POPTIC NERVE 2: LANGUAGE, LEARNING, CULTURE & WHY SHAKIRA IS DEAD GOOD

Clearly The Grain is today honouring Shakira in all her convoluted glory and, having only just managed to tear my eyes away from the hedonistic visual treat that is the video for ‘She Wolf’ (see the post below for this sumptuous promo and a review of the album), I feel obligated to write a few words on learning, language, culture and what that has to do with Shakira being dead good.

A cursory glance at the Columbian singer would probably place her fairly snugly in the (North) American pop music category. Visual hit points covered: blonde, attractive, a penchant for provocative dancing and revealing attire. Vocal hit points: a voice that can flit from belting out high notes, to melismatic warbles, to soft-focus, heavy breathing, crooning[i]. Musical hit points: a palette of stock song types that range from up-tempo dance to slow, (either melancholic ‘love lost’ or sensuous ‘love consummated’) ballads. There is also a dalliance with rock guitar and, latterly, with synths and vocoders. Lyrical hit points: sexual, again, flitting between defiant independence and submissive desire – but, most importantly perhaps as previously noted, sung in English.

However, a closer inspection will reveal that these familiar hit points don’t quite sit so flush with Shakira’s oeuvre. Listening to any Shakira song leaves you with a feeling that something is not quite right. I don’t mean this in the sense that it sounds wrong – quite the opposite – it’s interesting and forces the listener to re-evaluate the clichés of pop music. I think this comes directly from her constant negotiation with a musical culture (American pop) which, to her, is not indigenous. To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like to talk a bit about learning a foreign language. Quite often when someone has learnt a language to a reasonable level of fluency, (and I’m talking here about vernacular language rather than academic language – i.e. learning through speaking, often immersed in a foreign culture as well as a foreign language) they tend to come up with jaw-droppingly brilliant terns-of-phrase that, whilst traditionally ‘incorrect’, shape the language in a new and exciting way that makes you reassess your own language conventions.

PORNO PARA RICARDO, REAGAN YOUTH & THE 'PUNK' AESTHETIC

All this discussion of post-modernity and appropriation of style on ‘The Grain’ recently[1] has left me thinking about the ‘authenticity’, to use a musicological buzzword, of such musical practises. The criticism often levelled at post-modernity is that too often it appropriates style without concerning itself with content – or context. Thus we lambaste artists who seem to quick to jump on the latest stylistic bandwagon. Case in point, the recent 80’s pop revival for taking the sound but leaving the meaning. The reason being that we take it as read that the meaning of music stems from the context (social, economic, historical) of the musician, and that this inevitably shapes and creates the sound. To take the one without the other leads, all too often, to pastiche – that most wretched of musical traits. On the other hand, as AN demonstrates in the Beastie Boys essay, when genre styles are appropriated into a meaningful context, when they are not just taken on fashionable, but on representational, aesthetical considerations, then the ‘old’ can be re-told and re-evaluated as something contemporary and valid. In addressing this well documented subject, I’d like to step outside of the Anglo-American dialogue, and talk about a band who I have become very interested in of late; Porno Para Ricardo.

Right – introductions. Porno Para Ricardo (PPR) are a Spanish – language, hardcore punk band from Cuba. Formed in the late 90’s, they have become prolific since the mid-noughties, releasing several albums on a self-run record label. Ok, a hardcore punk band from Cuba – as niches go, this one is fairly… well, niche – but bear with me. For PPR have seemingly committed wholesale appropriation (genre robbery, if you like) of a totally alien style in hardcore punk. They have taken 80’s New York and transplanted it into contemporary Havana. It is interesting to note perhaps that NY-Havana was a particularly busy cultural tramline that fed both cities (Salsa, Latin Jazz, Afro-Cuban styles, Bolero all owe their origin to this inter-city dialogue). It has since been artificially (and, some would suggest, superficially) closed by political forces. But this aggressive re-opening by PPR is just part of the significant re-contextualisation of style to create a new, politically motivated, meaning.  PPR have taken the punk aesthetic on board firstly because it speaks to them both politically and aesthetically and secondly because they can re-mould it – play with the nuances, tinker with the conventions, fine-tune the sentiments – to speak for them and their unique situation. Is this post-modern? I don’t know. But it’s what post modern and the appropriation of the past should be.

