caucasian boy’s eye lining up with the center of the crack in a car window with the shot framed so that it appears as though the boy is looking through a bullet hole in the glass. In the recreation, we see a racial reframing of the shot, which now features an African-American boy

Interpretation of Elliott Erwitt, “Cracked Glass With Boy” (1955) in “ELEMENT.”

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peering out through the hole in the glass (almost looking as though he has been shot in the eye). This scene is foreshadowed earlier in the video when a passing car becomes the target for the boy with the toy gun as the other two children look on. The photo by Parks appearing at points early and midway through the video then finds its conclusion in Erwitt’s picture. The images frame the narrative, suggesting that the boy looking out through the cracked glass becomes the realized victim of the “toy” gun. With this in mind, the early shot of the boy with the June Bug offers a sharp contrast of the ideally serene childhood that is juxtaposed with the reality of early and cyclical exposure to violent themes. The inter-generational connection of Lamar and his contemporaries with the earlier struggle is further explored through recreations of Parks’ iconic images of key figures in the Nation of Islam. Most prominent among these are the aforementioned photos of Ethel Sharrieff and Muhammad Ali, as well as a recreation of Parks’ photo of a Fruit of Islam training session from the same period.41 Unlike the other artists mentioned, Lamar does not sample the voice of an NOI leader, nor does he lyrically reference the group

Interpretation of Gordon Parks, “Black Muslims Train in Self Defense,” (1963) in “ELEMENT.”

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on this track. Instead, he makes overt use of imagery that would be known to members of the African-American community of that generation but are otherwise subversive expressions of resistance aligned with similar gestures from the civil rights movement. The NOI images act in a complementary capacity to Lamar’s overt religious rhetoric on other parts of the album and underscore the role that religious groups and their leaders played, and continue to play, in the struggle for civil rights. Throughout the video, there is a sense of either impending, ongoing, or past violence. In a contemporary context, struggles for bodily security are inextricably tied to the interactions between the African-American community and the police. The fatal shootings of boys and young men such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Philando Castile, among too many others, have been the inspiration for numerous musical protests and tributes.42 In relation to his 2015 song “The Blacker the Berry” Lamar stated, “I am Trayvon Martin, you know. I’m all of these kids.”43 Lamar explores these interactions in a number of ways on “ELEMENT,” highlighting the role played by the police in perpetuating cycles of violence. The role of law enforcement in sustaining systemic racism is addressed in both the lyrics and the visuals. In verse one, Lamar states that his “daddy commissary got commas,” telling the listener that his father spent a lot of time in prison and hence, that he has a direct family connection to negative interactions with police. Also, in verse one, Lamar says “Thirty millions later, know the feds watchin’.” These two lyrical references tie Lamar to a larger cycle of oppression and violence that his father participated in while Lamar was a young child. In referring to the “feds watchin’,” Lamar also shows continuity with civil rights era leaders such as Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, both of whom are thought to have been under surveillance by the FBI during the period leading up to their assassinations.44

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Interpretation of Gordon Parks “Untitled” (1957) in “ELEMENT.”

Visually, interactions with the police are portrayed with a palpable sense of urgency, featuring three connected sequences of intervention by law enforcement. The first of these immediately follows the image of a child searching for their parents and depicts two people trapped in handcuffs. Lyrically, this image corresponds to the reference to the “feds watchin’.” Shortly after this a man is seen running away from what appear to be police lights as Lamar raps, “we ain’t going back to broke, family selling dope.” Again, Lamar expresses a familial association with crime and negative interactions with law enforcement as well as the hope that with his success he has broken the cycle of violence, if not the conditions that lead to criminalized behaviours in the Black community. The final law enforcement image in the video is a recreation of a photo by Parks of white policemen standing around talking, looking unconcerned, as seen from inside the police car.45 All three images depict the police in a negative light. In the first image, the implication is that they are tearing apart a family, in the second, they come across as ineffective, and in the third there is a sense of indifference. These images all reiterate how police are disengaged from their primary duty of protecting the community, a message fully consistent with the Black Lives Matter movement, and much of Lamar’s previous work.

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The sense that “ELEMENT” acts as a retrospective flashback is furthered in the closing sequence where the recorded track is slowed down, with pitched-down vocals and downward swooping sound effects, creating the effect of a loss of consciousness. The musical change corresponds to the image of a man’s slow-motion fall from a building, flashing immediately to a slowed-down image of Lamar striking a man on the ground, continuing a scene from earlier in the video. Most importantly, the music, lyrics, and images work together to frame the narrative in relation to the opening where the protagonist appears to be drowning. “ELEMENT,” then, presents a powerful case study through which to explore the contemporary fight for civil rights that is evident in conscious hip-hop. The borrowing and recreation of images by Gordon Parks, whose work provides a window into the civil rights struggle, creates inter-generational continuity. As Peter Kunhardt Jr, the director of the Gordon Parks Foundation, observed, “Gordon would have loved this. It’s a pop culture artist showing a new generation the impact of his story, race in America and the fight for social justice.”46 Parks’s photographs also connect on a wider level to the larger theme of African-American religious expression that runs throughout the album. While most of DAMN. grapples with Lamar’s connection to the Hebrew Israelite movement,47 “ELEMENT’s” use of Parks’s images underscores the role played by the Nation of Islam in the civil rights movement. While Lamar does not identify religiously with NOI, the “ELEMENT” video suggests that he identifies with them both culturally as part of the African-American landscape, and historically in relation to their role in the civil rights and Black Power movements. The specific beliefs of the NOI would, then, not be the focal point of the expression of protest. Rather, Lamar demonstrates the integral role that faith communities (including the Nation of Islam, the Hebrew Israelites, and a number of Black Protestant Christian groups) have

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played in creating connection and continuity with the civil rights movement. By visually “sampling” the civil rights era, which is musically, narratively, and visually framed as a flashback/retrospective, Lamar shares his lived experience while also leading viewers into a process of reflection on their own connections to the ongoing struggles against oppression.48

Coda In the current climate of ongoing social protest in hip-hop we encounter the intersection of political and religious discourses. The use of religious references and the civil rights era referents provoke a sense of discord with the continuing state of inequity and systemic racism. By sampling the civil rights era, these artists ask their audiences to view the current struggles against racism, police brutality, and economic disparity through the lens of their shared past. In the examples we have analyzed, the elements comprising the text— music, lyrics, spoken word samples, images—are brought together to convey multiple positional themes. Both Electronica and Lamar incorporate lived experiences, often using an introspective positioning that also draws on aspects of personal religious conviction or questioning tied to wider issues of the fight for rights as members of a historically aggrieved community. This occurs on numerous levels that include the track itself, the album as a whole, and the positioning of the track within the larger editorial context of the album (in the case of Lamar). In addition, both artists use their music to create a space for exploration of the battles of the recent past in a manner that is relevant to the contemporary American context. They do this by incorporating and recontextualizing audio and visual texts from a past era—Jay Electronica’s use of spoken word samples and Lamar’s recreation of Gordon Parks’ images—in order to show continuity with a struggle

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that is ongoing. While religion is not the focal point of the expression and protest, it is an integral part of how the connection to the civil rights movement is made manifest. By invoking these words and images, Electronica, Lamar, and many other current artists are not only acknowledging the necessity of continuing the fight for justice, but also highlighting shared historical circumstances and the crucial groundwork laid down by the religious leaders of the civil rights era that guides those continuing their work. Ultimately, the use of these samples serves to distill and encapsulate moments of protest within the art form, giving them further life as they are transmitted and consumed by listeners. In this way, as rappers such as Lamar and Electronica imbue their artistic products with key statements on social justice issues, music can move the protest beyond the key moment in time and engage those listeners who might not otherwise be directly affected.

Endnotes 1. Russell Rickford’s 2016 article “Black Lives Matter: Toward a Modern Practice of Mass Struggle” provides an excellent introduction to the movement’s history and internal politics. For a more in-depth discussion, see Christopher Lebron’s 2017 book The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea. 2. Barbara Ransby argues that it is a “Black-led mass struggle because it is decidedly not a Black-only struggle, and it is not only for Black liberation but rather contextualizes the oppression, exploitation, and liberation of Black poor and working-class people (Making All Black Lives Matter, 3). 3. Orejuela, “Introduction,” 3. 4. See Gilbert, “Kendrik Lamar’s Civil Rights Anthem” and Stuelke, “Trayvon Martin,” 753. 5. Dyson, Know What I Mean?, 64. See also Forman, “Conscious Hip-Hop” for a discussion of conscious rap’s political momentum in the Obama era. 6. Todd Boyd claims a generation gap between the civil rights generation and the hip-hop generation, stating that hip-hop “is a new way of seeing the world and it is a collective movement that has dethroned civil rights and now commands our undivided attention” (The New H.N.I.C., 13). While Boyd’s argument about the early hip-hop generation has validity, we would argue that many of the current generation of artists (keeping in mind that Boyd’s book came out in 2002) understand themselves as having a connection to the leaders of the civil rights era.

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7. For a broad discussion on religion in the hip-hop sphere, see The Hip Hop and Religion Reader, edited by Miller and Pinn. 8. Neal, “The Message,” 353. 9. Lamotte, “Rebels Without a Pause,” 688. Lamotte’s discussion here focuses on hiphop emerging from places of exclusion and is influenced by the work of Edgar Pieterse, who has discussed hip-hop’s connection to political agency in Brazil and South Africa. See Pieterse, “Hip-hop Cultures.” 10. Kelley, Race Rebels, 185. In fact, as Angela Ards suggests in “Organizing the Hip-Hop Generation,” “For many activists, the creation of hip-hop amidst social devastation is in itself a political act” (360). 11. Rose, “Fear of a Black Planet,” 276–77. Rose continues this discussion in her groundbreaking 1994 publication Black Noise. 12. For further reading on hip-hop, race, and politics see Hill Collins, From Black Power to Hip Hop; Ogbar, Hip-hop Revolution; Spence, Stare in the Darkness; and Burton, Posthuman Rap. 13. Forman, “Conscious Hip-Hop,” 3. 14. Since the 1990s, rappers such as Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, and Lupe Fiasco have all negotiated the complex workings of the music industry, having some mainstream success, but largely adhering to socially conscious message-based rap. For discussion of Lupe Fiasco’s conscious rap interventions see Woods and Burns, “Conscious Hip-Hop.” For a discussion of conscious rappers and “progressive voices” in the 2000s see chapter twelve of Rose, The Hip-Hop Wars. 15. Interested readers are encouraged to explore other writings on hip-hop sampling and the creation of meanings such as Demers, “Sampling the 1970s”; Schloss, Making Beats; Williams Rhymin’ and Stealin’ and “Post-Mortem Sampling”; Burns and Woods, “Rap Gods and Monsters”; and Burns, et al., “Sampling and Storytelling.” 16. Williams, Rhymin’ and Stealin’, 1 and 6. 17. The Bomb Squad are Public Enemy’s production team, made up of Hank and Keith Shockley, Eric Sadler, and Gary G-Wiz. The presence of the crackle in the background of the sample is an example of what Justin Williams calls unconcealed borrowing, where “hip-hop songs can textually signal their borrowing overtly” (Rhymin’ and Stealin’, 9). Discussing their production practices in a video produced by David Upshal, Hank Shocklee says “We could easily have put melodies, timing, all that stuff in sync. It wouldn’t have had no potency. We wanted to make sure the music was strong. We wanted our coffee black” (qtd. in Scobie, “‘We Wanted Our Coffee Black.’”). For further discussion of the Bomb Squad’s improvisatory production practices see Scobie, “‘We Wanted Our Coffee Black.’” 18. The slogan “Black Power” was first called out publicly during a speech by Stokely Carmichael on June 16th, 1966 in Greenwood, Mississippi. What he presented was a call to militancy with the end goal of integration. This is in sharp contrast to the non-violent policy of racial segregation espoused by the Nation of Islam in the 1960s. For further discussion see Peniel E. Joseph’s edited collection The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights Black Power Era. 19. Kodak Black announced his conversion to the Hebrew Israelite movement in 2017

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after being released from one of his numerous stints in prison (Kestenbaum, “Inside the Hebrew Israelite Movement”; Ivey, “What Kodak Black Did”). He has since, very publicly, converted back to Christianity, as signified in the video for his 2018 track “Testimony.” Black’s sample of Malcolm X in the lyrical context that references past criminal behavior is intended to demonstrate an identification of common biographical elements shared among Black, XXXTentacion, and the late NOI leader. As James Braxton Peterson observes, “Malcolm X’s autobiographical narrative is one of the most formative texts within hip-hop culture—often referenced and widely regarded as one of the most important prison narratives relevant to the hip-hop generation” (The Hip-Hop Underground, 15). 20. The Hebrew Israelite movement is a syncretic form of African-American religious expression, founded on the belief that the Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans are the true descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. As is the case with other forms of uniquely AfricanAmerican religion, the Hebrew Israelite movement developed in a climate of reaction to white Christianity and the idea that in some circumstances the “church” could condone slavery. Based on their interpretation of chapter 28 of the Book of Deuteronomy in relation to the history of oppression in the American context, Hebrew Israelites believe that they are, in effect, still wandering in the desert (post-exodus/emancipation) prior to reaching the promised land. For further discussion of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement see Key, “Toward a Typology.” For a discussion of the Hebrew Israelite movement in hip-hop see Woods and Edwards, “Gangsta’ Crisis.” On the larger context of African-American religious expression, see Pinn, The African American Religious Experience and Varieties of African American Religious Experience. Five Percent Nation is an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, founded in 1964 by Clarence 13X. For an in-depth discussion of Five Percent Nation and hip-hop see Felicia Miyakawa, Five Percenter Rap. Hugh B. Urban’s New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements discusses connections between the Nation of Islam and hip-hop. 21. The religious traditions in question should be classified as New Religious Movements (NRMs). NRMs can be defined as religious movements that emerged in the mid-late nineteenth century through to the present that, while they often include and reuse elements of established world religions, profess to offer converts a new worldview. NRMs are generally centered around a charismatic leader and often take advantage of dissonance and conflict (perceived or otherwise) between the individual convert/believer and the larger society. See Dawson, Comprehending Cults, for further discussion of NRMs. 22. We would define religious syncretism based on the early twentieth century work of Melville Herskovits, the American anthropologist whose observations of African-American lived religion in the 1920s and 1930s were focused on the survival of earlier traditions within the new syncretic movement. The possible flaw in Herskovits’s argument lies in the fact that it assumed that one of the two or more cultures in contact would be in a position of dominance (Stewart and Shaw, Syncretism; Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past). 23. Golianopoulos, “Jay Electronica.” 24. Farrakhan, “Minister Louis Farrakhan.” 25. See “Hon. Elijah Muhammad Interview – Part 1.” Similar to Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise,” the static of the original recording is audible on the track and is thus another example of unconcealed borrowing (see endnote 17). The unconcealed borrowing highlights the source of the borrowed material, allowing a sharp contrast between the sam-

