Month: November 2008

Music Break: “They Love K’naan in the Slums and in the Native Reservations”

/ Eamon / 7 Comments

I can’t wait until January. That’s when Somali-Canadian artist K’naan’s new album, Troubadour, drops. I haven’t been so excited by an album since Outkast came out with Aquemini in 1998. And this one is better.

I first saw K’naan in early September at Le Poisson Rouge in the village, and I’ve been hooked since. At that show, Mos Def appeared in the crowd at one point, and got on stage to perform this number with K’naan.

When Mos Def endorses something in the music world, you should probably pay attention. That night, K’naan had all of us not only paying attention but also singing along with the anthems he unleashed.

The other day, I finally had the chance to get a sneak preview of Troubador at the house of a friend who had a hook-up.  I was blown away. It’s a soulful, rousing, thought-provoking, witty and moving hour of classic joints. Dare I say it? OK, I will: Grammy 2010. If K’naan gets the kind of publicity he deserves, this will be a game-changing album, in a time when everyone is going back to the one-off single model on iTunes.

To understand the significance of K’naan’s music, you need to know a bit about his life story. Born in 1978, he grew up in Somalia and left on the last commercial flight out of Mogadishu in 1991, before the civil war descended into total chaos. In much of his music, he talks about the deaths of friends, violence and deprivation that characterized his youth. During that time, he listened to American rap music, memorizing lyrics before he knew what they meant. He’s been pursuing that passion ever since arriving in North America.

The pain and beauty of K’naan’s homeland resonate in all his music. In some songs, he samples old Ethiopian melodies, drops hip hop beats on them, weaves anti-violence rhymes through them, and links them with addictive, heart-tugging choruses. In the song “Somalia” — from which the title of this blog post comes — he sings:

What you know about the pirates terrorize the ocean?
To never know a single day without a big commotion
It can’t be healthy just to live with such a steep emotion
And when I try to sleep, I see coffins closin’

(You can download that song for free on K’naan’s MySpace page)

K’naan obviously listens to a lot of music. His flow most closely resembles Eminem’s. But elsewhere, like when he says I take inspiration from the most heinous of situations/Creatin’ medication from my own tribulations on “Take a Minute”, he sounds just like 2Pac. And when he speaks at the end of the same song, he sounds like Mos Def: “Nothin’ is perfect man, that’s what the world is, all I know is, I’m enjoying today. Cuz it ain’t every day that you get to give.” Elsewhere, he sounds like John Lennon: I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

His subject matter is a long, refreshing drink of water in the desert of still-bling-obsessed, violence-celebrating mainstream rap. K’naan talks about family, the virtues of generosity, the immigrant experience, the scars of war and — in one of the best songs, “Fifteen Minutes Away” — the simple pleasure of a wire transfer back home. He can afford to laugh at gangster-posturing American rappers because, he sings, he has lived a ghetto harder than anything they can talk about. The song “Strugglin'” from his excellent first album, The Dusty Foot Philosopher, showcases classic K’naan content, and his fusion of folk melodies with Hip Hop:

In the most moving song of all (and there are many on Troubador), a tune called “People Like Me,” K’naan sings a verse that I wish would come to define a new era in Hip Hop. In the first verse, a first-person poem reminiscent of Eminem’s “Stan”, but with more of an advocacy angle, K’naan takes on the voice of a soldier in Iraq. I made my friend let me write down the whole verse, and I’ll leave you with that:

Is it fair to say that I am stressing out?
I’m stationed in Iraq and they won’t let me out
My homie said I was stupid for even joining
My counselor said my decision was “disappointing”
Oh she had good slates (?) at state colleges
And with my good grades it wouldn’t have been a problem
But they don’t understand just the power of significance
More than brilliance and certainly more than dividends
And if you ask me now, Would I repeat it?
Would I fight in a war I don’t believe in?
Well the answer is, it’s not me where the cancer is
They’ve been doin’ this before Jesus of Nazareth
And after all this time it is still deadly hazardous
And Bush isn’t really bein’ all that inaccurate
When he says we winnin’ the war, ‘cuz it’s staggerin’
But that’s ‘cuz we’re killin’ everybody that we see
And most of us soldiers we can barely fall asleep
And time and time again, I’m feelin’ incompetent
‘Cuz my woman back home, we constantly arguin’
And I must be crazy, ‘cuz all I’m obsessin’ with
Is her MySpace and Facebook, and who’s commentin’
Swear to God if she’s cheatin’ I’m doin her ass in!
I could tell with one look
And it came to me, soundin’ somethin’ like a song hook:

[Hook]
Heaven, is there a chance that you could come down
And open doors to hurting people like me…

Music Break: Buika Has a Voice Like Smoke and Honey

/ Eamon / 2 Comments

I’m a fiend for good music by interesting people. I like artists who have a compelling life story that has shaped what they do.