"IT WAS FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY": DUST THEM ALL OFF

“I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair; ’77 and ’69, revolution was in the air”, or so sang erstwhile MySpace ‘phenomenon’ and purveyor of the insipid Sandi Thom. The rest of this forgettable track aside, these lyrics (and Thom can claim none of the creative spark for this sentiment) provide an interesting insight into the prescriptive nature of music history. There seems to be a general consensus, usually by those with a vested interest (Stuart Maconie et al I’m looking at you) that there are certain dates that are intrinsically ‘magical’ when it comes to music production, and thus are etched into our collective musical minds as significant. 1969 is one of these sacrosanct years. Even the most cursory of glances at the music press at the moment will yield myriad articles singing the praises of this year. Yet all will focus on one band, one album and one conclusion: the Beatles, ‘Abbey Road’ and that 1969 was a full stop at the end of a creative surge in popular music.

Ok, let’s get the necessaries out of the way. Yes, the Beatles were (and still are) unparalleled. They are among the most significant products this country has ever produced, and I don’t just mean musically, I mean they’re up there with the Magna Carta and the NHS! Yes, ‘Abbey Road’ is an amazing album and it did serve as the perfect end to the Beatles’ career[1]. But the way 1969 has passed into musical history, you’d be forgiven (well, not by me) for thinking that the whole of the music industry shut down, entering a dark-age of self-indulgent stadium rock until punk came along and breathed, or rather spat, vitality back into British music.

The points I’d like to try and get across in this article are firstly, that 1969 doesn’t simply represent the ‘end of an era’ and that a lot of exciting musical ventures took root in that year. Secondly, I want to try and dispel somewhat this prescriptive vision of ‘great years’ or even ‘great period’ of music in history. The sanctifying of an imagined past (almost always viewed in comparison to an un-favoured present and negatively projected future) is an overly simplistic and detrimental way of viewing music.

OASIS: AN OBITUARY

Well, it’s finally over… apparently. The pantomime dames that are Noel and Liam Gallagher have finally drawn the curtain on the self-appointed ‘biggest-band-in-Britain’ once and for all (although whether Noel can be tempted back once more into the breech is a moot point). Now seems as good a time as any to assess the legacy the band will leave behind, and, at this juncture, it doesn’t look too rosy.

When Oasis first arrived on the main stage of popular culture, I was just about the dead centre of their (supposed) demographic. 11 years old, white, male, northern – perfect. I was also struggling to carve out an identity in a Britain that, at the time, didn’t seem to have too much to offer. So, along came Oasis with Union Jack guitars and songs that were fairly easy to imitate and, like so many, I bought it hook, line and sinker. I’m not ashamed to say that I loved Oasis. I was an Oasis fan. I loved the bravado, the ‘us against the world’ rhetoric. I loved the volatility, the bickering and when Liam stuck his forks up at a camera. But, in the words of Saint Paul; “when I was a child, I spoke as a child”. That’s the problem, the brothers Gallagher have singularly failed to put aside childish things for over 15 years – and they weren’t exactly children to begin with! I mean, I have a younger brother and we used to argue and fight and say we couldn’t stand to be around each other – when we were children. To see two brothers in their forties still doing it is just embarrassing. Their resolute inability to change even slightly has meant they have faded, ungracefully, into ever increasing irrelevance and it is sad in every sense of the word.