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pled material and Jay Electronica’s verse. Williams’ discussions of “postmortem sampling” are also relevant to this discussion (Rhymin’ and Stealin’ and “Post-Mortem Sampling”). Williams suggests that samples taken from iconic figures who have died carry a certain amount of weight and authority: “The key to postmortem sampling is the authority and aura from the actual recording” (Rhymin’ and Stealin’, 123). 26. The incorporation of samples from this interview, juxtaposed with the figure of Professor Marvel, offers a poignant critique of the methods employed by the NOI leader. The choice becomes more interesting when considered against the backdrop of events in Elijah Muhammad’s personal and professional life during this period. The interview is contemporary with the split within the NOI that saw the departure of Malcolm X following the admission of sexual improprieties on the part of Muhammad. 1964 also saw another schism within the Nation of Islam when Clarence 13X departed over theological disagreements with Muhammad and formed the Nation of Gods and Earths (Five Percent Nation). Regardless of this, Electronica seems to assert that the deceptions on the part of Muhammad can be justified as necessary in the perpetuation of the Civil Rights Movement. 27. “Jay Electronica Speaks.” 28. “Jay Electronica Speaks.” 29. “Jay Electronica Speaks.” 30. “Jay Electronica Speaks.” 31. See, for example, Lynch, “The Political Theory of Kendrik Lamar,” and Lynskey, “Kendrick Lamar.” In his book Posthuman Rap, Justin Adams Burton discusses the “post-racial” rhetoric surrounding Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (2017). Burton argues that Lamar’s political interventions on the album operate as “post-race performance that solidifies his mainstream legibility” (Posthuman, 50). Many commentators have noted that the issue of “post-racial” discourse is not clear cut. The last decade has seen a high level of media engagement with problematic racial politics, sparked by police shootings, racist rallies, and the rhetoric of the Trump Administration. For further discussion of the inconsistencies in post-racial rhetoric see Squires, Post-Racial Mystique, and Kaplan, The Myth of Post-Racial America. Our reading of Lamar’s album DAMN. and the video for the song “ELEMENT” shows a direct engagement with contemporary racial politics as well as the racial politics of the 1960s. 32. The latter part of the twentieth century saw the development of what has been termed as the “religious marketplace.” This idea grew out of the observation that representative portions of the population were distancing themselves from organized religion while still identifying as “spiritual.” Within the “religious marketplace” seekers could pick and choose the elements of traditions that fit with their own worldview in order to create unique forms of religious expression. By referring to Lamar as a “religious seeker,” we are noting that within both his music and his public persona he has expressed and blended elements of numerous African-American religious traditions. See Stark, “Economics of Religion,” for further discussion of the “religious marketplace.” See Woods and Edwards, “Gangsta’ Crisis,” for further discussion of religious themes on DAMN. 33. Fernheimer, Stepping Into Zion, 10. 34. The Little Homies are the artistic duo comprised of Kendrick Lamar and Dave Freed. 35. Peterson has also noted the intersection of elements residing in hip-hop music, visual

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culture, literature, and personal context (The Hip-Hop Undeground, Ch. 7). 36. Kung Fu Kenny is one of Lamar’s personas that recurs throughout the album. The moniker is based on a character played by Don Cheadle in the film Rush Hour 2 (Berry, “Don Cheadle”). 37. The photo appeared in Parks’ series “Segregation Stories” (1956). 38. This photo is from the Life magazine photo essay “The Redemption of a Champion” (1966). 39. For further discussion of hegemonic norms in hip-hop, see Oware, “Brotherly Love,” and Lafrance, et al., “Doing Hip-Hop Masculinity.” 40. While we are problematizing the issue of violence in this article, we should note that the tradition of male role models teaching young boys to fight has a long history within the African-American community. In that context, the passing down of knowledge can also have a very positive impact on the child being taught these traditions. The interactions provide opportunities for positive modelling and the development of discipline that may otherwise be absent in the lives of many children. This form of fighting is often taught as a type of martial arts training, similar to karate or judo, that is specific to the AfricanAmerican inner city context. Most often it is referred to as “the 52s” (referring to the game 52 pickup), although it is also known by the variants “52 Blocks,” “52 Blocking Hands,” “Wall Fighting,” and “Jailhouse Rock.” Recently there has been an attempt on the part of practitioners to highlight the aspects of this art, including the discipline, modelling, and self-defense components in order to distance the tradition from earlier negative associations. This leads out of the history of “Jailhouse Rock” as a form of fighting that was taught and practiced within a prison and gang context, and hence had strong associations with African-American criminality and violence. See Century, Street Kingdom; Green, “Sick Hands”; and Young, “52 Blocks” for further discussion. 41. Gordon Parks, “Black Muslims Train in Self-Defense.” Chicago, Illinois, 1963. 42. Examples include J. Cole “Be Free” (2014), Lauryn Hill “Black Rage” (2012/2014), and D’Angelo’s album Black Messiah (2014). See Grow, “J. Cole” and “Lauryn Hill”; Drake, “Lauryn Hill”; Tate, “How #BlackLivesMatter Changed Hip-Hop.” See Fernando Orejuela and Stephani Shonekan’s edited collection Black Lives Matter and Music for additional analysis and discussion of these case studies and others. 43. Lynskey, “Kendrick Lamar.” For further discussion see Stuelke, “Trayvon Martin” and Lynch, “The Political Theory of Kendrick Lamar.” 44. Fox, Stalking Sociologists, 3. 45. Gordon Parks, “Untitled,” Chicago, Illinois, 1957. 46. Sayej, “The Story.” 47. See Woods and Edwards, “Gangsta’ Crisis.” 48. While we credit Lamar with authorial intention here, we should note that the creation of “ELEMENT” was a collaborative effort, including the video directors and music production team.

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Works Cited Ards, Angela. “Organizing the Hip-hop generation.” In That’s the Joint: The Hip-hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 357–70. New York: Routledge, 2004. Berry, Peter A. “Don Cheadle Confirms Kendrick Lamar’s Kung Fu Kenny Nickname is a Rush Hour 2 Reference.” XXLMag.com, April 20, 2017. Accessed February 26, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMXXLMag. Boyd, Todd. The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Burns, Lori, and Alyssa Woods. “Rap Gods and Monsters: Words, Music, and Images in the Hip-Hop Intertexts of Eminem, Jay-Z, and Kanye West.” In The Pop Palimpsest: Intertextuality in Recorded Popular Music, edited by Lori Burns and Serge Lacasse, 215–51. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2018. Burns, Lori, Alyssa Woods, and Marc Lafrance. “Sampling and Storytelling: Kanye West’s Vocal and Sonic Narratives.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter, edited by Katherine Williams and Justin A. Williams, 159–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Burton, Justin Adams. Posthuman Rap. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Century, Douglas. Street Kingdom: Five Years Inside the Franklin Avenue Posse. New York: Warner Books, 1999. Dawson, Lorne L. Comprehending Cults: The Sociology of New Religious Movements. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Demers, Joanna. “Sampling the 1970s in Hip-Hop.” Popular Music 22, no. 1 (2003): 41–56. Drake, David. “Lauryn Hill Black Rage Sketch.” Pitchfork, August 24, 2014. Accessed May 18, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMDrake. Dyson, Michael Eric. Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip-Hop. New York: Basic Civitas, 2007. Farrakhan, Louis. “Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Letter on Jay Electronica, Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival.” The Final Call, July 23, 2014. Accessed March 14, 2019. http://bit.ly/ RMFarrakhan. Fernheimer, Janice W. Stepping Into Zion: Hatzaad Harishon, Black Jews, and the Remaking of Jewish Identity. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014. Forman, Murray. “Conscious Hip-Hop, Change, and the Obama Era.” American Studies Journal 54 (2010). doi: 10.18422/54-03. Fox, Renee C. Stalking Sociologists: J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Surveillance of American Sociology. New York: Routledge, 2003. Gilbert, Ben. “Kendrick Lamar’s civil rights anthem ‘Alright’ almost didn’t happen.” The Business Insider, October 25, 2016. Accessed March 12, 2019. http://bit.ly/ RMGilbert.

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Golianopoulos, Thomas. “Jay Electronica: Man or Myth?” Spin, June 11, 2010. Accessed February 21, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMJayElectronica. Green, Thomas A. “Sick Hands and Sweet Moves: Aesthetic Dimensions of a Vernacular Martial Art.” Journal of American Folklore 125, no. 497 (2012): 286–303. Grow, Kory. “J. Cole Mourns Michael Brown in Somber New Song ‘Be Free.’” Rolling Stone, August 15, 2014. Accessed May 17, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMKoryGrow. ———. “Lauryn Hill Dedicates ‘Black Rage’ Song to Ferguson.” Rolling Stone, August 21, 2014. Accessed May 19, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMLauryn. “Jay Electronica Speaks To the Believers.” YouTube video. Posted by Khaaliq Media. 29:44. October 16, 2017. https://youtu.be/WqXYi3avjBw. Joseph, Peniel E., ed. The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights Black Power Era. New York: Routledge, 2006. Herskovits, Melville. Myth of the Negro Past. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941. Hill Collins, Patricia. From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. Ivey, Justin. “What Kodak Black Did On His First Day Out Of Prison.” Hip Hop DX, June 6, 2017. Accessed 8 April 2019. http://bit.ly/RMJustinIvey. Kaplan, H. Roy. The Myth of Post-Racial America: Searching for Equality in the Age of Materialism. Toronto: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. Kelley, Robin D.G. Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class. Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan, 1994. Kestenbaum, Sam. “Inside the Hebrew Israelite Movement That’s Inspiring Kendrick Lamar & Kodak Black.” Genius, August 17, 2017. Accessed October 22, 2017. http://bit. ly/RMKestenbaum. Key, Andre E. “Toward a Typology of Black Hebrew Religious Thought and Practice.” Journal of Africana Religions 2, no. 1 (2014): 31–66. Lafrance, Marc, Lori Burns, and Alyssa Woods. “Doing Hip-Hop Masculinity Differently: Exploring Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak through Word, Sound, and Image. In The Ashgate Companion to Popular Music and Gender, edited by Stan Hawkins, 285-299 Vermont: Ashgate Press, 2017. Lamotte, Martin. “Rebels Without a Pause: Hip-hop and Resistance in the City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38, no. 2 (2014): 686–94. Lebron, Christopher J. The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Lynch, Marc. “The Political Theory of Kendrick Lamar.” The Washington Post, March 23, 2015. Accessed March 28, 2019. https://wapo.st/31GFF73. Lynskey, Dorian. “Kendrick Lamar: ‘I am Trayvon Martin. I’m all of these kids.’” The Guardian, June 21, 2015. Accessed February 22, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMLynskey. Miller, Monica R., and Anthony B. Pinn, eds. The Hip Hop and Religion Reader. New York: Routledge, 2014.

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Miyakawa, Felicia. Five Percenter Rap: God Hop’s Music, Message, and Black Muslim Mission. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. “Hon. Elijah. Muhammad Interview – Part 1.” YouTube video. 9:30. Originally from 1964 and posted to YouTube by 7thJewelProductions, December 12, 2007. https://youtu.be/afE-Tej1n28. Neal, Marc Anthony. “The Message: Rap, Politics, and Resistance.” In That’s the Joint: The Hip-hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 353–6. New York: Routledge, 2004. Ogbar, Jeffrey. Hip-hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Orejuela, Fernando, and Stephani Shonekan, eds. Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018. Orejuela, Fernando. “Introduction.” In Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection, edited by Fernando Orejeula and Stephani Shonekan, 1–14. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018. Oware, Matthew. “Brotherly Love: Homosociality and Black Masculinity in Gangsta Rap Music.” Journal of African American Studies 15, no. 1 (2011): 22–39. Peterson, James Braxton. The Hip-Hop Underground and African American Culture: Beneath the Surface. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pieterse, Edgar. 2010. “Hip-hop Cultures and Political Agency in Brazil and South Africa.” Social Dynamics 36, no. 2 (2010): 428–47. Pinn, Anthony B. The African American Religious Experience in America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. ———. Varieties of African American Religious Experience: Toward a Comparative Black Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017. Ransby, Barbara. Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Rickford, Russell. “Black Lives Matter: Toward a Modern Practice of Mass Struggle.” New Labor Forum 25, no. 1 (2016): 34–42. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. ———. “‘Fear of a Black Planet’: Rap Music and Black Cultural Politics in the 1990s.” The Journal of Negro Education 60, no. 3 (1992): 276–90. ———. The Hip-Hop Wars. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2008. Sayej, Nadja. “The story behind Kendrick Lamar’s Gordon Parks exhibition.” The Guardian, December 13, 2017. http://bit.ly/RMSayej. Schloss, Joseph G. Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Scobie, Niel. “‘We Wanted Our Coffee Black’: Public Enemy, Improvisation, and Noise.” Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation 10, no. 1 (2014).

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Spence, Lester K. Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Squires, Catherine R. Post-Racial Mystique: Media and Race in the 21st Century. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Stark, Rodney. “Economics of Religion.” In The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by Robert Alan Segal, 47–67. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. Stewart, Charles, and Rosalind Shaw. Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis. New York: Routledge, 1994. Stuelke, Patricia. 2017. “Trayvon Martin, Topdog/Underdog, and the Tragedy Trap.” American Literary History 29, no. 4 (2017): 753–78. Tate, Greg. “How #BlackLivesMatter Changed Hip-Hop and R&B in 2015.” Rolling Stone, December 16, 2015. Accessed May 21, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMGregTate. Urban, Hugh B. “The Nation of Islam and the Five Percenters: Race, Religion, and HipHop.” In New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America, n.p. (e-book edition). Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Williams, Justin A. Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. Williams, Justin A. “Post-Mortem Sampling in Hip-Hop Recordings.” In Death and the Rock Star, edited by Catherine Strong and Barbara Lebrun, 189–200. Burlington: Ashgate, 2015. Woods, Alyssa and Lori Burns. “Conscious Hip-Hop: Lupe Fiasco’s Critical Teachings on Hip-hop Representations of Race and Gender.” The Journal of Popular Music Education 2, no. 1 (2018): 29–44. Woods, Alyssa, and Robert Michael Edwards. “Gangsta’ Crisis, Catharsis, and Conversion: Coming to God in Hip-Hop Video Narratives.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook to Popular Music Video Analysis, edited by Lori Burns and Stan Hawkins. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Young, Robert W. “52 Blocks: Art of Africa, Not ‘Art of Incarceration.’” Black Belt Magazine (May 2019): 36-41.

8 Enchantment’s Irreconcilable Connection: Listening to Anger, Being Idle No More

Dylan Robinson Dear Editor, This was bullying on an epic scale: On Dec. 23, the south mall of Park Royal Shopping Centre was closed down by a terrifying mob of natives waving banners. – Lin Rockwell, letter to the editor, North Shore News

This essay brings together two scenes of anger. The first of these is academic—a conference on Indigenous arts. The second is one of physical protest—two gatherings that were part of Idle No More activism in Canada in the winter of 2012. I bring these two scenes together in order to examine the reception and efficacies of Indigenous peoples’ anger in contexts of sounding social justice. In particular, I consider how Indigenous voices that express injustice through vocal dissent, oration, and song have affective impact and produce “felt forms of (il)legitimacy” for the Indigenous and settler subjects who hear them.

* This is an abridged and updated version of a text that was published as: Robinson, Dylan. “Enchantment’s Irreconcilable Connection: Listening to Anger, Being Idle No More.” In Performance Studies in Canada, edited by Laura Levin and Marlis Schweitzer. Montreal: MQUP, 2017.

