Youssou N'Dour: Living In The Ground
Jeff Rubard
The history of the appropriation of electrified African music
("Afrobeat") by the developed world, occurring since roughly the
middle of the 80s with a significant falling-off as of late, is a
strange one. Although records by the Talking Heads and Paul Simon
featuring African musicians and motifs were big sellers, there seems
to have been very little permanent influence on Western popular music
worked by that period; today bhangra from India has a significant
following among club kids, but what is to be heard of Africa is
primarily musicians influenced by the sounds of the Carribean (reggae,
dancehall). During the period of African electrified music's great
flourishing, these were dominant influences; above all, the figure of
James Brown (still one whose consideration
is clouded by a great deal of unnecessary awe at Brown's showmanship
skills) was the leitmotiv for the adaptation of traditional genres to
the social life of a post-independence, modernizing Africa.
It is rather well-known that the dominant figure of this period
(occurring during the 1970s) was Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti, who
patterned his mature act on Brown but whose showmanship is rather
downgraded due to the inaccessibility of his music. Kuti's Africa
70/Egypt 80 records are rather widely available on CD, at the
"contemporary" price point of $18-19; and Kuti music of this period is
something like a maximal extension of Brown's New Breed-era longform
grooves. Was Fela Kuti better than James Brown? In some respects
yes, as Bootsy Collins once remarked; the swing-size band manages to
bristle with virtuosity in a very restrictive format. But Kuti was
not *that* much better, such that this explains his legendary status;
rather, comprehensive consideration of his *oeuvre* requires one to
attribute a great deal of influence to his activities as a practical
politician, which in my opinion tend to be misprised as disliked but
necessary concomitants of aesthetic production
in an unfree country, although this is probably accurate enough for
purposes of "musical history".
In a piece on Public Enemy, I recently wrote about a connection
between "actually existing socialism" in the Eastern Bloc and the
culture of the African diaspora mediated through the pan-Africanism of
that period: when Chuck D says "plus I never have, and plus I never
been" there's more than a little of the left-handed compliment
present. And to my mind, Fela Kuti was the epitome of this: the "New
Man", transposed into an Third-World context. By contrast to Kuti, Ho
Chi Minh was veritably Eurocentric, with his Western intellectual
education and distaste for much of Asian culture; but (and this is
important, since Kuti was never any kind of Stalinist) what is of
value in that political and cultural tradition is present in Kuti's
defiance of corrupt Nigerian governmental and corporate authority,
though perhaps not in his easy familiarity
with native religions he was not born to.
So, is Kuti, who fought these murderous authorities for decades, an
objectionable figure in any sense? The answer is yes, and it comes
from his son Femi Kuti, who remarked that his father had fought these
people all his life, and nothing changed. And for all we know,
perhaps that young man would have liked to have seen something
different from his father. Has there been something different? Yes;
for many years in sub-saharan Africa, the musical tone has been set
not by Kuti but by others, chiefest among them Senegal's Youssou
N'Dour. N'Dour is also a hard figure to know, as his image has been
wrapped up following the earliest years of his band Super Etoile with
the aforementioned appropriation of African music by the West; I claim
no special expertise in this essay. But music from that period is
inexpensively available on a disc from Rough Guide, and although this
is still more than a little precious the record is well worth owning.
Why? Well, for starters Robert Christgau's characterization of Super
Etoile is not quite right (although I still believe every word in the
Consumer Guide is literally true): Super Etoile is the best
electrified band *ever*, this is what amplified instruments were made
to do. From a technical perspective, although there is limited
soloing the band as a unit is the most technically proficient
outfit "since Thinking Fellers", and like that defunct SF group their
music is frankly pretty. Furthermore, like that group (which was
affiliated with a sound subsisting across the bay, in the tonier parts
of Oakland) a genre which blends rock and R&B with traditional sounds,
*mbalax*, grew up around Super Etoile. Supplanting earlier "Star
Bands", this became something like the national sound
of Senegal. Are there better mbalax bands? I doubt it very much, but
I also doubt that this is important, which this linguistically
challenged listener takes to be the point of N'Dour's music.
N'Dour's music is, in its way, perfect qua *sui generis*; to emulate
him would be to engage in something of a conceit for the entertainment
of one's self and one's friends, both of which could be construed
rather widely. Is it perfect from the standpoint of the liberation of
the Senegalese people? That question does not apply, and this is
something like the criterion of the first status. N'Dour is not a
hypermasculine figure like the "openly polygamous" Kuti; his aural
signature is his extremely high register, but I suspect it wouldn't
bother him too much if the style did not appeal to you. In other
words, he is not a figure of open rebellion; but he is not apolitical,
either. Much of the political valences of N'Dour's work are
inaccessible to the Western ear, as he often writes in native
languages; an early hit included on the Rough Guide disc is the song
"Thiapatholy", but what exactly is being said is likely to remain
inaccessible to my ear forever. However, I suspect something of the
flavour of N'Dour's political stance can be gleaned from the song
"Woman Is The Future
Of Love", included on the recent *Nothing's In Vain*.