So I was immediately captivated when I heard the smoky voice of Buika on PRI’s The World: Global Hit the other day. Buika is a Spanish singer whose family was refugees from Equatorial Guinea. She grew up singing in hotels in Mallorca after her father abandoned the family. Listen to the compelling podcast about her journey from being a Tina Turner impersonator to a nominee for a Latin Grammy the other night.

And check out a song or two as well.

(And btw, this is the first installation in a recurring feature about my neverending quest for great music.)

Election Night in Harlem

/ Eamon / Leave a comment

I am very sorry I missed it. My friend John put together this clip.

I was in the laundromat two days ago on Malcom X and 117th and overheard a middle aged woman talking to an older man.

“I go to work in the morning and I look at my boss and just smile,” she said with a laugh. “We’re ready for Barack Obama. I’m more ready for Obama than I’m ready for myself.”

Obama Is Only the First Step

/ Eamon / 2 Comments

A professor of mine — a leading star in anthropology with a towering, critical mind — pointed out to us students on Thursday that we should be asking what kind of change Barack Obama will really bring.

Make no mistake: this prof was happy about Obama, and couldn’t hide it. I don’t think he had any intention of dampening the classroom’s euphoria, either (there are like two McCain supporters at SIPA). But it’s his job to think about these things, so I think we’d do well to listen.

What he pointed out was that there’s lots we don’t know about the Obama presidency. Will he deepen the occupation of Afghanistan? Isn’t the United States’ superpower status so predicated on a powerful military that we will need ever more expeditions to stay relevant? Hasn’t Obama worryingly surrounded himself with interventionists like Samantha Power? (In my prof’s view — or what I understand of it from his class — Power’s take on what the U.S. should have done in Rwanda was wrong and didn’t account for the country’s history.) And what of a resurgence of patriotism — even jingoism — that could mean a blank check on dubious policies? (We’ve seen that one before!)

In short, my prof was saying that the president can only be as big as the presidency. I think he’s is right.  And there are far more constraints on Barack Obama than there were on W, for two reasons. One, Obama truly was elected by a grassroots campaign, and so must in some ways be held to the whims of his grassroots. Two, the changes he wants to make — and that progressives hope he makes — are more revolutionary than the kind of changes Bush began 2000.

I had already been thinking about the limits and challenges of an Obama presidency because of some observations I made while canvassing in Ohio. For one thing, there are those in America that hate what Obama stands for. Like it or not, they vote, and we must bring them into the dialogue if we ever want lasting change in our country. Without that, the Christian right will just end up hating Obama as much as progressives hate Bush.

Another thing is that there is certainly not unity among Obama’s supporters on all issues. In the post-euphoria of the election, we shouldn’t shy away from looking at our fellow Obama supporters and asking them what they think about really difficult issues: abortion, gay marriage, immigration, Israel and Palestine. And while we all agree that our current foreign policy is terrible, there is wide disagreement about what the correct one looks like. One Obama supporter told me he thinks Iraqis should pay us back for the cost of the invasion. I totally disagree. The fact that we were able to agree enough on the campaign to drive around in the middle of the night before E-Day planting Obama signs is testament to the power of Obama’s message. But the discussion is not resolved.

We don’t need immediate consensus, but we must have dialogue. We can all crawl back to the rocks we live under — liberal, conservative, coastal or heartland — and wait for Obama to answer all these questions for us. Or we can keep up the amazing hope and dialogue this campaign has started, so we are never surprised by the views our fellow voters come up with, and so that when we hit impasses, we know how to solve them in ways beside shouting at each other, or worse.

Here’s an issue we can start with: Obama’s reported plan to come up with an alternative justice system to replace Guantanamo. Is this what we want? The ACLU has criticized it. On the other hand, it’s a way to get the travesty of Guantanamo off our hands with the quickest consensus possible. I don’t know enough yet to give a strong opinion (though when the ACLU speaks, we should listen). All I can say is: Stay abreast, stay engaged, don’t get passive!

Finally, a shout out to my fellow canvasser and blogger Seth Wessler, who is doing his part to promote this dialogue with his excellent blog posts via Racewire, which is associated with the magazine Colorlines. I love these anecdotes from Ohio (Seth stayed in the same house I did in Lancaster).