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I am equally concerned—here and in other writing—with what it means to write about Indigenous experience. What, in the context of a book on music and social justice, does my writing do to effect social justice?1 To what extent does it affirm or extend the important work we as Indigenous people undertake? Conversely, in what ways might it unintentionally “mine” or extract from such work as a mere resource that does not feed back into and extend the urgent work that Indigenous people undertake in order to support the health of our families and communities?2 In what ways might writing serve more-than-documentary, more-than-descriptive and more-than-critique functions? While reparative forms of writing by feminist, queer and critical race theorists (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, José Esteban Muñoz, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Aruna D’Souza) have offered various means by which writing might move beyond “mere critique” toward forms of imagining otherwise and decolonizing imagination, less of a focus has been given to the ways in which Indigenous writing might sustain the functional significance our songs and other performance work have as medicine, acts of history, and law-making. For Pacific Northwest First Nations in particular, our songs can act as the equivalent to legal expressions of land title, enact forms of diplomacy between nations, and convey knowledge about the land––they are living documents of our history, affirm our own and other nations’ sovereignty, and provide healing.3 As such, not only do these songs have an aesthetic aspect, they also operate similarly to what J.L. Austin calls speech acts, or what we might instead call “song acts” and “dance acts.”4 They do what they sing. This is not to say that all songs by Pacific Northwest Indigenous peoples function as forms of law and healing; such efficacy must be determined case by case, or song by song. Not all song-actions achieve those aims on their own by merely being sung. Like Austin’s speech acts, there are numerous factors at play that result in the “felicitousness”

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of “song acts.”5 To assert the functional nature of Indigenous song is to emphasize its more-than-aesthetic impact upon the lands that Indigenous peoples are caretakers of, and its capacity to have an effect upon our relations, both kin and other-than-human.6 This essay resists the tendency to dissociate our dances, songs, oratory, and regalia from their ontological significance as living, sensate, and what I call their “instrumental” capacities to do things in the world. Writing that isolates and atomizes the performative elements of Indigenous cultural practices risks perpetuating a discursive sanitization that treats Indigenous culture as primarily a subject of beauty, or aesthetic resource. In resisting such atomizing forms of analysis I follow musicologist Suzanne Cusick, for whom formal and structural music analysis can be akin to “the dismemberment of music’s body into the categories ‘form,’ ‘melody,’ ‘rhythm,’ [and] harmony,’” that she sees as perpetuating a kind of violence upon music’s “body.”7 While Cusick focuses upon the violence that analysis inflicts upon music’s body, I would emphasize a similar connection to the violence of mining Indigenous art and culture in order to enrich discourses and fields that are less concerned with the work that such writing does for Indigenous peoples. There is a similarity between the increasing resource extraction in our territories in order to stabilize the Canadian economy, and writing that extracts Indigenous culture, practices of sovereignty, and epistemology, in order to support the aims of the scholarly project without reciprocity toward Indigenous people. Studies of “X Discipline in Canada” have been particularly problematic for a multicultural approach that recognizes Indigenous perspectives upon the terms of their contributions to the “in Canada.” While multicultural values increasingly situate Indigenous People front and centre in the Canadian national imaginary, and as central to the history of the state, such initiatives raise the profile of First

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Peoples’ cultural contributions to the state only to undercut their sovereign status first and foremost as the sui generis expressions of First Peoples. In response, it is imperative to propose reparative methodologies that not only resonate with the political and social aims and accomplishments of Indigenous people, but that sustain this work. Consequently, this essay examines Idle No More activism not for what it demonstrates about performance or aesthetics, but to better understand strategies that may in some small way help Indigenous artists, activists, and academics resist the destruction of Indigenous lands. In focusing on Idle No More gatherings in Vancouver and Victoria, BC, I illustrate how sensory and affective politics are materialized in public space. The first of these gatherings is a round dance in the atrium of Victoria’s Bay Centre Mall that I participated in. The second is a gathering at the Park Royal Mall (leased to Larco Investments Ltd. by the Skwxwú7mesh Nation)8 in North Vancouver, where those who gathered participated in Slahal, a handgame played by many Indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest. My focus here is a letter to the editor in the North Shore News sent by a concerned shop owner at Park Royal Mall regarding the fear and anger she felt at this event. Paying particular attention to the ways in which anger mixed in these events with the aesthetics of play and other affects (love, enchantment, fear), I will argue that these examples of round dancing and Slahal do not as much envision new aesthetic forms of activism as they affirm Indigenous peoples’ connection and sense of belonging through Indigenous public assembly, both in public spaces and public-feeling private spaces, such as the mall.

Angry Indians To set the stage for examining these examples of Indigenous anger,

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I begin with an anecdote. In 2013, I participated in a conference on Indigenous arts that included a large number of Indigenous artists and scholars from across the globe.9 Following one of the keynote presentations on a film about an Indigenous community, a member of that community stood up to voice her discomfort with the presentation. She was concerned, in particular, that the keynote speaker had failed to convey accurately the ambivalence some residents of the community, including herself, felt about the portrayal of their successes and struggles. Throughout her response her voice quivered upon the threshold of containing her anger. The following day, a second keynote presented on the topic of repatriation. Following this keynote, a different Indigenous participant asked the keynote presenter, along with the wider audience, why after all these years she felt as if she were still “under the microscope.” This participant’s reference to “being under the microscope” referred to the way(s) in which the Indigenous subjects of the presentation (a community that the presenter was part of) seemed to her present only as those who were studied, rather than having agency in the study. While the post-keynote responses from Indigenous artists and scholars featured the most prominent expressions of anger, these moments were not isolated. Several other Indigenous scholars and artists raised their voices in solidarity during other panel sessions, noting a lack of Indigenous methodologies and critical perspectives, while still others (both Indigenous and settler participants) questioned the legitimacy of asking that a conference could be something other than what it was intended to be, to accommodate those who were not familiar with, or did not value, the format. In one instance an Indigenous participant reminded everyone of the privilege we must recognize to even be having these conversations amongst Indigenous colleagues from across the globe.10 While the anger expressed through several critical interventions made by Indigenous participants in some cases shifted the conversation

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into productive reconsiderations of Indigenous methodologies and scholar–artist–community relationships, one particular response stood out. “I know the backstory here,” a senior colleague said to me privately. “That person is just upset they didn’t have one of their proposals accepted.” “Just upset.” “Just angry.” “Just.”

By re-narrating the artist’s anger as un-justified—as mere bitterness—this scholar participated in a much larger discourse connected to the pathologizing of negative affect termed resentment, or ressentiment by Nietzsche.11 But as Glen Coulthard notes, while resentment is often cast as the inability to come to grips with history [and] indicates an inability to let go . . . Embracing one’s resentment is not only an entirely defendable position, but actually a sign of our critical consciousness, of our sense of justice and injustice, and of our awareness of, and unwillingness to reconcile ourselves with the structural and symbolic violence that is still very much a part of our lives. Of course we should resent colonialism, as well as those people and institutions who are wilfully complicit in its ongoing reproduction.12

As Coulthard’s work shows, resentment mischaracterized as a racialized attachment to “mere bitterness” is an expression of legitimate concern, here pathologized for the register of its expression. The marginalization of negative affect is especially familiar to Indigenous scholars, artists, and activists who stand up to express our anger at the ongoing lack of government accountability to nation-to-nation negotiation, exploitation of our lands, and marginalization of issues such as the exorbitant number of murdered and missing Aboriginal women and girls in Canada. We are the

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twenty-first century’s “angry Indians”—cousins to the “melancholic migrant” and “feminist killjoy”13 in our unwillingness to let go of less-than-palatable cultural difference in order to participate as proper subjects of both the nation state and academic systems. To express grievance against injustice, whether misrepresentation or exploitation, is to court dismissal as being “just angry” and “unjustly angry.” This accusation of unjust anger obviates the recipient of the anger from being held accountable to the claim of injustice and anger expressed. The speaker’s claim is delegitimized by his or her angry response recognized as a compromise with the capacity for deliberate, rational thought. In Canada’s current climate of reconciliation, such anger finds itself further marginalized by the prevailing narrative (and at times imperative) to “move beyond,” “let go,” and “get over” one’s anger. As a member of the public who witnessed the work that took place at Truth and Reconciliation Commission gatherings over the TRC’s five-year process, I have asserted to my own communities (Indigenous, academic, and artistic) the important need to resist this narrative and refuse those invitations and demands for reconciliation to take the form of mere friendship-formation, and forms of getting along better.14 I said as much in my own presentation at the very same conference that day. My experience of this conference in which anger was heard as “unjust” also gives me pause for thought regarding how the expression of injustice has efficacy in other settings. I have described these expressions of anger in considerable detail, not simply to illustrate the continued marginalization of Indigenous anger in academic settings, but for another reason. I have recounted this experience in order to demonstrate how, despite the necessity of raising our voices in anger to oppose continuing injustice, racism, and abuse, the expression of such anger invalidates the speaker through the perception of being unjustifiably resentful. What in part aids in this categorization of un-

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justifiable resentment is the mis-recognition of anger as a singular emotional state rather than a mobile affective intensity. Anger, in many instances, is not an affect felt (or received) with nuance and subtlety. We feel it emerge as a force; a brick; a wall. For this reason, some may prefer to understand anger not as an affect at all, but as an emotion.15 And yet, despite its seemingly unambiguous appearance, anger can and does result in many expressions that might themselves be far from angry, as is the case in many Idle No More gatherings where the epistemic value of song has functioned as a sounding of community and history, with instrumental capacity to do things in the world.

Love in the Mall There are round dances by the dollar stores. There are drums drowning out muzak in shopping malls. There are eagle feathers upstaging the fake Santas. – Naomi Klein, “As Chief Spence Starves”

In response to the lack of nation-to-nation consultation in the Canadian government’s passing of laws that significantly affected the lives of First Peoples—and specifically former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s omnibus Bill C-45 that removed protections for waterways under the Navigable Waters Protection Act—Idle No More spread rapidly across Canada and the United States during the winter of 2012. Yet although Bill C-45 catalysed the Idle No More movement, the diverse actions that took place across the country as part of Idle No More should be understood as part of the much larger assertion of Indigenous sovereignty through Indigenous political structures. Importantly, music, sound, and dance in Idle No More gatherings were not simply the media by which political messages were conveyed, but performative forms of politics in and of themselves. They continued Indige-

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nous political forms that take place through song and dance, and did so in public settings.16 A significant number of Idle No More events disrupted the narrative of First Peoples political action as irrational terrorism,17 or as “just anger” without just cause, by complicating what the public might understand to be the genre of protest. Two examples of Idle No More gatherings in Victoria and North Vancouver, BC, demonstrate how such protest re-channelled our anger at ongoing injustice through aesthetic and Indigenous cultural strategies that disrupted the dismissal of protesters as being “just angry.” Through these strategies, Idle No More gatherings decoupled the essentialized object-state dyad of protest and anger, in favour of affective experience beyond and between the single-state recognition of emotion. The work of Jane Bennett is useful here in asking how Idle No More recontextualized protest as a form of “enchanted activism” that publicly affirmed Indigenous cultural survivance, while catching the attention and inviting the participation of the settler Canadian public. At first glance, the words enchantment and activism seem awkward partners. While enchanted connotes a kind of fantastical world outside of the everyday, activism concerns the commitment to engaging with and potentially improving the everyday existence of disempowered communities. Yet I would suggest that in these terms’ explicitly awkward union, they represent the very ambiguity at the heart of Idle No More’s affective capacity to dismiss dismissal. In different ways these gatherings shifted the ontology of protest through Indigenous forms of “doing sovereignty.” In doing so, Idle No More gatherings not only disrupted the normative negative assumptions that settler Canadian spectators may associate with protest, but also reaffirmed the vital possibility of public assembly among Indigenous participants, which in turn has sustained our energies in agitating for further change.18

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My first opportunity to participate in Idle No More was at the Bay Centre Mall in Victoria, BC. Just before entering the mall with a friend, a concerned citizen rode by us on her bike, saying, “Didn’t you read the signs? They say, ‘no drums in the mall’!” Although we had not been carrying drums, two women in front of us carried theirs with them. There was some irony in this prohibition of drums, as if censoring a nuisance or hazard, but perhaps more in the strange enforcement of the rule by the passing cyclist. Once we entered the mall we found ourselves in the midst of singers, dancers, and curious onlookers. Like many of the Idle No More gatherings, participants filled the mall’s central atrium in a circle surrounding a central group of singers and drummers. Lekwungen, Songhees, Nuu-cha-nulth, Kwakwaka’wakw, Cowichan, those from other coastal nations, and from nations much further away gathered in the atrium that day, our voices at times singing over, and at other times intermingling with Christmas classics. Ella Fitzgerald’s “Let It Snow” played alongside the “Women’s Warrior Song”; “Rudolph the RedNosed Reindeer” joined with the heartbeat of the drum. As we sang and round danced, settler Canadian participants joined in a circle that wound its way around the nearly one hundred people who had gathered in the mall. Dancers smiled and joined hands, and in doing so blocked the entrances to stores, sometimes inadvertently and sometimes purposely. To describe the material circumstances of this gathering is much easier than to describe what it felt like to participate in it. Against my lingering annoyance from the concerned citizen’s prohibition of drums, a sense of hopefulness and “fullness” was amplified—our exuberance occupying this corporate space. There were no victims appealing to the state, only strength. In this in-between space of mixed sensation, my experience was as close to the definition of affect as I can imagine, in the sense that a single emotion cannot describe the fluid movement and overlapping of intensities experienced. Anishnaabe writer Leanne Simpson describes her own experience of an Idle No More round dance to

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Naomi Klein as one of joy: Leanne: When people started round dancing all over the turtle’s back in December and January, it made me insanely happy. Watching the transformative nature of those acts, made me realize that it’s the embodiment, we have to embody the transformation. Naomi: What did it feel like to you when it was happening? Leanne: Love. On an emotional, a physical level, on a spiritual level. Yeah, it was love. It was an intimate, deep love. Like the love that I have for my children or the love that I have for the land. It was that kind of authentic, not romantic kind of fleeting love. It was a grounded love. Naomi: And it can even be felt in a shopping mall. Leanne: Even in a shopping mall.19

Simpson describes how affective experience interrupts normative representational operations of perception and judgment. Specifically, these Indigenous forms that remake activism (rather than simply inflecting it) through round dances and Slahal, have the potential to interrupt the normative perception of protest as based upon anger and fractious politics. The round dance itself, and particularly in the celebratory Christmas space of a mall, issues an invitation for those who are present to join, and hails the participation of non-Indigenous spectators. In doing so, it recuperates the settler imaginary of protest as the result of “angry Indians” and consequently disrupts the ability to categorize and judge activism as the purview of “unhappy Others.” This is to say, while we may still be angry, we are also asking you to dance. Traditionally, the form of round dancing itself is an invitation extended with love. “After all,” notes ethnomusicologist Elyse Carter Vosen, “round dance songs are courting songs, with all of the vulnerabilities those entail.”20 The strangeness of this mix between protest and play, between

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anger and love, forms part of the aesthetic experience that Bennett calls enchantment. As Bennett explains, To be enchanted is to be struck and shaken by the extraordinary that lives amid the familiar and the everyday . . . [E]nchantment involves, in the first instance, a surprising encounter, a meeting with something that you did not expect and are not fully prepared to engage. Contained within this surprise state are (1) a pleasurable feeling of being charmed by the novel and as yet unprocessed encounter and (2) a more uncanny feeling of being disrupted or torn out of one’s default sensory-psychic-intellectual disposition.21

It is, of course, impossible to ascertain the individual experiences of the majority of Christmas shoppers who encountered such an unexpected event in the mall, and to insist that such an encounter was consistently one of enchantment. Perhaps some encountered the gathering with confusion, or merely amusement, an experience that Bennett contrasts with enchantment as “an affective state that shares a certain pleasurableness with enchantment but lacks its disturbing dimension.” Unlike amusement, Bennett asserts that enchantment works “by slowing down or speeding up the usual tempo of something . . . . The differential in tempo delights but also unsettles. In contrast, amusement is too smooth a feeling to admit wonder and surprise, too contented for critical thinking to emerge as an aftereffect.”22 Bennett’s emphasis on amusement’s smoothness prompts a consideration of the “smooth” space of the mall at Christmastime: Christmas shoppers celebrating the season with Starbucks gingerbread lattes in hand, listening to the ubiquitous Christmas Muzak, passing by babies on the laps of Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Mall experience is nothing if not a smoothly regulated space of sensory abundance and consumption. That day, as we gathered for Idle No More, we were also celebrants, gathering to celebrate the vibrancy

