Weaponized Music

Fela oversees rehearsal (Photo by Janet Griffith)

1. I have been listening to Fela Kuti. His pidgin, his music. What little I know about him, I read on Wikipedia–which is to say: I know very little about Fela Kuti. I know very little about Africa. Less about Nigeria.

2. Photos and videos suggest that Fela did not care for pants–at the same time, he seemed to prefer pageantry. Fela was a rock star, a big voice and a bigger show. If people gathered at his concerts for the show, why did they join his commune? When is music a weapon? In Fela’s Nigeria, I suspect that persona was the weapon. Fela, the show, was too much for his opponents.

3. When is music a weapon? 1990: The U.S. military’s boom-box blockade of the Vatican embassy in Noriega’s Panama. Did Van Halen see any profits?

4. Fela’s offense, to compare soldiers to zombies. Fela would not take orders:

Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go (Zombie)
Zombie no go stop, unless you tell am to stop (Zombie)
Zombie no go turn, unless you tell am to turn (Zombie)
Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think (Zombie)
- Africa 70, Zombie (1977)

5. In Babylon silence was a weapon, but the silence gave voice to the Psalm:

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. (Psalm 137:8-9, KJV)

6. Fela was an excess. He would have been a terrible head of state; he was a better, self-proclaimed “Chief Priest”. He preached a corrective, an antidote, prophecy. He might tear down, but could he build?

7. Daniel Auber’s La muette de Portici (1828) stirred the political passions of Belgium’s (French) revolution:

Amour sacré de la patrie,
Rends-nous l’audace et la fierté;
A mon pays je dois la vie;
Il me devra sa liberté.

8. Fela imported Black Power from America. When black America was busy looking for its royal African heritage, Fela gathered a harem of queens and adopted the role. Bold, tough and brazen: what white culture feared. Music became a weapon because it was a boast. Fela taunted Nigeria’s guns; they torched his place and killed his mother. Dead mothers are a weapon too.

9. When Milosevic silenced the news, Belgrade’s radio stations played a loop of N.W.A.’s “Fuck tha Police” and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”.

10. Cult of (doubtfully benevolent) personality. Fela returns to America as a story. Cultured, tamed, marketed. Che Guevara on a t-shirt; Fela Kuti on the soundtrack. His sons have inherited the show. Femi and Seun preach a similar message, but the beatings Fela won seem less likely to be given to his sons. Much could change, but has Nigeria imported “culture” from America. People are a weapon, better keep them entertained.

11. Pidgin brokin perfect, Abi?

12. “Strange Fruit” fed the outrage, but “We Shall Overcome” sustained the movement.

13. Music doesn’t kill people; people kill people.

14. I do not trust the song anymore than I trust the poem. Most times it would be better to tie a millstone to the tongue.

Animal Suicide Note

Why should the human animal be prone to suicide? The question itself reveals the kind of loneliness in which we find ourselves. We presume a unique otherness–cognitively engaged, self-aware, self-examined. By definition, it would seem, only the animal with a “self” can kill itself. Animals can be pressed to a kind of system failure, in which certain stresses (captivity, for example) lead to death. I once tried to feed an abandoned duckling, a mallard; in futility, it leaped in its cardboard box until it died. It would be hard to imagine, however, that its intentions (or “instincts”) were anything other than to escape. Cut off from the consciousnesses of other species, we cannot know if or when the deer has the urge to dash in front of the semi, or when the rat, in despair, takes its poison with purpose. For the most part, non-human, animal models for suicidality, are just that … non-human models. It is for this reason that researchers like Preti and Malkesman look for the traits in animal behavior that are known to be associated with human suicide risks, including: anxiety, impulsivity, and helplessness. Apparently, one can pester a mouse until it mostly gives up on life. Some switch eventually flips and the poor beast simply submits to predation. But the helpless mouse is helpless, not zelfmoord.

On the other hand, we are animals and there is no reason to suppose that our own system failures differ from those of other species. It is the reflection, this face in the mirror, our human narcissism which pushes us to assume that our creaturely break downs are in fact some kind of rational deliberation about the value of another minute of life. In contrast, philosophical suicidality is silly. Thinking about the more troubling questions of existence, even when the answers are dire, ranks among the pleasures of life. Even so, Socrates serves (on one side of the coin) as a fine case study of the suicidality of self-examination. After all, to examine one’s life is, ultimately, to weigh whether or not it’s worth living. For most of us, I suspect that a competing animal urge toward self-preservation (completely outside of any rational machinations), protects us from philosophical foolishness. But for others, a completely different noise burns through the mind. The pain itself (even if we might know its source and, therefore, its limits) rages and smolders in the brain stem. In as much as it is “natural” to jump off of a hot stove, likewise, a human, an animal, in pain will seek ways to escape. But when we humans leap or pull the trigger, even then something in us, that blasted narrator, observes: you’re about to jump; you’re about to do yourself in. The chatter itself is tiresome.