Getting Folks Like David to Vote, Again and Again

/ Eamon / 6 Comments

“Are you sure you don’t want to vote?” It was 7:05 p.m. on Election Day and my friend Crissie was making a last-minute phone call from the local Democratic party headquarters to  plead with David, a 20-year-old resident of Lancaster, Ohio, to get to the polls.  “I know, we’re all really tired. But this election is really, really important and what happens in Ohio is going to decide it.”

David had just returned from a long day at school, and said he was just too tired to vote, even though he supported Barack Obama. He even declined the campaign’s offer of a ride.

My friend Matteen and I were in the field office sitting on the couch next to Crissie, along with about 20 other volunteers making similar calls to hundreds of potential Obama supporters in the final minutes of voting.

“Let’s just go to his house and pick him up anyway,” Matteen said, glancing around the room full of tired volunteers. Without a second thought, he and I jumped up. Moments later, we were tearing through the streets of Lancaster in a rented green minivan with an Obama-Biden placard masking-taped to its side door. A local teenage volunteer rode shotgun, guiding us through the dark streets to David’s house, whose address we had from the voter rolls.

I knocked on the door of David’s back-alley apartment, but no answer came. I called his phone from my cell. No one picked up. In only 15 minutes, David’s dwindling opportunity to vote would be a long-gone memory.

The race to get David to vote was the final effort of a weekend-long push to make sure every Obama supporter in the area had made it to the polls. For the last three days, after making the 11-hour drive from New York City, our cadre of eight current and former SIPA students and several other New Yorkers had relentlessly pounded the pavement in Lancaster and other towns in southeast Fairfield County, Ohio — a former Republican stronghold — to canvass for the Democratic candidate for president. With the help of local organizers, we had knocked on thousands of doors. We talked to 92-year-old matriarchs, 18-year-old high school students, young parents and recent retirees. We walked through subdivisions with seas of McCain-Palin lawn signs, trying to motivate islands of hesitant Obama supporters. On the Appalachian fringes of the county, we searched for Obama voters on dirt roads that wound through coves where confederate flags hung in the windows of single-wide trailers.

It was a weekend of not turning back, of going the extra step to approach the places most unlikely to house Obama supporters.

To be sure, there were disappointments. There was the woman who told Matteen she “just can’t trust a Muslim.” There were the provocateurs who came by the campaign headquarters the night before the election and hurled racist slurs.

But more than anything, there were the rewarding moments that showed Obama had real support, in a town where everyone goes to church and the population is 97.4 percent white. There was the young farmer on a rural route who had a giant Obama sign in his yard, and gave an encouraging thumbs up from the seat of his tractor. Or the woman with a country drawl who hadn’t voted in 20 years, but said this time she was going to the polls for Obama. Or the elderly woman I called on Tuesday evening to check that she had voted. She had.

“I’m just so excited about Obama,” she said. “I’m just a-waitin’ on the results, sittin’ on pins and needles.”

Those interactions spurred us on to make sure that every Obama vote in town was cast.

So rather than accepting defeat as we waited outside David’s silent apartment, we tried one last tactic.

“Hey David!” Matteen yelled, with the familiarity of a long-time friend.

There was a pause, and a noise deep within the house. Finally, a reluctant response.

“Yup…”

“Come on, bud, we’re here to take you to the polls,” Matteen shouted. “You only got a couple minutes left to vote.”

Soon David shuffled out with a sheepish look on his face. A tall fellow with braces, he wore sweats and white plastic slippers.

“Ah, OK. Let’s go, man.”

We careened to his polling place, and convinced the poll workers to hold the door open for one last voter — it was 7:29.

When he was finished, David grinned and gave me a firm handshake. It was the first time he ever voted.

It was only one vote, but it was a moment that epitomized the grass-roots basis of Obama’s campaign. Thousands of volunteers throughout Fairfield County, the state of Ohio and beyond had made similar efforts again and again. One and two voters at a time, they had turned Lancaster into a battleground. They won Ohio, and they won America.

So as a mix of local and out-of-state volunteers at a Lancaster sports bar watched the first black President of the United States take the stage on the night of November 4, 2008, tears flowed freely and glasses were raised because, as Obama said, we were the ones who had put him there.

“Above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to — it belongs to you,” Obama said at Grant Park in Chicago.

For once, from Lancaster to Los Angeles, from Albuquerque to Albany, we felt that there really was one America.