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of Indigenous political sovereignty alongside the saturated space of Christmas sensoria. In this mall, our voices and drums remixed Christmas tunes as we sang. The result was an unsettling and pleasurable intermingling of music that disrupted the feel-good atmosphere of the mall: our remix slowed the business as usual tempo of Christmas capitalism. Indeed, this slowing of Christmas shopping was doubly effected through shoppers’ negotiation of dancing bodies en route to the Body Shop, combining the timbral and rhythmic cultural specificity of our drums and voices with the crooning of Bing Crosby. The strangeness and play of these shopping/dancing bodies, these voices of survivance/Christmas nostalgia, and visuals of defiance/advertisement formed a rough aggregate, unreconciled. If such gatherings refuse settler ontologies of protest in favour or Indigenous forms of song and dance as “enchanted” structures, we might further ask what purpose such enchantment serves. Following Bennett, we might understand enchantment’s efficacy operating through a form of connection. Bennett describes enchantment as a feeling of being connected in an affirmative way to existence; it is to be under the momentary impression that the natural and cultural worlds offer gifts and, in so doing, remind us that it is good to be alive. This sense of fullness . . . encourages the finite human animal, in turn, to give away some of its own time and effort on behalf of other creatures. The wager is that, to some small but irreducible extent, one must be enamoured with existence and occasionally even enchanted in the face of it in order to be capable of donating some of one’s scarce mortal resources to the service of others.23

Bennett here focuses on affirmative forms of connection, but I would like to suggest a broader ethical dimension that theorizes enchantment’s force of connection not simply as an exclusive or even primary operation of positive feeling. As Bennett characterizes it,

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enchantment occurs through an oscillation or overlapping of alienation and seduction, and as such, the force of enchantment does not merely result in positive feelings but entails significant disruption. In its very irresolvability of feeling, enchantment may also entail forms of connection that keep the moment in memory, returning it to us, and in doing so asking us to reconsider the issue tied to enchantment’s force. As such, enchantment does not allow us to move on, to over-identify with the issue as a stable “thing,” but asks us to work through the push and pull of alienation and wonder. Enchantment’s irresolvability puts in motion an ethics of alterity that asks the viewer to treat it as we might a living thing encountered again and again through memory. There is no way to measure the degree to which Idle No More’s particular moments of enchanted protest have resulted in forms of connection where participants have offered their time or material resources to ongoing fights against pipeline development, for example. I’d suggest, however, a more general assumption of connection might more easily be made. Prior to participating in Idle No More, I felt a certain amount of ambivalence toward the efficacy of protest, due primarily to the presumption that its directional address is by necessity oriented toward the general public and other state and institutional addressees. With Idle No More, in contrast, I came to reconsider protest’s affirmative politics through self-address, back toward those who participated, through felt forms of accumulation. Across our different nation-specific politics, First Peoples gathered in malls, in intersections, on train tracks, in schools, in ever-expanding round dance circles, filling spaces with our voices, and dancing through these spaces together. Rita Wong captures this sense of accumulation lucidly in her poem, “J28”: last year, i never imagined we would be round dancing in Glenmore Landing round dancing in Chinook Centre

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round dancing in Olympic Plaza round dancing in Metrotown round dancing in West Edmonton Mall round dancing outside the Cayuga courthouse round dancing on Akwesasne round dancing on Strombo huychexa! mahsi cho! welalin! drumming at Waterfront Station drumming at the United Nations drumming at Columbia University drumming at Granville & Georgia drumming at Dalhousie University drumming at the Peace Arch drumming on Wellington Street drumming on Lubicon lands drumming in Owen Sound drumming in Thunder Bay drumming in Somba K’e drumming in Chicago drumming in Chilliwack drumming in Kitimat taking a much needed pause for thought on tarsands Highway 63 on the 401 on CN rail tracks with Aamjiwnaang courage a human river on Ambassador Bridge time to stop & respect remember we are all treaty people unless we live on unceded lands where rude guests can learn to be better ones by repealing C45, for starters 24

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I quote Wong’s poem here in its entirety in acknowledgement of the atmospheres of accumulative fullness that it so lucidly evokes, and the sense of capacity it affirms. This experience of possibility should not be understated here. As political theorist Rosi Braidotti notes, what affirmative experiences of affect allow are the endurance and the sustainability of political resistance. This, as my consideration of the role of song and dance in Idle No More suggests, applies to musical affect. And while I cannot support Braidotti’s characterization of the opposite—that, in her words, “negative passions are black holes”—I would assert that without the affirmative balance to anger, without the enchantment of protest, Indigenous resistance will continue to be dismissed as “just anger.”25

When the Drumming “Starts to Get Ugly” Not all Idle No More mall celebration was felt equally as celebration by settler spectators, however. Even when protest is “at play,” its ludic qualities may not be legible to those unfamiliar with Indigenous cultural practices. While round dancing may convey more friendly invitations to join the action of moving together, other forms of Indigenous cultural practice may mark boundaries of settler participation. Such was the case when members of the Squamish nation gathered on 23 December 2011 in in Park Royal Centre Mall, in West Vancouver, BC, to play Slahal, otherwise known as stick or bone games. Slahal (or Lehà:l in Halq’emeylem) is a game played by many Pacific Northwest First Nations, with many variations. Historically, it has functioned as more than merely entertainment. As Squamish Slahal participant Tiffany Joseph describes it on her YouTube video recording, “Among the Coast Salish peoples it was called the ‘bloodless war game’ as disputes between villages would be settled through the slahal (stick game / bone game). Traditional social songs are used by opposing teams to call on the spirit of slahal to encourage their team.”26 There is often also an element

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of dance where the person holds the bone or stick while dancing, moving it between her hands, while a member from the opposing team guesses which hand it is in.27 In the Idle No More gathering on 23 December a lively game of Slahal was held in Park Royal Mall for all ages, with the same laughter, smiles, and energy as was present at the Bay Centre Mall gathering. Yet not all spectators at this gathering “felt love” at the mall, as Leanne Simpson characterized her experience. Indeed, one of the most publicly vocal spectators felt its antithesis: fear. Following the Park Royal Slahal game, Lin Rockwell, owner of the lingerie store Romantique, wrote a letter to the editor at the North Shore News titled “Mob Protest Makes No Point” that took on the quality of a police report, documenting the exact times of the “incident”: Dear Editor, This was bullying on an epic scale: On Dec. 23, the south mall of Park Royal Shopping Centre was closed down by a terrifying mob of natives waving banners. The drumming was so loud it was deafening. The merchants, staff and customers were at first scared and terrified – and then angry! We did not know what was going on, why it was going on, or what we should do. At 3:30 p.m., the centre court of the south mall started filling up with natives, security guards and police, and then more and more natives and police. The police presence only justified our fears. The drumming started at around 3:45 p.m. and it just kept getting louder and louder. I let all my staff go home as soon as the drumming started to get ugly, many of them were in tears by then. Customers were fleeing also; the parking lots were gridlocked. I found out halfway through that we were allowed to close up and go, but we were not told that by the mall or the police. At

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the very least we should have been given that option before this time. If they couldn’t stop the demonstration, why were we not warned? We didn’t know who they were, where they came from, what they were angry about or what it had to do with us. It was bad enough to lose the business but if we had been warned, we could have closed up our stores and kept our staff safe. The merchants probably lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. A lot of us rely on the last few days of December. The livelihood of merchants, their families and staff depend on this business. Shame on our government for allowing it! Shame on the local bands for supporting it! And most of all, shame on the first nation bands who think that closing down businesses and highways with mobs whose intent is to intimidate, scare and terrify peaceful people is an appropriate way to make a point. What is their point anyway? 28

The angry “unidentifiable natives” in Rockwell’s narrative—where had they come from?—threatened the safety of the mall staff by their presence, by their game, by their dancing, and by drumming that “started to get ugly.” As described by Rockwell, the Slahal gathering more closely resembled terrorism than a game. It is worth noting here that it is the terrorizing sound of the drum that is the focus of the narrative, similar to the prohibition of the drums at the Bay Centre Mall. Rockwell’s exasperated conclusion, “What is their point?” was in fact a frequent response to Idle No More from both the media and general public. In part, this response was the result of non-mutually exclusive local agendas, and nation- and community-specific issues that were addressed by participants; as with the nation-specific forms that Idle No More protest took, each gathering was inflected by the place and context it was presented in. “Our points”

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were thus as multiple as Stephen Harper’s omnibus bills themselves that attempted to “hide” a number of legislative changes within a single bill. Yet another significant reason behind the public’s inability to identify “the point” was that the aesthetic and affective timbre of the gatherings themselves made them less legible to the general public as protest. Round dancing in intersections, singing beside advertisements for Future Shop, Slahal games by signage for Winners—these actions complicated the reading of Idle No More activism and perhaps to a certain degree foreclosed upon a habitual dismissal of protest.29 Idle No More gatherings here drew spectators in not just as participants, but as active observers. In the case of Lin Rockwell and her staff, this engagement unsettled the quotidian signs of Christmastime, and in doing so questioned assumptions about who is entitled to occupy the public-feeling private space of the mall. This last point is particularly salient, considering that Park Royal Mall is not only situated on Squamish territory at Xwme’lch’stn, on the Capilano Reserve, but also that the land upon which the mall is built has been leased by the Squamish nation. The presence of Slahal challenged the felt fact that underpins settlers’ civic entitlement: that the land upon which the city stands has no memory. To have one’s sense of civic entitlement challenged is a frightening experience, as Lin Rockwell felt keenly. Idle No More’s exceptional acts of affirmative politics presented through the mixture of cultural practice and protest at the Park Royal Slahal, as well as the raising of our voices and dancing in malls, intersections, universities, and railroad tracks across Canada, brought anger into relationship with enchantment. While such work results in the enchantment of the non-Indigenous audience witnessing something between anger and play, between protest and cultural practice, it is important not to characterize this enchantment as primarily for non-Indigenous witnesses. To do so would be to mis-characterize these actions as appeals for recognition. Enchantment in these

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gatherings instead operated through the shared hope that kindled our energies in the continued combat against state injustice.

Conclusion If history has shown us anything it is this: if you want those in power to respond swiftly to Indigenous Peoples’ political efforts, start by placing native bodies (with a few logs and tires thrown in for good measure) between settlers and their money, which in colonial contexts is generated by the ongoing theft and exploitation of our land and resource base. – Glen Coulthard, “#IdleNoMore in Historical Context” 30

Coulthard’s argument—stressing the importance of placing native bodies in opposition to other bodies that serve the continued exploitation of Indigenous peoples’ land—emphasizes a materialization of the unified relationship between Indigenous lands and First Peoples. This materialization upends the settler fantasy of land as an abstract place for development and resource extraction. In order for Indigenous bodies not to be seen as a mere mass (or faceless mob) without individual presence, it is imperative that we do more than throw in a few logs and tires for good measure. We must be conscious firstly of how our bodies are in relationship with other bodies so that they are read not just as a mass of disgruntled others and angry Indians. We must think strategically of the aesthetics and spatialization of protest in ways that maintain the singularity of Indigenous political sovereignty, and at the same time disrupt the ontology of protest in ways that ask non-Indigenous audiences to consider the issues our bodies stand for, sing for, and dance for. Writing about the expression of anger by women of colour, Audre Lorde notes, “[We] have grown up within a symphony of anger, at being silenced, at being unchosen, at knowing that when

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we survive, it is in spite of a world that takes for granted our lack of humanness and which hates our very existence outside of its service. And I say symphony rather than cacophony because we have had to learn to orchestrate those furies so that they do not tear us apart.”31 I’d like to extend Lorde’s metaphor both toward Indigenous peoples’ protest, and toward the future, in asserting that we might continue to re-orchestrate activism across sensory and artistic registers in order, like Idle No More, to disrupt the marginalization of Indigenous activism as being “just angry.” To find productive oscillations, admixtures, and orchestrations of affirmative anger, of playful rage, and of enchanted resentment, and to understand sound as a vital component in these expressions, is to extend and further sustain the resistance to colonial oppression across Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Yet in this larger re-orchestration of affect and activism, we must also consider the role of the listener, not merely the musicians. To place responsibility on First Peoples to modify (yet not moderate) our anger is to continue to locate the problem as one of composition rather than reception. Equally necessary in the larger context is settler subjects’ re-attunement to anger in ways that categorize it not by “type” or “genre” of personal bitterness; this re-attunement must instead engage in the difficult act of listening to the timbres of injustice for the particularities of their range and astringency. Anger’s dissonance will always present a challenge to listeners who prefer the beauty of Indigenous voices singing Christmas tunes to the irreconciled intermingling of Slahal songs with “Greensleeves.” To listen through enchantment to irresolved songs is to understand the necessary agonism at the heart of nation-to-nation sovereignties.