SAY GOODBYE TO POST-BRITPOP PASTICHE, HELLO TO DIRTY PROJECTORS’ BITTE ORCA AND THE FUTURE OF CIVILISATION

I don’t know what ‘bitte orca’ means, and I must say that I’m also having a similar problem in trying to work out what the hell the new Dirty Projectors’ album of the same name is all about. Just where on earth does this insane, art-pop-neo-folk-chamber-rock-minimalist-afro-r’n’b odyssey fit into the scheme of things? There’s Kasabian, and then there’s Dirty Projectors. What kind of fucked-up logic is at work in a world that presents us with such radical contrasts in artistic worth? Did the same God who made West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum make Bitte Orca?

I think not, and in actual fact it’s not really all that difficult to position this latest offering from Dave Longstreth and co, to realize that Bitte Orca is so obviously and emphatically what the world needs right now. Even if large swathes of the western population don’t know it yet (notably most of our fellow citizens here in the UK) we’re surely now coming to the end of the great nostalgic postmodernist joke that got out of hand. This was a chapter of our cultural history which began in earnest in the mid-nineties with the arrival of the devout pastiche-driven retrogressiveness of Britpop, and subsequently deepened into a bewildered and backward-looking decade-and-a-half that saw just about every stylistic movement of the late-twentieth century pillaged and travestied in superficial principle-less fashion, until every shred of futurism and vitality was squeezed out of a once noble, radical and meaningful alternative/independent scene.

We’re now at a juncture where many people who really should know better genuinely think the future of British music lies in the hands of a slickly-marketed, fashion supplement-courting Kylie Minogue knock-off. So friends, I’m afraid it’s time to for us to choose sides. Will we carry on down the path of music-as-lifestyle, of shallow ironic referencing of past cultural (non-)glories, of dumbing-down, of pop music as commercial sell-out rather than populist art? Or will we side with the Dirty Projectors’ exhilarating, intelligent, experimentalist vision of what twenty-first century music can amount to if underwritten with a bit of idealism, bravery and (dare I say it) pretentiousness?

Listen to Bitte Orca, and the decision should be immediate and conscious-bypassing. The album opens with a series of evocatively filtered late-period-Beatles guitar strums and, from here on in, its becomes evident that the DPs have finally managed to pitch the art/pop quota just right; in doing so they might just have elevated themselves to the position of standout creative role models for a newly forward-thinking musical generation. Everyone should have heard by now about the laugh-out-loud total freaking genius of lead single ‘Stillness is the Move’, that seems to suggest a perfect synthesis of post-Timbaland r’n’b pop and leftfield adventurousness, while sounding so effortlessly instantaneous and physically joyous as to literally knock the breath out of you the first time you hear it.

GORDON GEKKO SAYS 'GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN''

It is easy to dismiss the 2005 Curtis Jackson film vehicle as another value-less part of the money-generating automaton that 50 Cent became (if he was ever anything else). However, ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’’ might deserve a very prompt re-assessment in light of current events.

Apart from defying most of the basic rules of good cinema and storytelling in general, it does offer some sort of reflection of popular culture in the last ten years and therefore some of the ideas that have gained currency in society as a whole, not least the self-centred short sightedness of personal greed and unrestrained capitalism.

With reports of the current financial crisis being rammed down our throats on a daily basis there have been calls for a new Gordon Gekko, the Michael Douglas character from Oliver Stone’s eighties classic Wall Street. This has even resulted in the news that a Wall Street sequel is lined up so we can all utter the phrase “greed, for lack of a better word, is good” in a disparaging contemporary way at these bastard bankers and politicians. However, we seem to have missed the fact that a film that better summed up these times has already been made. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was Wall Street 2, and for a new slogan to rival ‘greed is good’ just look at the bloody title. 50 Cent’s film neatly bundles all of our misplaced values into a tidy little package. We haven’t been seeking intrinsic value, only the monetary value we have created, and a generation of people aspire to nothing more than money. The archetypical hero du jour is, or at least should be, good old Fiddy, who in his biopic tells us how he got rich, while caring about very little else, and lacking any real discernible talent. Just don’t blame him, blame yourself for funding him.

