The Subtweet

by Vivek Shraya

  My inbox was engorged with 458 Twitter notifications. Distracted by my dream, I had forgotten about my tweet. In the fifteen hours since I had posted it, it had been retweeted more than all of my previous tweets combined. Why was there suddenly so much interest in what I had to say, let alone in such an ambiguous tweet? Maybe including the hashtag of Subaltern Speaks’ album title had been a little cheeky, a little pointed, but “hegemony” could also be read as a reference to the power of white supremacy.

  I assumed that the online activity was mostly being generated by fragile right-wing white men who tend to have a hysterical response to any mention of “white people.” Then I noticed that many of the circular profile photos in my mentions featured women of colour. Clicking on their profiles, I bit hard on my lip and scrolled through their bios and tweets, trying to figure out who these people were and why they were so invested in my tweet. Some of these women were young girls, students. Some were academics. Some even used Rukmini’s photo as their profile photo and were seemingly fans.

  “Fuck. Rukmini!” I blurted. Had she seen my tweet? I rushed to my profile page, deleted the tweet and shut down my computer.

  Unable to walk away from my desk, I glared at the machine, my new enemy. Together we sat in a stalemate. Thirty minutes passed before I finally yielded — to my own guilty conscience. I turned my computer back on and stared at my phone in my lap, debating whether or not to text Rukmini. What would I even say?

  Hello. I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but did you see my subtweet last night?

  Why draw her attention to the tweet if she hadn’t seen it? Perhaps I had managed to erase the tweet before it had caused any substantial damage. And if she had seen it, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. We had often talked about race and art, so the tweet wasn’t exactly out of character. Maybe it would create an opportunity for us to finally reconnect.

  This possibility was shattered when I logged back into Twitter and saw that the number of notifications had almost doubled in the past half hour.

  Several users had taken screenshots of my now-deleted tweet. These screenshots were being tweeted and retweeted. I was tagged in every tweet. Credited.

  Rukmini was also tagged in every tweet.

  My legs twitched and my phone fell to the floor. Instead of bending sideways to pick it up, my body curled off the chair onto the hardwood and I knelt over the phone in child’s pose. It took me a minute to find Rukmini’s number because I kept accidentally searching under N, as though I was subconsciously trying to find my own name, so I could call myself in the past and say, “Don’t do it.” When I finally reached the Rs, I listened as the phone dialled and repeated, “Please pick up,” though part of me hoped she wouldn’t. She didn’t.

  I stayed on the floor with my phone in hand and watched my words morph and proliferate in my notifications. Somewhere, Rukmini was also seeing these tweets accumulate. If she had to suffer through this, then, as the instigator, I had to too.

  Every few minutes I clicked on Rukmini’s actual profile to see if she had responded. Her last tweet remained the same — a photo of her leaning against Hayley’s tour bus making a peace sign with her fingers.

  I was woken up the next morning by a pinching ache along my left shoulder down to my lower back. I had fallen asleep on the floor, clutching my sweat-slicked phone. As I considered taking a shower to temporarily wash away the weight of my own shame, a respite I didn’t deserve, I was tagged in another tweet — from @TorontoTops.

  RUK-MINI UNCOVERED

  Toronto Tops’ music writer Sumi Malhotra delves into recent Twitter controversy

  By Sumi Malhotra

  When Hegemony, Orion nominee Subaltern Speaks’ long-lost album, emerged last fall, the spotlight shone on the band’s frontwoman, Rukmini (stylized RUK-MINI). While some journalists attempted and failed to reach the band’s producer, Malika Imani, most writers and fans seem content just to celebrate the popular cover singer. In interviews about the album, Rukmini herself cautiously and cleverly dodges questions about Malika, focusing exclusively on her own process. On its own, this might seem unremarkable. However, upon further examination of Rukmini’s rise to stardom, a concerning pattern of erasure of (dark-skinned) brown and Black women emerges.