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Endnotes 1. This in no way is intended to undermine the value of writing and scholarship in general, or this collection in particular, but more to question the value of reciprocity that is central in Indigenous methodologies. In the original version of this essay in the book Performance Studies in Canada, I similarly engaged the context of what writing about Indigenous work and action meant in the context of a book about (and to a certain extent for) the “in Canada.” In that instance, upon invitation to contribute something to a collection on Performance Studies in Canada, I imagined I might focus on the political efficacy of aesthetic strategies of performance employed by those who participated in Idle No More. The more I wrote, the more conflicted I felt about discursively mining Idle No More gatherings for what we might call their “performance resources.” My initial writing began to bend the singular experience of this activism toward its usefulness for the thing called “Performance Studies in Canada.” I asked to what degree does my work in a performance studies context efface a colonial enterprise in that field’s desire to understand, and perhaps in the process normalize, Indigenous cultural practice as “performance first,” against Indigenous ontologies of performance that understand such performance as law, medicine and historical documentation. 2. I am far from alone in raising these concerns about continuing forms of academic colonization that treat Indigenous knowledge as a resource to be extracted for purposes other than the development of Indigenous thought, the health of our families and communities, and supporting future generations. Canadian studies of the arts have a long history of using Indigenous topics for “multicultural enrichment.” In raising this issue, I point toward the compelling body of literature on (and critical of) Native nationalism, with its central tenet of demanding that scholarship be responsible to Indigenous peoples first and the social and political exigencies of our communities. See Warrior, Weaver, and Womack, American Indian Literary Nationalism; Fagan and McKegney, “Circling the Question;” and Fagan et al., “Canadian Indian Literary Nationalism?” 3. See Mique’l Dangeli’s exceptional doctoral dissertation “Dancing Sovereignty” for numerous examples of these actions. 4. In How to Do Things, Austin defines speech acts as moments in which the speaking of a statement enacts the action that is spoken. A primary example is the statement “I now pronounce you husband and wife” (or “husband and husband” as the case may be) when uttered by a priest or other legal officiant, constituting marriage. 5. Tuscarora art historian Jolene Rickard notes that the affirmation of Haudenosaunee treaty takes place not just through the presentation of a wampum belt, but through “the public recitation of Kayanerenhtserakó:wa, which frames Haudenosaunee philosophy in governing principles – in English, peace, power, and righteousness.” (Qtd. in Alves, Hopkins, and Rickard, “Fair Trade.”) 6. Here it is important to recognize different levels of function in different presentational contexts. A song sung in the longhouse, for example, will not necessarily hold the same function in documenting history when sung in the general public (though it does not completely lose its instrumental function in its public presentation). Like performative utterances, the functional aspects of Indigenous songs and dances have various levels of felicitousness dependent upon a large number of variables, including whether the singer

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is recognized as having the appropriate status to sing the song. 7. Cusick, “On a Lesbian Relationship with Music,” 77. 8. “Most of the South Mall of Park Royal is located on Squamish Nation land and operates under the lease between Park Royal Shopping Centre Holdings Ltd. and the Squamish Nation. This includes the south retail mall, the Village at Park Royal, and 100 Park Royal (the “black tower”). On the North side of Marine Drive, the Park Royal (rental) towers operate under a separate lease agreement between Larco and Squamish Nation.” See Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw / Squamish Nation, “Project Negotiation.” 9. Some of the details have been changed here to maintain the anonymity of participants. 10. Such gatherings of Indigenous scholars, artists, and community members from Indigenous communities across the globe had been less frequent prior to the inaugural Native American and Indigenous Studies Association gathering in 2007. 11. Glen Coulthard critiques Nietzsche’s characterization of ressentiment “as a reactive, backward, and passive orientation to the world” where the subject is “irrationally preoccupied with and incapacitated by offences suffered in the past” (Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, 111). 12. Ibid., 33–45. 13. Sara Ahmed notes, “The melancholic migrant is the one who is not only stubbornly attached to difference, but who insists on speaking about racism, where such speech is heard as labouring over sore points. The duty of the migrant is to let go of the pain of racism by letting go of racism as a way of understanding that pain” (Ahmed, “Multiculturalism,” 133). 14. See Robinson, “Feeling Reconciliation Remaining Settled.” 15. At the most basic level, emotion is a categorization of the physiological effects of affect. Or, as Brian Massumi explains, emotion “is the sociolinguistic fixing of the quality of an experience,” a “qualified intensity” that has been inserted into a system of “semantically and semiotically formed progressions, into narrativizable action-reaction circuits, into function and meaning” (Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, 28). 16. Some Idle No More gatherings remained within “traditional” forms of protest— blockades, marches—and took place at traditional centres of state power, including government buildings. Yet these established markers of traditional protest reinforced Idle No More activity within the genre of protest, and public prejudice toward protest as being only “for” a certain contingent of the general public. This imagined public that both constitutes protest and represents protest’s larger constituency, operates along generalizations: “special interest groups,” “visible minorities,” “anarchists.” As such, protestors are not seen to represent the broad interests of the public. 17. Pauline Wakeham makes the compelling argument that the turn of the millennium has seen a “simultaneous emptying out and proliferation of the meanings of ‘terror’ that has enabled private media and government and policing services to collapse radically diverse practices—from violence that threatens civilian safety to counterhegemonic resistance in the form of public protest—into one homogenized category of threats that need to be eradicated” (Wakeham, “Reconciling ‘Terror,’” 7). 18. It is important here to assert that, in contrast to the prevailing measurement of activ-

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ism’s efficacy as the achievement of change, my argument emphasizes that its intangible outcomes are the most significant: first, the sense of hope that emerged for Indigenous participants, changing our sense of possibility in public assembly, and second, the sense of ontological dissonance that Idle No More produced around the concept of protest for non-Indigenous witnesses. To assess Idle No More purely by its measurable impacts and policy outcomes would be to miss a fundamental point of its intangible efficacy. 19. Simpson, “Dancing the World.” 20. Vosen, “Singing and Dancing Idle No More.” 21. Jane Bennett, Enchantment of Modern Life, 4–5. 22. Ibid., 127. 23. Ibid., 156. 24. Wong, “J28.” Rita Wong. “J28.” In undercurrent, 77. Madeira Park: Nightwood Editions, 2015, www.nightwoodeditions.com. 25. Braidotti, “Nomadic Ethics,” 182. 26. “FlashMob Bonegame.” 27. For a more detailed description of the rules of slahal, see Galloway’s entry on “lehà:l” in Dictionary of Upriver Halkomelem. There are a number of variations to the game within Pacific Northwest Nations. 28. Rockwell, letter to the editor. 29. Not only did our songs remix Christmas classics, but they recontextualized the general advertising in interesting ways—for example, the “WINNERS” sign above the Slahal, the “FUTURE” of Future Shop, and fashion banner “CELEBRATE EVERY SIDE OF YOU” appeared like Brechtian placards calling toward our nations’ vibrant futures. 30. Coulthard, “#IdleNoMore in Historical Context.” 31. Audre Lorde, qtd. in Carpenter, Seeing Red Anger, 15.

Works Cited Ahmed, Sara. “Multiculturalism and the Promise of Happiness.” New Formations 63 (2007–2008): 121–37. Alves, Maria Thereza, Candice Hopkins, and Jolene Rickard. “Fair Trade Heads: A  Conversation on Repatriation and Indigenous Peoples with Maria Thereza Alves, Candice Hopkins, and Jolene Rickard.” Documenta14. Accessed June 27, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMDocumenta14. Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words. Edited by J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. Bennett, Jane. The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Braidotti, Rosi. “Nomadic Ethics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze,  edited

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Carpenter, Cari M. Seeing Red Anger, Sentimentality, and American Indians. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2008. Coulthard, Glen. “#IdleNoMore In Historical Context.”   Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, December 24, 2012. http://bit.ly/RMCoulthard. ———. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Cusick, Suzanne G. “On a Lesbian Relationship with Music: A Serious Effort Not to Think Straight.” In Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, 67–84. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Dangeli, Mique’l. “Dancing Sovereignty: Protocol and Politics in Northwest Coast First Nations Dance.” PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2015. D’Souza, Aruna. Whitewalling: Art, Race, & Protest in 3 Acts. New York: Badlands Unlimited, 2018. Fagan, Kristina, and Sam McKegney. “Circling the Question of Nationalism in Native Canadian Literature and its Study.” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 41, no. 1 (May 2008): 31–42. Fagan, Kristina, Daniel Heath Justice, Keavy Martin, Sam McKegney, Deanna Reder, and Niiganwewidam James Sinclair. “Canadian Indian Literary Nationalism?: Critical Approaches in Canadian Indigenous Contexts – A Collaborative Interlogue.” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies 29, no. 1/2 (2009): 19–44. “FlashMob Bonegame @ Park Royal Mall #IdleNoMore.” YouTube video, 4:50. Posted by Tiffany Joseph, December 24, 2012. https://youtu.be/5V4SIOAJRsw. Galloway, Brent D. “lehà:l.” In Dictionary of Upriver Halkomelem. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Robinson, Dylan. “Feeling Reconciliation Remaining Settled.” In Theatres of Affect, edited by Erin Hurley, 275–306. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2014. Rockwell, Lin. “Mob protest makes no point.” Letter to the editor. North Shore News, January 11, 2013. http://bit.ly/RMRockwell. Simpson, Leanne. “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson.” By Naomi Klein. Yes! Magazine: Powerful Ideas, Practical Actions, March 5, 2013. Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw / Squamish Nation. “Project Negotiation and Development.” http://bit.ly/RMSquamish. Accessed September 7, 2015. Vosen, Elyse Carter. “Singing and Dancing Idle No More: Round Dances as Indigenous Activism.” In Music and Modernity Among First Peoples of North America, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine and Dylan Robinson, 91–113. Middletown, CT:

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Wesleyan University Press, 2019. Wakeham, Pauline. “Reconciling ‘Terror’: Managing Indigenous Resistance in the Age of Apology.” American Indian Quarterly 36, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 1–33. Warrior, Robert, Jace Weaver, and Craig Womack. American Indian Literary Nationalism. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Wong, Rita. “J28.” In undercurrent, 77. Madeira Park: Nightwood Editions, 2015.

9 Remix Two Music and Transformation: Sounding Agency and Direct Action

Ajay Heble “The beauty in our own differences”: An Urgent Story to Tell He’s been called “the Jazz Voice of Black Lives Matter” by cultural critic Greg Tate, “a healing force, a place of regeneration when you’re trying to deal with the trauma of being black in America.”1 Consider, too, the titles of some of his best-known recordings: The Epic; Harmony of Difference; Heaven and Earth. I’m talking, of course, about saxophonist and bandleader Kamasi Washington. The album titles are telling: taken together, they reveal an artist with something big to say, an artist determined to take giant steps in order to do the important work of advancing our struggle for a more inclusive framework of social understanding. And it’s not just his titles or even his post-Coltrane tenor sound that are big and urgent. There’s also urgency, there’s heft, in the very ideas that frame his music. Reviewer Nate Chinen has noted that “Washington is flagrant in aligning his music with a tradition of transcendent struggle. The feeling he’s chasing,” Chinen suggests, “is the feeling of someone who’s been to the mountaintop and come back with an urgent story to tell.”2 Another reviewer says that Washington is framing his

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works in ways that make it clear that “they’re in conversation with the biggest social issues facing the world.”3 Still another reviewer situates Washington’s oeuvre within the context “of the civic shocks and political divisions of the past few years,” suggesting that, in such a context, there “has been a widespread hunger for more meaningful cultural output, and an enthusiastic uptake of sounds rising to the occasion.”4 An urgent story to tell. Transcendent struggle. A hunger for meaningful cultural output. The biggest social issues of our time. Sounds rising to the occasion. These, of course, are grand claims. Grand not only for the way these commentators have contextualized Washington’s music, but also for how they echo the kinds of expansive ideas about music as a force for social transformation that resounds throughout much of the history of African American music making. It’s no coincidence that Washington, though widely recognized as a boundary-shattering cross-over artist whose credits include working with musicians ranging from Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus to Chaka Khan, is often also seen (and heard) as being part of a lineage in African American music, and specifically in jazz, that includes Coltrane, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, and other luminaries. Their titles, too—Trane’s Giant Steps, Ascension, and Interstellar Space; Ra’s Other Planes of There and Space is the Place; Pharoah’s Black Unity—had heft. They, too, encouraged us to contextualize the innovative sound worlds these artists were generating in relation to broader issues of social instrumentality. And if Ra was busy travelling the spaceways from planet to planet in search of alternatives to the earth-bound dead-end life-situations in which African Americans repeatedly found themselves—alternatives to a world of systematized and institutionalized forms of violence, oppression, and racist constraint—Washington’s search, if we take our primary cue once again from the titles of his recordings, would seem to be more focussed on struggles for social inclusiveness, for a recogni-

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tion of the harmony that can be found in difference, both here on earth as well as in heaven, which the saxophonist describes in the liner notes to his Heaven and Earth recording as representing “the world as I see it inwardly, the world that is a part of me.”5 And, yes indeed, these struggles can certainly be considered epic; they may well be among the “biggest social issues” of our time. Consider our cultural moment. We live in troubled times. Think of Michael Eric Dyson’s assessment of how a “greatly stepped up harassment of people of color, and Muslims, and immigrants, in the wake of Trump’s election points to a sea change in our naked tolerance for such assaults, in the permission granted to diabolical forces that rob us even more of comity and support for the commonweal.”6 Washington has said that he sees his own life as “an expression of Black Lives Matter. As an African American man,” he explains, “we live in constant danger of society’s prejudices against us. We’re painted as dangerous, that it’s OK to use lethal force against us regardless of who we are but based on how we look. That’s something I can never stop thinking about.”7 Think, too, of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s extraordinary book Between the World and Me. Written in the form of an open letter to Coates’s teenaged son, the book explores what it means to inhabit a Black body. “And you know now, if you did not before,” Coates explains to his son, “that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding. It does not matter if the destruction springs from a foolish policy.”8 In the face of such destruction and misunderstanding, and (to borrow again from Dyson) in light of the “permission” that now appears, by way of Trump’s election, to have been granted to “diabolical forces that rob us . . . of comity,”9 it has become increasingly clear that “one of the most urgent predicaments of our time,” as cultural theorist Ien Ang, writing in another context, has posited,

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“can be described in deceptively simple terms: how are we to live together in this new century?”10 Listen to Washington’s EP Harmony of Difference. Premiered as a part of a multimedia work at the Whitney Museum of American Art 2017 Biennial, featuring a film by A.G. Rojas and artwork by Amani Washington (Kamasi’s sister), the project features six parts with the sixth and final movement, “Truth,” combining the previous five compositions (“Desire,” “Humility,” “Knowledge,” “Perspective,” and “Integrity”) into a new piece. In his liner notes to the recording, Washington writes, “My hope is that witnessing the beautiful harmony created by merging different musical melodies will help people realize the beauty in our own differences” (emphasis mine).11 Here, Washington is drawing on the musical concept of counterpoint as his guiding metaphor: in his own words, that’s “when you take different melodic figures and shape them to be harmonious with one another so that they can become more beautiful together than they are apart.”12 What’s especially compelling in this particular instance is how Washington uses a musical technique as his vehicle for social action. Rather than relying on lyrics or spoken word segments here to raise awareness, to mobilize action, or to promote social transformation, Washington tells his urgent story through the use and combinations of sounds. And his emphasis, interestingly, is on sounds of hope, rather than sounds of protest. Sounds of promise, rather than sounds of resistance. Can sonic interventions be a force for social change? What kind of story can music tell without relying on words? Can sound alone bear witness? Will efforts to cultivate resources for more purposeful listening actually enable us to hear the world anew? Can music, by itself, help us to negotiate differences and to appreciate diversity? Can it teach us something about how best we might learn to live together in this new century? Trane, Ra, and

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others clearly believed in the power of music to spark change, in the ability of “out” jazz and creative improvised music to tell different kinds of stories: stories, for example, about change, about hope, about social mobility, about spiritual uplift. Building on that legacy, Washington, I’d like to suggest, holds out the hope that music can function as an ethical call to action. In an interview with Toronto’s NOW Magazine, Washington spoke about the divisiveness in Trump’s America, and about how music can play a role in helping us rethink our relations with one another: “When the Whitney Museum invited me to be a part of the Biennial,” he explains, I was really struggling to figure out what I wanted to do. But at that time we started to see the reality of a possible Donald Trump presidency. It got to a place where people were shining such a negative light on the idea of diversity, making it seem that if what you believe and the language you speak and the way you view the world isn’t parallel to another person’s views then you were a problem. I never looked at the idea of diversity as a problem. It’s a blessing, it’s a gift. I wanted to create something that celebrated it and push back against this attack.13

Washington’s idea of using musical counterpoint—the art of combining melodies—as a model for promoting understanding and appreciation of the harmony in difference finds a parallel in a statement by Nobel Prize winning philosopher and economist Amartya Sen. “The hope of harmony in the contemporary world,” writes Sen, “lies to a great extent in a clearer understanding of the pluralities of human identity, and in the appreciation that they cut across each other and work against a sharp separation along one single hardened line of impenetrable division.”14 Washington’s music seems to

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ask, What might a clearer understanding of the pluralities of human identity sound like? As a guiding metaphor for social cooperation, the musical model of counterpoint, as I’ve suggested elsewhere,15 can prompt us to take up some key questions, including those posed by cultural theorist Ella Shohat: “How can diverse communities speak in concert? How might we interweave our voices, whether in chorus or in antiphony, in call and response, or in polyphony? What are the modes of collective speech?”16 If Washington’s work is successful in encouraging people to reflect on such questions, then it may well also succeed in opening up space for a more rigorous consideration of our responsibilities as cultural citizens in a global community.