The film tries to follow that all-too-familiar rags to riches storyline, popular since at least as far back as Dickens, coupled with all the usual clichés prevalent in all the weak hip hop biopics and those films that I will call ‘Nouvelle Vague Blaxploitation’ (in an effort to make myself sound intelligent; you know, young man struggling in the ghetto/it’s a hard knock life).

A young Curtis Jackson, who is fatherless, which is apparently the reason for his later misdemeanors, loses his mother, a part time prostitute/crack head/crack dealer/hoe bag. He attends the funeral. He does not cry. Curtis is then shipped off to live with his blue collar grandparents before falling into a life of gangs and street crime (although it just looks like petty drug deals to me). Understandably he pursues this life initially to fund the purchase of new trainers that he really really wants. He then embarks on a life of blow, money and gang rivalries. He gets shot lots of times. He does cry. He then fulfills his (apparently long standing) dream of becoming an MC and somewhere in the middle he gets a girl (by making a mix tape and rapping about ‘cuming in her hair’) and has a kid. There’s some internal gang politics in the mix as well.

ANORANZA POR LA CONGA – LONGING FOR THE CONGA

In light of the United States’ apparent sea change in attitude towards the ‘axis of evil’ nations, and the notable absence of world record orator Fidel Castro, one might be forgiven some long overdue optimism in thinking that perhaps the iron curtain around Cuba may be lifting slightly. Whilst it may be true that ‘Gitmo’ may be closing its barbed-wire gates to the world’s orange boiler-suited malcontents, and Cubans may now be ‘allowed’ to use mobile phones, things, as they say, have a long way to go.

It should be remembered whilst reading that any article gesturing towards the political and historical events that have come to define Cuba should be prefigured with the knowledge that one is entering contested terrain. Though even the most seasoned of commentators find their ‘facts’ about Cuba shrouded in secrecy and engulfed in political hyperbole from both sides, it remains suffice to say that anything said about Cuba (including this piece) must be taken with a fairly hefty pinch of salt.

This, in part, is what I want to talk about. As a foreigner, the problem of unravelling the accuracies of the long standing stalemate between the Caribbean island and its goliath neighbour, and thus trying to see a way forward (post Castro/Bush) is compounded by the simplistic way in which it is addressed in the world outside Cuba’s borders. Whether it is the tyranny of the US in imposing a crippling trade embargo, or Cuba’s communist regime and their stubbornness and reluctance to change – the fact is that illegal emigration from Cuba has created a situation where more Cubans live outside Cuba than live in it.

We tend to hear about this problem in these simplistic terms, a situation not helped by the cultural products from Cuba with which we are familiar. The ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ for example, however enjoyable, don’t touch the subject of politics with a ten-foot barge pole – and why should they? With political censorship still strictly controlled, in order to gain any type of official sanction music that steers clear of controversy has become de rigueur. Obviously there are a number of examples of musicians in Cuba (and outside Cuba) who openly criticise the regime. The quite brilliant folk singer Pedro Luis Ferrer and the genuinely-anarchic-without-a-hint-of-pretence punk band ‘Porno Para Ricardo’ are two notable exceptions. Yet both ply their trade in a world that exists outside of ‘Cuba’ – the former relying on European tours, the latter constantly hounded by police. A popular and accurate assessment of the current political and social climate is a hard thing to come by. However, in the song ‘Añoranza por la Conga’ by the Santiago de Cuba based band ‘Sur Caribe’ one may find exactly that.

THE BEASTIE BOYS' CHECK YOUR HEAD AND YOUR RECORD COLLECTION

Following on from the recent re-mastered anniversary release of (the still outstanding) Paul’s Boutique, and in anticipation of their new album, possibly due out late in the year, the Beastie Boy’s have also recently dropped a re-mastered (curiously non-anniversary) version of the 1992 record Check Your Head, complete with a disc of b-sides and remixes.[1]

Check Your Head was, and remains, a pivotal moment in the Beasties’ oeuvre, pointing toward the path they would take throughout the 90’s, and returning them to mainstream consciousness after their previous commercial failure. The album appears to be simultaneously, and quite possibly contradictorily, a huge departure from their previous release and a continuation of same ethos that informed Paul’s Boutique’s creation. On first listen it provides a genuine ‘where the fuck did that come from?’ moment whilst continuing the Beasties’ modus operandi of producing albums that filter and combine their disparate influences, fashioning the music they listen to and care about into something original and, as always during their peak, enjoyable.