Having written this, having reworked it, once again, through my mind, and obviously with some motivation, I suppose knowing is itself a bit of a buffer. We survive, but, like any animal, among the wounded.

References:

Malkesman O, Pine DS, Tragon T, Austin DR, Henter ID, Chen G, Manji HK. Animal models of suicide-trait-related behaviors. Trends Pharmacol Sci. 2009 Apr;30(4):165-73. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2788815.

Preti A. Do animals commit suicide? Does it matter? Crisis. 2011 Jan 1;32(1):1-4. PubMed PMID: 21371964.

Daffadillies: Lycidas

And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies.

- John Milton, “Lycidas“. 150-151.

With the daffodil, one comes to the end of Milton’s catalog of flowers in Lycidas. The daffodil makes frequent appearances in poetry (Dickinson, Frost, Herrick, Jonson, Shakespeare, Spenser, Wordsworth). It nearly rivals the rose and often tumbles into cliched preciousness. Its abundance in verse will come as no surprise to gardeners–were I to start another spring bulb garden, I’d probably include the poet’s narcissus (Narcissus poeticus). Not for its name, but because it grows so well, multiplies easily, and blooms abundantly. (I also like the shape and color–green-throated, stout yellow tubes, rimmed with orange against a very white background.) However, if Milton had any narcissus at all in mind, it seems unlikely that he would have thought of the N. poeticus. If he did think of N. poeticus, he would not have known it as the “poet’s daffodil.”

Narcissus pseudo-narcissus, Redouté, Pierre Joseph, 1759-1840

In Milton’s century, botanists were frustrated with the common name “daffodil.” It seemed, to them, to be misplaced. Derivative of asphodel (“the affodil”), the name seemed a better fit for the genus Asphodelus. But common names are stubborn and Gerard uses “daffodil” throughout his descriptions of Narcissus. He also notes: “The yellow English Daffodil groweth almost everie where through England” (134). Thus, I would bet that Milton meant, if he meant any specific Narcissus, for readers to recall the common daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus). These were the flowers, as common as they were, to which botanists hoped that English speakers would limit there use of “daffodil.”

All the same, both the N. poeticus and the N. pseudonarcissus are mismatched to Milton’s somewhat mixed metaphor (part eyeball, part cup) in these lines. Not unlike the Narcissus myth, Milton gives the flower some human properties, specifically the ability to express grief. In the Narcissus story the flower bends its head over a stream to gaze at its own beauty, but in Lycidas the daffodil begins to weep and fills its cup with tears. I have no problem with the weeping, as saccharine as it is, but I see no way to fill its cup with liquid. Bent over, the common yellow daffodil cannot fill its cup with anything. In fact, it is probably bent over in this way to prevent it from flooding with rain water. Tears would merely spill to the ground. Although less bent, N. poeticus with its very short flute would serve similarly as a poor cup for sorrows.

Although not expressing incredulity, Sims is also underwhelmed by Milton’s daffodils:

The daffadillies with their cups full of tears seem to be deliberately anti-climactic to prepare for the sudden recognition of the unreality of all these flowers and of the “frail thoughts” of the poet about them. (89)

I agree with the unreality of the image, but I am less willing to make excuses for Milton. In many respects the poet was writing a faux-pastoral poem and at other times a genuinely pastoral poem. In both cases the young talent was showing us what he could do within and around the genre. He took risks and excelled (a lengthy flower catalog), but sometimes hit a false note (a teary-eyed daffodil).

References
Gerard, John, and Thomas Johnson. 1975. The herbal: or, General history of plants. New York: Dover Publications.
Sims, James H. “Perdita’s ‘Flowers O’ Th’ Spring’ and ‘Vernal Flowers’ in Lycidas,” Shakespeare Quarterly 22, no. 1 (Winter 1971): 87-90.

[Note: This is the twelfth post in a series. See also: The Flowers in Milton's "Lycidas", Primrose: Lycidas, Tufted Crow-toe: Lycidas, Pale Jasmine: Lycidas, White Pink: Lycidas, Not Your Freaking Pansy: Lycidas, The Glowing Violet: Lycidas, Musk-rose: Lycidas, Woodbine: Lycidas, Cowslips: Lycidas and Amaranthus: Lycidas.]