“[O]utside of . . . what is acceptable”: To Hear the World Anew Kamasi Washington is, of course, not alone among African American musicians who believe that sonic interventions can be powerful agents of social change. While Washington seeks to tell his urgent story using the musical model of counterpoint, other artists, especially within the context of experimental jazz and creative improvised music, have turned to irony. When clarinetist Don Byron was asked by music scholar Ingrid Monson to comment on the most important elements in African American musical aesthetics, Byron suggested: There’s irony all over, irony everywhere . . . . It’s definitely that balance . . . between totally opposite aesthetics . . . the conflict between being serious and avant, and just playing swinging shit . . . a polar pulling between cleanliness and dirtiness, between knowing rules very well and breaking them. There’s a certain kind of pull between opposite impulses that you . . . see in any

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good black anything . . . . A certain kind of inventiveness outside of . . . what is acceptable. And I think that comes from being in the society in that role . . . just the fact that you’re not quite an accepted member of society gives you a certain distance from the way things usually go.17

Byron describes irony in African American musical practice in terms of “the conflict between being serious and avant,” between “just playing swinging shit” and playing fast and loose with the rules, in terms, that is, of the ability of the music’s practitioners to work both ends of the inner and outer regions of the musical spectrum. Moreover, he insists, we can find this trope functioning everywhere in the music: “There’s irony all over,” he says to Monson. But, as literary theorist Linda Hutcheon asks in her book Irony’s Edge, “Why should anyone want to use this strange mode of discourse where you say something you don’t actually mean and expect people to understand not only what you actually do mean but also your attitude toward it? How do you determine if an utterance is ironic? In other words, What triggers you to decide that what you heard (or saw) is not meaningful alone, but requires supplementing with a different, inferred meaning (and judgment) that would then lead you to call it ‘irony’?”18 Why, how, and what indeed. The answers to these questions aren’t always so easy to reach. But in the context of the music under consideration here, these questions may have something to do with understanding how African American musicians are confounding orthodox assumptions, unsettling categorically sanctioned ways of seeing, thinking, and listening. These inside/out, outside/in, players compel us to dispense with customary frameworks of assumption, they determinedly elude any inclusive analysis or interpretation of the effects they produce, they continually keep us on edge, and subject our assessments to an ongoing process of critical inquiry.

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In short (and here Byron’s remarks seem spot-on), it’s a mobility of practice that commands our respectful attention. And there may well be something about the open-endedness of the improvisational form that allows, favours, and asks for the manifestation of ironic messages. Indeed, if the conventions associated with fixed genres, as George Lipsitz notes, “contribute to an ahistorical view of the world as always the same” and if the “pleasures of predictability encourage an investment in the status quo”19—indeed, if the fixity of genres has often functioned as a locus of racialized and other forms of power—then the musics I find myself drawn to, the musics that move me, inspire me, provoke me, surprise me, and compel me to keep listening, so often serve as prods to confront and to reconsider our very assumptions about genre. So, with Nathaniel Mackey, I want to celebrate improvisation’s “discontent with categories and the boundaries they enforce, with the impediment to social and aesthetic mobility such enforcement effects.”20 And herein, as Byron would have it, lies a tale about “a certain kind of inventiveness outside of . . . what is acceptable,”21 a tale, that is, about the art and politics of irony in African American improvised music. Think, for instance, of the music of The Art Ensemble of Chicago. The group’s discontent with categories is perhaps most evident, most pronounced, in their deliberate efforts to draw upon and rework traditional, historically laden sound sources. “As the AEC disinters, resuscitates, rummages, and rearranges rhythms, melodies, and sounds from the past,” writes Don Palmer in a feature article on the group in JAZZIZ magazine, “certain elements of tradition aren’t just rediscovered, but are transformed and made relevant for the present and future.”22 That relevance, as I’ve suggested elsewhere,23 arises directly out of the challenge the Art Ensemble’s texts pose to the homogenizing tendencies in dominant history-making tradi-

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tions. In contrast to the institutionalized silencing of dissident voices in canonical representations of history, the process that Malcolm X famously referred to as “whitening,”24 the ensemble cleverly and deliberately introduces noise into hegemonic, historically laden sonorities. It deploys nontempered sounds and intonations in an effort to create a space for the articulation and the revaluing of dissonant histories, histories that are (to invoke Byron’s comments again) out of tune with “the way things usually go.” Think also of the music of the free jazz saxophonist David S. Ware. The specific piece I have in mind is Ware’s rendition of “The Way We Were” on his recording Go See the World. The recording features an all-star high-wire quartet with bassist William Parker, drummer Susie Ibarra, and pianist Matthew Shipp. In writing about this specific track, the authors of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD ask us to “Think back to the moment [when] Trane deconstructed ‘My Favorite Things’ or ‘The Inch Worm’ and join us in a moment when jazz reinvents itself, forthrightly, humbly and with absolute conviction.”25 In the liner notes to the recording, Joe Morris suggests, “The message in his [Ware’s] music is a positive one for the future. The hope of looking forward.”26 What’s interesting, given this forward-looking orientation, is Ware’s decision here to resuscitate a familiar tune from the past. Indeed, “The Way We Were,” a tune made famous by Barbara Streisand in the well-known 1973 movie of the same title, is, as the title suggests, about the past, about “misty watercolor memories,” and “scattered pictures” of “smiles . . . left behind.” In an interview with William Sacks, Ware suggests that he is attracted to standards such as “The Way We Were” because they enable him to discover what Sacks calls “a new modality in the past.”27 Listen, then, to how the group circles around the tune, hinting at the familiar melody, occasionally touching down on it, only to blast off into the outer limits of free music. Using dissonance and improvisation to defamiliarize sounds from

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the past we thought we knew, Ware’s bold and ironic remaking of “The Way We Were” sonically documents the fact that other ways of knowing (and remembering) the past are possible. In this case, these other ways reflect the social energies found in forms of Black cultural expression, in discrepant practices (to borrow Nathaniel Mackey’s phrasing), that sound an explicit challenge to the fixity of naturalized epistemic orders. Indeed, Ware’s rendition of “The Way We Were” is very much in keeping with the implications of his CD title, Go See the World. As Morris writes, “‘Go See the World’ is . . . like a suggestion to us listeners to open our minds [to] . . . what is around us.”28 Ware’s version of this familiar tune calls to mind Ingrid Monson’s analysis, in her essay “Doubleness and Jazz Improvisation,” of how African American artists have used irony to transform popular Euro-American songs into vehicles for jazz improvisation, with perhaps the most oft-cited and well-known example (already noted in the remarks I quoted from the Penguin Guide), being John Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things.” Through an analysis of irony, Monson’s concern is “to show the way in which improvising musicians articulate worldviews, identities, and aesthetics through manipulation of musical resources that signal matters of cultural significance.”29 Improvisational music, says Monson, “is a form of social action.” “Musicians articulate cultural commentary with sound itself.”30 In this context, “Coltrane’s version of ‘My Favorite Things’ turns a musical theater tune upside down by playing with it, transforming it, and turning it into a vehicle for expressing an AfricanAmerican-based sensibility.”31 What irony in improvised music offers, then, is the chance to hear the world anew, the opportunity for encounters with radically different orders of historical experience. At issue here is a sense of the playful and the insurgent, the interplay between the serious and

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the avant, between “misty watercolor memories” and the destinations out of free jazz, between “swinging shit” and—well, yes—whoknows-what-else. Now irony, by itself, won’t automatically dismantle hierarchies of power and privilege. Its political effects will depend on various factors: the social and institutional contexts in which the music is performed, represented, reproduced, listened to, and talked about, the assumptions and expectations, as well as the commitments, governing the ways in which we listen, the experiences and intentions that, from the artist’s point of view, may have given rise to the music in the first place, and so on. Yet if irony’s mobility of practice has the effect of encouraging a questioning of our settled habits of response and judgment, of querying taken-for-granted frameworks of assumption, then it may, indeed, offer a powerfully compelling expression of dissent against the status quo.

“Sound is our weapon”: One Massive Roar The two examples I’ve cited above have sought to use sound, rather than words, as a model for social action. Kamasi Washington’s contrapuntal melodies and David S. Ware’s ironic dissonances offer two models of sonic intervention that grapple with broader struggles for social inclusiveness. But words, too, have immense power to raise awareness and to prompt change, as many of the artists and rebel musics discussed in this volume have made abundantly clear. A recent example from R & B singer Janelle Monáe seems to me to call out for particular attention. In 2015 with members of her Wondaland artist collective, Monáe recorded “Hell You Talmbout,” a powerfully moving, raw, and gut-wrenching response to the tragic consequences of police brutality. At once a rallying call to action and an attempt to honour the memory of African American victims of police violence and other racially motivated incidents in the United States, the song uses only a simple drum line on top of which members of the Wondaland collective shout out the names of the

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murdered victims. It asks its listeners to do the same. The song, explains Monáe via her Instagram account, “is a vessel”: It carries the unbearable anguish of millions. We recorded it to channel the pain, fear, and trauma caused by the ongoing slaughter of our brothers and sisters. We recorded it to challenge the indifference, disregard, and negligence of all who remain quiet about this issue. Silence is our enemy. Sound is our weapon. They say a question lives forever until it gets the answer it deserves . . . Won’t you say their names? 32

The act of saying “their names” is part of an important process of commemoration, of remembering, of bringing public awareness to the victims, and to the circumstances surrounding their deaths. But it’s also, as I’ve suggested, a vital call to action, a provocation, and this is evident in the fact that Monáe and Wondaland released a downloadable instrumental version that allows, and indeed encourages, people to cut their own versions of the song. “And then once you’ve laid down your vocal,” we’re told on the Okayplayer website, “upload your own personalized version of the cut to Soundcloud to join the chants and outrage in one massive roar.”33 By encouraging a replication of its own activist efforts in this way, by transferring a sense of responsibility to listeners to create their own personalized piece to honour victims of oppression, the song enacts its very insistence that instead of remaining silent about injustice, we need to join together to express our “outrage in one massive roar.” The Wondaland label puts it this way: “This song is a vessel and now it is YOUR tool. We’ve created this space for YOU to join us in honoring the memory of individuals that have been victimized by systematic oppression and abuses of power in our communities. It is our hope that, together, our voices can be a force that adds to a movement

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for recognizing our collective humanity. The practice of policing those who are Other must come to an end.”34 This transfer of responsibility (from artist—in this case, Monáe— to listeners) is key to our understanding of music’s social force, its power to express our collective humanity. Yet music’s afterlife, how listeners take up (and/or act on) music once they have heard it, what they do with the emotions conveyed or the knowledge imparted, remains, for the most part, uninventoried. Writing in another (but related) context, Toni Morrison has suggested that “Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.”35 Could it be that musicians, too, can engage in such acts of translation, can model their practice in ways that help to sharpen the moral imagination? Could it be that musicians, with or without the explicit use of words, can turn sorrow into meaning? I’m put in mind of John Coltrane’s mournful “Alabama,” written in response to the 1963 bombing in Birmingham, Alabama of the 16th Street Baptist Church, an attack which resulted in the death of four African American girls. Think, too, of Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit,” a chilling indictment against lynching, and perhaps one of the most profound protest songs in the history of the genre. In his book about the history of protest songs, 33 Revolutions Per Minute, music writer Dorian Lynskey takes up the difficult question of how, as an audience member, one responds to Holiday singing “Strange Fruit.” “The music,” he writes, “stealthy, half in shadow, incarnated the horror described in the lyric. And instead of resolving itself into a cathartic call for unity, it hung suspended from [the] final word. It did not stir the blood; it chilled it.”36 Imagine, he says, we’re there in the audience at Café Society, the club on West Fourth Street, and we’ve just witnessed Holiday performing the song: “Now ask yourself this: Do you ap-

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plaud, awed by the courage and intensity of the performance, stunned by the grisly poetry of the lyrics, sensing history moving through the room? Or do you shift awkwardly in your seat, shudder at the strange vibrations in the air, and think to yourself: you call this entertainment?”37 Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout” might be said to raise a similar set of questions. The song’s title, an African American vernacular contraction that, if fully spelled out, asks “What the hell are you talkin(g) about?” conveys a sense of “unbearable anguish,” as does the sheer intensity of the victims’ names being shouted out. Implicit in the title there’s also a feeling of incredulity: how is it possible for such injustices not only to be enacted, but to be sanctioned by systems, policies, and institutions that enable their perpetuation? The question of how we respond is central here, and by offering up a downloadable instrumental track for listeners to cut their own versions, Monáe has upped the ante: she’s exponentially increased her demands, and her expectations, for the song’s ability to function as a force for social change. We’ve listened to the song. We’ve learned about the injustices committed against African Americans. We’ve commemorated the victims by saying their names. Now, Monáe seems to be challenging us to ask, can we find a way to join together in “one massive roar” and to act in ways that will help bring about change? Listening. Learning. Remembering. Acting. There’s a resonant moment in David Mitchell’s novel The Bone Clocks where the character of war correspondent Ed Brubeck speaks about the significance of his work in ways that call to mind some of the issues we’re negotiating here, especially in relation to whether making people aware of injustices, in his case through journalistic writing, can actually bring about change: “if an atrocity isn’t written about,” Brubeck says, “it stops existing when the last witnesses die. That’s what I

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can’t stand. If a mass shooting, a bomb, whatever, is written about, then at least it’s made a tiny dent in the world’s memory. Someone, somewhere, some time, has a chance of learning what happened. And, just maybe, acting on it. Or not. But it’s there.”38 Reflecting on this passage from Mitchell’s remarkable novel (which might be said, like much of Mitchell’s oeuvre, to be engaged in its own kind of contrapuntal logic), literary critic Michaela Bronstein suggests that “Writing is the means by which the sacrifices of the present become useful for the future. It might lead not just to ‘memory’ but to ‘learning’ and ‘acting.’ What matters is not the transformation of the real into the textual representation of it but the unpredictable things that the resulting artifact might do.”39 I’d like to suggest that Bronstein’s comments about “what matters” with writing have resonance in the context of the musical issues we’re discussing here. Music matters, in short, not because it can change the world (though, for many listeners, it undoubtedly has had this kind of impact), but rather because of the “unpredictable things” that it can make happen. Its afterlife, what happens to it after we’ve had a chance to listen to it, to soak up its meanings, will always be up for grabs, despite even the most concerted efforts by artists to shape and direct its messaging.40 From words and names bearing witness and calling out injustice, to titles signalling affiliation with the biggest social issues of our time, to the use and combination of sounds as catalysts for political engagement and social cooperation, it’s “the unpredictable afterlives”41 of musical texts that strike me as being of particular interest here. And herein, I would suggest, lies the urgent story that these African American artists I’ve been considering all seek to share: it’s a story about how music’s capacity to inhabit, and indeed to transform, the social sphere can be unleashed in various complex and interconnected ways. It’s a story that involves listening, learning, remembering, and, maybe—just maybe—acting. And if it’s a sto-

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ry that, in particular instances, may offer a compelling response to the urgent predicament identified by Ien Ang about how we can live together in difference, if it’s a story that will prompt us to hear (and to see) the world anew, if it’s a story that results in direct social action, it’s also a story that can’t be fully scripted. A story whose effects and afterlives can’t easily be predicted. A story whose final chapter can’t be written. Living with the knowledge, and the consequences, of such incompleteness is not always easy. But there is an up side, an opportunity, here. Recognizing this incompleteness, this unpredictability, ought to be taken as a prompt, a cue for us as listeners, as citizens, to declare our intent, to express our commitment, and (if I may borrow and rework the final words from the final cut, “Americans,” on Monáe’s Dirty Computer recording), to sign our names on the dotted line.