This twist of Louis Aragon's dictum "Woman Is The Future Of Man" is
rather obviously a cut on the modernizing tendencies of
"Afro-bolshevism"; and with all due respect to Negativland, I suspect
it is a perfect cut given the cultural context of N'Dour's career, the
AIDS pandemic among African youth. As is well-known, AIDS is
omnipresent in Sub-saharan Africa (claiming the life of Fela and many
other notables), but I suspect close listening to N'Dour may be the
first indication that the *Lord Of The Flies* understanding of
contemporary Africa promoted by Robert Kaplan in his popular Atlantic
Monthly essay of about a decade ago "The Coming Anarchy" may not be
entirely correct, although the large-scale economic damage caused by
AIDS is real enough.
Super Etoile is not escapist; their music is not particularly
"luxurious", having a minimum of flourishes added to the
challenging-enough concept of mbalax (double-tracked rhythm). But
neither are they particularly *cautionary*; these are not tales of
"life among the lowly" and its attendant risks, those are well-known.
I recently introduced the Hegelian concept
of reconciliation into the consideration of country and western
music's relation to existing institutions, and I would say that
N'Dour's music goes further than any of those acts do in grasping the
suffering caused by the
world order. It is either *reconciled* or *post-reconciliation*, and
figuring out the difference between the two might take a while, since
no clues are offered by the artworks themselves. If you are looking
for a tool to amplify desires for *sociopolitical* purposes, this
isn't it; but, y'know, it might be okay anyway.
Papa Andy
to the African music fan N'Dour and Fela are as you suggest, world's apart
but still represent the higher levels of modern African music
I was not really sure what points you were trying to make and didn't see the
value of dragging in socialism and Chuck D
A
--
Play I Some Music with Papa Andy
Reggae, African and Caribbean Music
http://wxxe.org
Saturday 8 PM - 11 PM ET
All Nite Rewind 11 PM - 3 PM
"Jeff Rubard" <jru...@opensentence.org> wrote in message
news:740acfc5.03111...@posting.google.com...
Jeff Rubard
> Afrobeat is actually a term used by Fela to describe his music
> to the African music fan N'Dour and Fela are as you suggest, world's apart
> but still represent the higher levels of modern African music
> I was not really sure what points you were trying to make and didn't see the
> value of dragging in socialism and Chuck D
>
> A
Andy, Andy, Andy, thank you for the comment but I can't let this go.
Politics are more or less important for those artists respectively,
and I was using Chuck D as a familiar example for US audiences to draw
out the point that both of them are rather eclectically traditionalist
in terms of their perceptions of the African community, but worldly
and modern enough for all that ("I.T.T." is a damn perceptive analysis
of globalization as we have come to understand it -- a force almost
outside space and time).
Michael Leahy
interesting, but calling "them" (Check D and who?) "rather eclectically
traditionalist in terms of their perceptions of the African community" loses
me.
But there is some great hip-hop coming from Africa, for those those that
fancy some "ecletically contemporary perceptions".
M
Jeff Rubard <jru...@opensentence.org> wrote in message
news:740acfc5.03112...@posting.google.com...
Jeff Rubard
> Like Andy, I'm not too sure what is the point being made. Some of it sounds
> interesting, but calling "them" (Check D and who?) "rather eclectically
> traditionalist in terms of their perceptions of the African community" loses
> me.
>
> But there is some great hip-hop coming from Africa, for those those that
> fancy some "ecletically contemporary perceptions".
>
> M
This is fucking lame. Firstly, you're the one dragging race in (not a
worthwhile concern with respect to contemporary Africa, as the real
problems can now just as easily be located with Africans), and very
stupidly as these are careful portrayals (I am not treating Chuck D
like a stepchild, or perhaps I wasn't in another article and I am in
another sense now). I'm not into musical eclecticism, I'm rather
absurdly "purist" with respect to genres (Teengenerate was a lot
better than the Strokes, dude); and I already mentioned a *dancehall*
orientation as the contemporary sound I know of. In other words,
that's (obviously) not all there is to this music but the politics is
a dimension "casual appreciation" often *obscures* *for other people*.
Jeff Rubard
Michael Leahy
I don't understand what you are trying to tell me, even less so with this
reply. So there's no need to thrown the book at me.
M
Jeff Rubard <jru...@opensentence.org> wrote in message
news:740acfc5.0311...@posting.google.com...
Jeff Rubard
> Are you sure you replied to the right thread? If so, I'll simply repeat that
> I don't understand what you are trying to tell me, even less so with this
> reply. So there's no need to thrown the book at me.
>
> M
Yes, and that's another gratuitous remark. As for my comments, you
put "them" in quotation marks, and you get what you get for that
set-up. Please, no more Rogerian psychotherapy.
Michael Leahy
Jeff Rubard
> ?????
>
????? yourself. This is too cute by half; that was a pretty heavy
initial comment and I don't feel like shouldering your discursive
load.