It’s a good idea to keep the two previous releases in mind. Licensed to Ill picked up where Run DMC left off and took it to the next stage with some genuine breakthrough moments (Slow & Low, The New Style, Paul Revere) as well as incorporating all the frat boy humour, sexism, stupidity and obvious riff samples. Three years later and Paul’s Boutique is still seen by many as a high watermark for the sampling era. Teaming up with the Dust Brothers, they made what is possibly the most sonically brilliant hip hop album of the late eighties (and there is a lot of competition[2]). It still sounds staggeringly good 20 years on.

So where is this ‘what the fuck moment’ in Check Your Head? Well, it might start out with the Jimi Hendrix sampling ‘Jimmy James’, falsely leading you to believe they will continue where they left off, but it soon becomes apparent the net has been cast much wider than that. By the time the Beasties have hit Biz Markie’s slurred singing over Ted Nugent, an unrecognisable hardcore cover of Sly Stone’s ‘Time For Livin’’ drenched in MCA’s fuzzed bass that blows everything you’ve already heard out of the water, and the talk box vocal of ‘Something’s Got To Give’, they have already touched on jazz-funk instrumentals, soul, the bosa nova rhythms of ‘Lighten‘ Up’, the alt-rock of ‘Gratitude’, and of course hip-hop (‘Pass the Mic’, ‘Jimmy James’, ‘So What’cha Want’). This is an album that followed the juvenile jokes of Licensed to Ill (see ’Girls’) and Paul’s Boutique’s layered sample buffet and intelligent wordplay with a record that references about 10 genres before ending with a spoken word number, intoned over a jazz influenced instrumental backing, that opens with the line “A butterfly floats on the breeze of a sun lit day/As I feel this reality gently fade away”. What the fuck? Where did this come from?

DAN DEACON’S BROMST AND AMERICA

For the first time in ages, as 2008 drew to a close, it seemed that pop music and world politics might just be engaged in a meaningful, hope-inducing symbiosis.  With the election of Obama, the US had enacted one of its perennial spectacular self-reinventions, apparently morphing overnight from the guise of a monomaniacal toddler hell-bent on devouring everything it can fit into its mouth, into the figure of a rational, responsible adult capable of encapsulating all the most noble aspects of humanity, FDR/MLK/Abe Lincoln-style.

This rather magical turn of events was paralleled on the musical front by a rainbow haul of epoch-defining American music, perhaps the finest example of which arrived in the form of the Fleet Foxes’ rarefied, folk-essentialist debut (with offerings from Vampire Weekend, Q-Tip, Department of Eagles, Gang Gang Dance, and TV on the Radio trailing not far behind). Here stood summarized all the humane idealism of America, all its sense of communal strength and longstanding obsession with utopian suggestion embodied in an expansive panorama of dazzling harmonic inventiveness and bullshit-free soulfulness (Motown + Brian Wilson + Joanna Newsom = one sublime time).

But then, for all its distinguished qualities, for all its epochal resonance and melodic-formalist perfection, the Fleet Foxes record is perhaps in the last instance just a tad twee and retrogressive to be an unqualified triumph, a bit too nostalgic to amount to anything more than a timely but fleeting reminder of something lost and in need of salvaging in the short-term, for existence’s sake.

Proof of such shortcomings arrives, by way of contrast, in the form of Dan Deacon’s fourth long player Bromst, a record that shares many of strengths of Fleet Foxes, but adds a requisite helping of futurist momentum into the admixture.