Endnotes 1. Tate, qtd. in Shatz, “Kamasi Washington’s Giant Step.” 2. Chinen, “Kamasi Washington.” 3. Richardson, “Kamasi Washington.” 4. Empire, “Kamasi.” 5. Washington, liner notes to Heaven and Earth. 6. Dyson, Tears, 222. 7. Qtd. in Watson, “Kamasi Washington.” 8. Coates, Between the World, 9. 9. Dyson, Tears, 222. 10. Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese, 193. 11. Washington, liner notes to Harmony of Difference. 12. Qtd. in Grier, “Q&A.” 13. Qtd. in Grier, “Q&A.” 14. Sen, Identity and Violence, xiv. 15. See Heble, “New Contexts.” 93. 16. Shohat, “The Struggle,” 177.

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17. Qtd. in Monson, “Doubleness,” 291. 18. Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge, 2. 19. Lipsitz, American Studies, 185. 20. Mackey, “Paracritical Hinge,” 368. 21. Qtd. in Monson, “Doubleness,” 291. 22. Palmer, “About Time,” 52. 23. See Heble, Landing on the Wrong Note, 76. 24. “The teachings of Mr. Muhammed stressed how history had been ‘whitened’—when white men had written history books, the black man simply had been left out . . . . The teachings ring true—to every Negro. You can hardly show me a black adult in America— or a white one, for that matter—who knows from history books anything like the truth about the black man’s role. In my own case, once I heard of the ‘glorious history of the black man,’ I took special pains to hunt in the library for books that would inform me on details about black history” (X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 175). 25. Cook and Morton, Penguin Guide, 1531. 26. Morris, liner notes. 27. Sacks, “In Conversation.” 28. Morris, liner notes. 29. Monson, “Doubleness,” 292. 30. Monson, “Doubleness,” 313. 31. Monson, “Doubleness,” 298. In her discussion of Coltrane’s rendition of “My Favorite Things,” Monson reminds us that “Coltrane would have been well aware of the emphasis on ‘white’ things in the lyric—girls in white dresses, snowflakes on eyelashes, silver white winters, cream-colored ponies. In 1960—a year of tremendous escalation in the civil rights movement and a time of growing politicization in the jazz community—Coltrane quite possibly looked upon the lyrics with an ironic eye” (298). See also Eric Lewis’s analysis of Coltrane’s reworkings of “My Favorite Things”: “Sure, the superficial meaning of ‘My Favorite Things’ is still present, or perhaps accessible,” he writes. “One can still hear, so to speak, the ode to ‘warm woolen mittens,’ but can anyone really take the sonic onslaught of the version performed in Tokyo to really be about the pleasures enjoyed by coming-of-age Austrian aristocrats during World War II?” Lewis concludes: “Not only does Coltrane clearly alter the apparent meaning of ‘My Favorite Things’ via his complex act of formal revision—via his signifyin(g)—but, so many argue and I agree, he intended these meaning revisions, for they are in keeping with his own accounts of his practices, and the practices of many like-minded musicians at the time” (Intents, 255). Both Monson and Lewis draw on Henry Louis Gates, Jr’s concept of Signifyin(g) to contextualize their readings and analysis of “My Favorite Things.” Ware’s version of “The Way We Were” also seems a clear example of what Gates might refer to as Signification. 32. As posted by Janelle Monáe to her Instagram account in August 2015. The post is no longer available on Monáe’s account; however, it was widely quoted at the time of the song’s release. 33. Zo, “Janelle Monáe.”

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34. Leight, “Janelle Monáe.” 35. Morrison, “Peril,” ix. 36. Lynskey, 33 Revolutions, 5. 37. Lynskey, 33 Revolutions, 4–5. 38. Mitchell, The Bone Clocks, 210. 39. Bronstein, “Taking the Future into Account,” 124. 40. It may seem that the kinds of musical examples I’ve discussed here are unlikely to bring about significant change. As Barbara Tomlinson and George Lipsitz suggest in their book Insubordinate Spaces: Improvisation and Accompaniment for Social Justice, “hegemony is both instituted and contested by seemingly small moves—how people argue, how they treat both allies and enemies, and how they accompany those who are like themselves and those who are not. It is never easy,” they tell us, “to undo decades and centuries of subordination, but, precisely because subjection has been shaped by a long chain of signs and symbols, aggrieved individuals and groups need to forge an equally long chain of counter symbolization” (22). 41. Bronstein, “Taking the Future into Account,” 125.

Works Cited Ang, Ien. On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West. London: Routledge, 2001. Bronstein, Michaela. “Taking the Future into Account: Today’s Novels for Tomorrow’s Readers.” PMLA 134, no. 1 (January 2019): 121–36. Chinen, Nate. “Kamasi Washington: Heaven and Earth.” Pitchfork. June 22, 2018. http:// bit.ly/RMChinen. Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Cook, Richard, and Brian Morton. The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. 5th ed. London: Penguin, 2000. Dyson, Michael Eric. Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017. Empire, Kitty. “Kamasi Washington Review – Spiritual Sax that Packs a Punch.” The Guardian. May 5, 2018. http://bit.ly/RMEmpire. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Grier, Chaka V. “Q&A: How Kamasi Washington is Using Music to Create Empathy.” NOW. November 16, 2017. http://bit.ly/RMGrier. Heble, Ajay. Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice. New York: Routledge, 2000. ———. “New Contexts of Canadian Criticism: Democracy, Counterpoint, Responsibility.”

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Hutcheon, Linda. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Leight, Elias. “Janelle Monae Asks Listeners to Record Personal Versions of ‘Hell You Talmbout.’” Fader. August 28, 2015. http://bit.ly/RMLeight. Lewis, Eric. Intents and Purposes: Philosophy and the Aesthetics of Improvisation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. Lipsitz, George. American Studies in a Moment of Danger. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Lynskey, Dorian. 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs from Billie Holiday to Green Day. New York: Harper Collins, 2011. Mackey, Nathaniel. “Paracritical Hinge.” In The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue, edited by Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble, 367–86. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Mitchell, David. The Bone Clocks. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2014. Monáe, Janelle. Dirty Computer. Atlantic, 2018, compact disc. Monáe, Janelle, and Wondaland. “Hell You Talmbout.” Released August 13, 2015. Wondaland Records. Monson, Ingrid. “Doubleness and Jazz Improvisation: Irony, Parody, Ethnomusicology.” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 2 (Winter 1994): 283–313.

and

Morris, Joe. Liner notes to Go See the World by David S. Ware. Columbia, 1998. Morrison, Toni. “Peril.” In The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, vii–ix. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019. Palmer, Don. “About Time.” Jazziz: Art for Your Ears 15, no. 11 (1998): 49–53. Richardson, Mark. “Kamasi Washington, Harmony of Difference EP.” Pitchfork. September 28, 2017. http://bit.ly/RMRichardson. Sacks, William. “In Conversation with David S. Ware: Improvisation, Meditation, and the Crystalline Idea.” November, 1998. http://www.furious.com/perfect/davidsware. html. Sen, Amartya. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. New York: Norton, 2006. Shatz, Adam. “Kamasi Washington’s Giant Step.” New York Times. January 21, 2016. https://nyti.ms/2KX5wRC. Shohat, Ella. “The Struggle Over Representation: Casting, Coalitions, and the Politics of Identification.” In Late Imperial Culture, edited by Román de la Campa, E. Ann Kaplan, and Michael Sprinker, 166–78. New York: Verso, 1995. Tomlinson, Barbara, and George Lipsitz. Insubordinate Spaces: Improvisation and Accompaniment for Social Justice. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019. Ware, David S. Go See the World. Columbia, CK 69138, 1998, compact disc.

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Washington, Kamasi. The Epic. Brainfeeder, 2015, compact disc. ———. Harmony of Difference. Young Turks, 2017, compact disc. ———. Heaven and Earth. Young Turks, 2018, compact disc. Watson, Tom. “Kamasi Washington: The Sky’s the Limit.” Crack Magazine. Accessed April 23, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMWatson. X, Malcolm, with Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove, 1965. Zo. “Janelle Monáe & Wondaland Want You To Cut Your Own Version Of ‘Hell You Talmbout.’” Okayplayer. Accessed April 23, 2019. http://bit.ly/RMMonae.

Contributors

Daniel Fischlin is a leading Canadian humanities researcher who has produced important cross-disciplinary work, including some twenty books with a wide variety of international presses. His most recent books include (with Ajay Heble and George Lipsitz) The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation (Duke UP) and a co-authored book with Martha Nandorfy entitled The Community of Rights • The Rights of Community (Oxford UP), the third in a trilogy of books co-written with Dr. Nandorfy on rights issues. Fischlin has received several major awards for teaching excellence and is to date the only winner from the Humanities of the prestigious Premier’s Research Excellence Award. As a musician and community organizer, he is the Artistic Director of Silence, a community artspace in Guelph, and is also the founding director of the newly launched MA/PhD program in Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph.

Ajay Heble is the founding Director of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), and Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. His research has covered a full range of topics in the arts and humanities, and has resulted in numerous books, articles, or chapters. He was the founding Artistic Director of the award-winning Guelph Jazz Festival and Colloquium, and a founding co-

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editor of the peer-reviewed journal Critical Studies in Improvisation/ Études critiques en improvisation (www.criticalimprov.com). Heble is also an accomplished pianist who, with Daniel Fischlin, records and performs with the improvising quartet, The Vertical Squirrels.

Robert Michael Edwards is a Part-Time Professor at the University of Ottawa in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies. His areas of research include Nag Hammadi studies and early Christian martyrdom narratives. Dr. Edwards has published in the journal Henoch, as well as the edited collections, La croisée des chemins révisitée: quand l’Église et la Synagogue se sont-elles distinguées? (2012) and La littérature des questions et réponses dans l’Antiquité profane et chrétienne: de l’enseignement à l’exégèse (2013). He is presently working on an inter-disciplinary project, studying religious affiliation, expression, and conversion in hip-hop music and culture.

George Lipsitz is Professor of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the co-author with Barbara Tomlinson of Insubordinate Spaces: Improvisation and Accompaniment for Social Justice and co-author with Ajay Heble and Daniel Fischlin of The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation. Lipsitz won the American Studies Association Angela Y. Davis Prize for Public Scholarship in 2013 and its Bode-Pearson Prize for Career Distinction in 2016. His single authored books include Time Passages, Dangerous Crossroads, Footsteps in the Dark, and Midnight at the Barrelhouse.

Josslyn Jeanine Luckett is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. She holds a PhD in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, and a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. Her research interests

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include and combine media studies, jazz and improvisation studies, and comparative and relational Ethnic Studies. Her current book project examines the pre-history of the filmmakers known as the “L.A. Rebellion,” by engaging the multiracial media “insurgents” of UCLA’s Ethno-Communications Program, whose activist film work changed the face of independent media across Black, Chicana/o, Asian American and Native American communities in Los Angeles and beyond. A former Executive Story Editor for the WB sitcom, The Steve Harvey Show, she wrote the teleplay for the MTV Original Movie, Love Song, directed by Julie Dash.

Martha Nandorfy is co-author, with Daniel Fischlin, of The Community of Rights • The Rights of Community (2011), The Concise Guide to Global Human Rights (2007), and Eduardo Galeano: Through the Looking Glass (2001). She is a professor of literature at the University of Guelph where she works on storytelling about decolonization in the Americas, Native American and Latinx literatures, environmental literature and cli-fi, and creative non-fiction.

Leila Qashu is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), which she holds at the University of Guelph. She previously held a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (2016-18) at Concordia’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS). She has been working with the Arsi Oromo in Ethiopia and conducting fieldwork since 2002. In her PhD research, for which she held a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship (2010-14), she focused on ateetee, an indigenous Arsi women’s sung dispute resolution ritual, and how Arsi women use this process to protect, promote, and affirm their rights. Her PhD received the 2017 CAGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her current research project, financed by a SSHRC Insight Development grant, uses collaborative and improvisational audio

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and video methodologies in workshops and feedback sessions with young Oromo women in order to examine the challenges young Arsi women face and their hopes for the future.

Dylan Robinson is a Stó:lo¯ scholar and artist who holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University, located on the lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe people. Dr. Robinson’s current research documents the history of contemporary Indigenous public art across North America, and questions how Indigenous rights and settler colonialism are embodied and spatialized in public space. Robinson’s previous publications include the co-edited volumes Music and Modernity Among Indigenous Peoples of North America (2018); Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2016) and Opera Indigene (2011). His monograph, Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (2020), examines forms of “inclusionary performance” and Indigenous and Settler Colonial practices of listening, and is published as part of the Indigenous Americas Series with University of Minnesota Press. Dr. Robinson additionally works as a curator of Indigenous art and performance. Soundings, an exhibition co-curated with Candice Hopkins includes scores by Indigenous artists, writers, musicians and composers, and will gather new work by Indigenous artist as it tours internationally until 2023. Alongside this exhibition, Robinson has curated the Ka’tarohkwi Festival of Indigenous Arts at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, and a new Indigenous performing arts festival at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Fall 2020.

Feryn Wade-Lang is a PhD student in the University of Guelph’s Literary Studies program. Her past research has focused

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on orientalism, trauma studies, and border imperialism in speculative fiction. She completed her MA thesis at the University of Guelph, titled White Women in the Medina: Race, Gender, and Orientalism in Women’s Travel Writing on Morocco (2019). Her current research interests include the fiction of Octavia Butler, travel literature, and fiction and non-fiction by trans and gender variant authors.

Alyssa Woods is an Assistant Professor in the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph.  Her research involves interdisciplinary approaches to music-analytic and socio-cultural analysis, focusing on gender and race in popular music. Her most recent work has explored the concept of myth making, genealogy, and succession in hip-hop. She has published articles in the journals Music Theory Online and Twentieth-Century Music, as well as in the edited collections The Pop Palimpsest: Intertextuality in Recorded Popular Music (2018), The Ashgate Companion to Popular Music and Gender (2017), and The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter (2016). Dr. Woods is currently involved in an interdisciplinary project on religious conversion in hip-hop music and culture.

Index

A Adams, Sylvan, 23–24 Advis, Luis, 153–54 Against Me!, 68–69 Albany Movement, 36 Ali, Muhammad, 203–4 Allende, Salvador, 151, 153 Amazon, 20, 25, 44n30 ambient music, 21–22; creation of, 50–51; as genre, 51–53, 55; as improvisation, 56, 61–63; and interiority, 53–54, 64, 67–72; listening and, 52–54, 57–59; and loneliness, 64, 68, 72–73; as political, 65–66, 68–72; and reverberation, 56–57, 61–62; structure of, 60–61; submersion through, 54–57, 69–73; vocal, 61–62 American Indian Movement (AIM), 34, 145 Ang, Ien, 246–47, 259 Aphex Twin, 51, 53–54, 67 Apple, 20 “Arauco tiene una pena” (Parra), 166, 170–74, 177–78 Arby, Khaira, 31, 33 Arffan Qallo, 112 Armstrong, Lil Hardin, 33 Armstrong, Louis, 33 Arsi Oromo. See Oromo

Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEC), 251 As Above, So Below (1973), 82–84, 92n3 Asian American Movement, 87, 135, 140–42 ateetee, 95–100; and community, 99– 100; improvisation in, 100–101; musical structure of, 100–101; as restorative justice, 98–103, 105–6, 124

B Baker, Chet, 75 Baker, Ella, 35–36 Bambara, Toni Cade, 79–81, 85, 92n4 Barcode Free Music, 16, 43n18 Barwick, Julianna, 61–62 Bay Centre Mall, 221, 227, 234–35 Belafonte, Harry, 8 “Better in Tune with the Infinite” (Jay Electronica), 194–97 Bieber, Justin, 21 Biftuu Ganamo, 112 Big Sean, 194 Bill C-45, 225, 232 Black, Kodak. See Kodak Black Black Hebrew Israelites, 34, 193, 207, 210–11nn18–19 Black Lives Matter, 2, 188–89, 198, 206, 209nn1–2, 213n42, 244, 246 Black Power, 192, 210n18

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Bomb Squad, The, 192, 210n17 Bono, 20–21, 25, 44–45n32 Brown, Michael, 188, 205 Browne, Samuel Rodney, 89–92 Burns, Ken, 75, 81 Byard, Jaki, 17 Byron, Don, 249–52

C Canto al Programa, 153–54 Carmichael, Stokely, 192, 210n18 Casa del Popolo [venue], 16 Cash, Johnny, 11–12, 19 Castile, Philando, 205 censorship: of Ethiopian music, 112–18, 124 Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer, 58 Chance the Rapper, 194 Cherry, Don, 89–90, 92n6 Chin, Charlie, 140–42 Chinen, Nate, 244 civil rights, 8–11, 31–33, 35–36, 43n6, 79, 187, 260n31; as sampled in hip-hop, 189–209, 209n6, 212n26 Civil Rights (Fair Housing) Act (1968), 187 Clark, Larry, 78–80, 82–84, 92n3 climate change, 2, 7, 21–23, 38 Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 219, 246 Coltrane, John, 244–45, 247–48, 256; “My Favorite Things,” 252–53, 260n31 commons, the, 13, 19, 25; and music, 14–16, 25, 30, 35, 41–42; “conscious hip-hop.” See hip-hop: as protest “conscious rap,” 189, 191, 209n5, 210n14. See also hip-hop: as protest Cox, Bradford, 63 Cruisin’ J-Town (1975), 87–88, 91, 92n3 “C/S” (Guevara), 135, 140, 143–44

D Dakota Access Pipeline, 34 DAMN. (2017), 198–208, 212nn31– 32d decolonization: in Latin America, 164–65 Deep Listening [practice], 58–61, 71 Deep Listening Band, 55–56; Deep Listening [1989 album], 55–58, 60 Deep Listening Institute, 58 Deerhunter, 63–64 Defend PR, 39–40 Dempster, Stuart, 55–56 Domingues, Dario, 27 Dutcher, Jeremy, 37–38

E Edge, The, 20–21 Electronica, Jay. See Jay Electronica “ELEMENT” (Lamar), 199–208, 212n31, 213n48; “El Guillatún” (Parra), 155, 166, 174–75 Ellington, Duke, 13 Eno, Brian, 51–53, 55, 57–58, 66 environmentalism. See climate change, Idle No More Ethiopia: censorship of music in, 112–18, 124. See also Oromo Ethno-Communications: at UCLA, 77–81, 84–85, 91, 93n14, 93n20 Eurovision, 23 Extinction Rebellion, 2, 7, 22

F Facebook, 21, 44–45n32 Fandango, 129–32, 136–137, 146 FandangObon: and Afro-diaspora, 132–33, 136–37; origins of, 129–33, 146; as political, 135–40, 147; relationship to Fandango, 129–31; relationship to Obon, 129–32 Favre, Gilbert, 183n42 film: by UCLA Ethno-Communications

Index students, 75–92, 92n3, 92n6 Fischlin, Daniel, 84 Fitzgerald, Ella, 33, 227 Five-Percent Nation / Nation of Gods and Earth (FPN), 193, 195, 211n20, 212n26 Flores, Quetzal, 129–30, 132–33, 135, 140, 145–46 Franklin, Henry, 76–77 Fruit of Islam, 195, 204

G Galeano, Eduardo, 3–4, 180n4 Gaza, 23–24 geerarsa, 111, 115; use by women, 105, 117–23 gender, 63–64. See also genderbased violence, queerness, trans identity gender-based violence, 9–10, 99, 101–2, 104. See also women: violence against Gera, Cris, 41 Gonzalez, Martha, 129, 132–33, 135, 140, 145–46 Google, 20, 44n30 Grace, Laura Jane, 68–69 “Gracias a La Vida” (Parra), 166–69, 183n37 Grain of Sand, A, 135, 140–43, 145; “Yellow Pearl, 140, 142–43, 145 Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, 191 Great Leap, 129, 145 Greene, Ralph “Petey,” 5 Grouper, 60 Guevara, Rubén Funkahuatl, 129, 132, 135, 140, 143–45, 147; “C/S,” 135, 140, 143–44 gun violence, 193, 203–4

H Harpeth Rising, 9–10 Haynes, Justin, 27–30 Healy, Matt, 22

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Heble, Ajay, 84 Hebrew Israelites, 34, 193, 207, 210–11nn18–19 “Hell You Talmbout” (Monáe), 254–257 hip-hop: civil rights sampled in, 189–209, 209n6, 212n26; faithbased, 189, 193–208 210n7; as protest, 9, 65, 187–209 Hiroshima, 76–77, 82, 85, 87–88, 91, 92n3 Holiday, Billie, 33, 256–57 homelessness, 27–30 Horace Tapscott: Musical Griot (2017), 89, 92n3, 92n5 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 31–33, 83 Hutcheon, Linda, 250

I Ibarra, Susie, 252 Idle No More, 2, 7, 218, 221, 225–38, 239n1, 240n16, 240–41n18 Iijima, Chris, 140–42 improvisation, 39; and accompaniment, 84–85; in aggrieved communities, 137; in ambient music, 56–57, 61–63; and ateetee, 100–101; and irony, 251–54; as methodology in workshops, 108–10; and social practice, 15–18; use by Violeta Parra, 160 Inada, Lawson, 85–87, 92n3, 93n12, 93n16 independent music 29: labels, 15–16; venues, 20 “Indigenous anger,” 218, 221–26, 228–29, 233, 236–38 Indigenous peoples [North America], 33–35, 37–39; dance acts by, 219, 225–26; and protest, 218, 225–37; in scholarship, 218–19, 222–24, 239nn1–2; song acts by, 219–20, 225–26; writing by, 219.

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See also Jeremy Dutcher, Idle No More, Mapuche, Slahal International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), 124n1 Inti-Illimani, 148, 153 Israel-Palestine conflict, 23–24 I Told You So (1974), 85–86, 92n3

J Jackson, George, 141 Jackson, Jonathan, 141, 143 James, Richard D. See Aphex Twin Jara, Victor, 148–53, 155–56, 180n12, 183n37 Jay Electronica, 190–91, 194–98, 208–9, 211–12nn25–26; “Better in Tune with the Infinite,” 194–97; and civil rights, 196–98; religion in the work of, 194–97; sampling in the work of, 196–98 Jay-Z, 21, 194–95 Jazz (2001), 75, 81 Jónsi & Alex, 69–70 “J28” (Wong), 231–33

K Kesha, 9 Kid Capri, 200–201 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 197, 205 Kinnara Taiko, 133 Kodak Black, 192–93, 210–11n19 Kodani, Mas, 131, 133 Kondo, Alan, 86–87, 92n3, 93n14, 93n16 Kubo, Duane, 85, 88, 92n3, 93n20 Kuramoto, Dan, 76–77, 85–88, 91, 92n3 Kuramoto, June, 76–77, 85–88, 92n3

L La Farge, Peter, 19 Lamar, Kendrick, 188–91, 198, 208–9, 212nn31–32; “ELEMENT,” 199– 208, 212n31, 213n48; sampling

of Gordon Parks in the work of, 199–209 L.A. Rebellion, 78–80, 82, 90, 93n19 Lepilaf, Juanita, 176 Lewis, Eric, 250n31 Lil Dicky, 21 Lipsitz, George, 84, 251, 261n40 listening: act of, 7, 14–15, 238, 250– 51; and ambient music, 52–54, 57–59. See also Deep Listening [practice] Live in San Francisco County Jail (2015), 10–11

M Mackey, Nathaniel, 251, 253 Madonna, 23–24, 44–45n32 Mapuche, 149, 158–59, 181n16, 183n40, 183–84n49, 184n51; and Violeta Parra, 150, 152, 154–56, 162–79, 184n54, 184n60 Marsalis, Wynton, 75 Martin, Trayvon, 205 Masekela, Hugh, 77 McCarthy, Joseph, 31 McCullough, Barbara, 79, 89–90, 92n3, 92n6, 93n20 mental health, 27–30 Metheny, Pat, 13 #MeToo, 2, 9 Michel, Danny, 45n47 Miranda, Roberto, 92n3 Mitchell, David, 257–58 Mitchell, Joni, 18 Miyamoto, Nobuko, 129–35, 140–43, 145 Monáe, Janelle, 254–57, 259, 260n32; “Hell You Talmbout,” 254–57 Monson, Ingrid, 249–50, 253, 260n31 Morgan, Frank, 76–77 Mori, Johnny, 85 Morrison, Toni, 256 Moten, Fred, 16–19 Muhammad, Elijah, 195–97, 202, 212n26

Index music: censorship of, 112–18, 124; and the commons, 14–16, 25, 30, 35, 41–42; independent: 15–16, 20, 29. See also ambient music, hip-hop, improvisation, nueva canción “My Favorite Things” (Coltrane), 252–53, 260n31

N Nakamura, Robert, 78, 80, 84–85, 92n3, 93n20 Nation of Gods and Earths (FivePercent Nation), 193, 195, 211n20, 212n26 Nation of Islam (NOI), 193, 195–98, 202, 204–5, 207, 210–11nn18–20, 212n26 1975, The, 21–22 Nipsey Hussle, 189 Nisei Week Festival, 134 nueva canción [new song movement], 148–149; as male-dominated, 158; role in revolution, 150–53, 167, 171–72; Violeta Parra and, 148, 150–51 NWA, 188

O Obon, 129–32, 134, 136–37 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria (AOC), 38, 43n6 Ohashi, Alan, 85 Oliveros, Pauline, 55–58, 61–62, 66, 71; Deep Listening (1989), 55–58 Orbison, Roy, 20 Oromo: historic oppression of, 110– 16; and protest, 112–10, 116–24, 126n34; women, 98–110, 116–21, 124. See also ateetee, geerarsa Ortega, Sergio, 153

P Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (PAPA), 76–77, 82–83, 88, 90–91, 92n3

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Panaiotis [Peter Ward], 55–56 Pandora, 20, 44n30 Park Royal Shopping Centre, 218, 221, 233–36, 240n8 Parker, William, 38, 252 Parks, Gordon, 199–208 Parra, Violeta, 148, 179n1, 179–80n3, 183n42; “Arauco tiene una pena,” 166, 170–74, 177–78; creative practice of, 159–60, 178–79; “El Guillatún,” 155, 166, 174–75; “Gracias a La Vida,” 166–69, 183n37; and Mapuche culture, 150, 152, 154–56, 162–79, 184n54, 184n60; musical style of, 159–60; and the nueva canción, 148, 150–51; as of the people, 155–58, 161, 180n7; as political, 161–62, 177–79; and Victor Jara, 151–52, 155–56, 183n37; in Wallmapu, 164–66, 168, 174–79; “Yo canto la diferencia,” 148, 161, 182n26 Phillips, Nathan, 33–35 Pink Floyd, 23 Pinochet, Augusto, 151–52 Plena Combativa, 40, 46n67 police brutality, 18–90 202–8, 246, 254–55, 212n31. See also Black Lives Matter Popular Unity [Unidad Popular] (UP), 152–55, 161 Prévost, Edwin, 25 prison activism, 5, 10–12, 143 public commons, 13, 19, 25; and music, 14–16, 25, 30, 35, 41–42; Public Enemy, 188, 190, 192, 210n17, 211–12n25

Q Qannoo, Ilfinesh, 117 queerness, 58, 61, 63–64, 66–73 Quetzal, 135, 146 Quilapan, Juan López, 176 Quilapayún, 148

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R Ra, Sun, 40, 42, 245, 247–48 racism: in Chile, 152, 177; FandangObon as counter to, 130, 135–38, 141–45; hip-hop as counter to, 187–208, 212n31; Indigenous experience of, 31–35, 219, 240n13; Oromo experience of, 110–13; See also civil rights Rajabian, Mehdi, 41 Ramallah, 40 Reagon, Bernice Johnson, 35–37 Rebel Musics: Human Rights, Resistant Sounds, and the Politics of Music-Making, 1–4, 151, 162 Resistance Revival Chorus, 8–9, 43n6 Rice, Tamir, 205 Roxy Music, 52 Ruben and the Jets, 135

S Sakamoto, Ryuichi, 195–96 Sanders, Pharoah, 245 Santoni, Adriana, 40 Scott, Hazel, 31–33 Sen, Amartya, 248–49 Shakur, Tupac, 20 Shalhoub, Naima, 10–12 Sharrieff, Ethel, 202, 204 Shipp, Matthew, 252 Silence [venue], 16, 44n21 Simpson, Leanne, 227–28, 234 Smith, Zadie, 18–19 Slahal, 221, 228, 233–36, 238, 241n27 Solomon, Seenaa, 117–19, 122 son jarocho, 129–132, 137 Spotify, 20, 44n30, 45n47 Standing Rock, 34 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 36 Sweet Honey in the Rock, 35–36

T Tagaq, Tanya, 38–39 taiko, 133

Tapscott, Horace, 76–77, 82–84, 89–92, 92n3, 92n6 Tate, Greg, 244 Taylor, Clyde, 79 Taylor, Elyseo, 80–81 Tazaraa, Hawwi, 117–19 Thunberg, Greta, 21–22 #TimesUp, 9 Todd, Thomas “TNT,” 192 trans identity, 66–73 Tranzac Club, 16 Trump, Donald, 8, 34, 189, 191, 212n31, 246, 248 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 224

U UCLA, 76–82, 84–85, 91, 92n3, 93nn19–20; EthnoCommunications program at, 77–81, 84–85, 91, 93n14, 93n20 Unidad Popular [Popular Unity] (UP), 152–55, 161 Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA), 90 U2, 20, 25–26, 44–45n32

V Vantzou, Christina, 60–61 Via Campesina, 2 Visual Communications (VC), 85–87, 92n3, 93n14, 93n16, 93n20

W Ware, David S., 252–54, 260n31 Washington, Kamasi, 244–249, 254 Waters, Roger, 23–24 Watts Rebellion, 77, 79 Watts Towers Jazz Festival, 76–77, 88, 91 wealth disparity, 20–21, 25–26, 29, 44n30, 44-45n32, 45n43 Whitney Museum, 247–48 Winehouse, Amy, 20 Wizard of Oz, The, (1939): as sample,

Index 196–97 women: rights of, 8–11, 31, 96–99, 101–6, 116–22; violence against, 31, 98–99, 101–2, 106–10, 124–25n2. See also ateetee Wondaland, 254–56 Wong, Eddie, 78, 80–81, 85, 92n3 Wong, Rita: “J28,” 231–33 Working Families Party, 8

X X, Malcolm, 192–93, 205, 210–11n19, 212n26, 252, 260n24 XXXTentacion, 192–93, 210–11nn19

Y “Yellow Pearl” (A Grain of Sand), 140, 142–43, 145 YG, 189 “Yo canto la diferencia” (Parra), 148, 161, 182n26 YouTube, 20, 116

Z Zapatistas (EZLN), 2, 135, 140, 146 Zappa, Frank, 20, 135 Zimbabwe, 41

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