  Rukmini’s big break arrived when she covered local icon Neela Devaki’s track “Every Song.” Initially this cover was perceived as a tribute, and evidence of the pair’s then budding friendship on social media suggests that Neela happily received this gesture. However, the press soon stopped crediting Neela when they mentioned Rukmini’s cover. In the recent SPIN feature on Rukmini, the word “cover” wasn’t used at all, which implies that Rukmini wrote the song, an error she didn’t bother to correct in the interview or when she shared it online.

  To fully comprehend the politics of Rukmini’s ascension, it is essential to examine the cover itself. While it certainly is a gripping, contemporary arrangement of Neela’s song, the electronic backing combined with Rukmini’s straightforward vocals pushes it into pop territory. This shift explains the widespread consumption of the cover: Rukmini’s transformation has made the song sound, ironically, like every song on the radio. To date, there has been no acknowledgement of what has been lost. Neela’s vocals and raw arrangement make the original version “almost unlistenable” (Pitchfork). This indigestible quality is arguably a consequence of Neela’s brownness, and of the ways brownness continues to be alien, and therefore undesirable, in the music sphere. Rukmini renders Neela’s work listenable by stripping the song of its original foreign, brown quality. This is likely what Neela was alluding to in her recent and widely debated subtweet: “Pandering to white people will get you everything #hegemony.”

  To examine the politics of Subaltern Speaks, it would be crucial to hear from Malika, the missing piece in the puzzle of Rukmini’s rise to fame. Unfortunately, I recently discovered that Malika was killed in a 2011 texting and driving accident.

  If she were still alive, would she condone the current dissemination of Hegemony? Sadly — and perhaps conveniently for Rukmini — we will never know.

  I was able to locate Malika’s cousin, Dr. Zuhur Imani, who is an associate professor of cultural studies at the University of Minnesota.

  When did you first hear the Subaltern Speaks album, Hegemony?

  Malika sent it to me soon after she made it, ten years ago. She was thinking about pursuing a career in music and wanted a close opinion.

  What was your opinion of the album and her ambitions?

  I told her the album was an essential addition to mixed media discourse being created by twenty-first century racialized women. I also told her that I would support her music career wholeheartedly.

  Did Malika make any more music after Hegemony?

  She recorded a few instrumentals that she shared with me, but she often complained about being unable to find another vocalist. She talked about the organic connection she and Rukmini had made and the impossibility of recreating this with someone else.

  What has been your family’s response to the resurfacing of this album?

  It has been a process of both re-mourning and also rejoicing, especially as we witness the profound and impactful legacy of the work she has left behind.

  Had you ever thought about distributing the album yourself?

  No. Malika’s passing was sudden and devastating. Sharing her class project was the last thing on my mind at the time. However, I am planning to teach Hegemony and some of her unreleased demos in my Word, Image, Sound class in the fall.

  How do you feel about her “bandmate” RUK-MINI performing some of Subaltern Speaks’ songs while opening for Hayley Trace?

  Her performing the songs doesn’t bother me. On the other hand, her profiting from the songs is extremely upsetting.

  But the album is a free download.

  Yes, but she is getting paid to be on a world tour with a mega pop star. It�
��s also impossible to put a price on the cultural capital she has been accumulating from the resurgence of this album.

  Have you been to any of the shows?

  No.

  I recently saw her show in Detroit and was uncomfortable seeing her perform these songs to a mostly white audience.

  That was never the intention of those songs. When Malika shared the album with me, she was most stimulated by how the music enabled her to build community with women of colour.

  What are your thoughts on the Orion nomination? Will you or anyone in your family be attending?

  We were not invited, so we will not be attending.

  Again, as with Neela, Malika’s vital contribution as producer of Hegemony has been overlooked in most of the media coverage and by Rukmini herself, who has replaced her with Kasi Kamar (one of Devaki’s former bandmates, no less) on Hayley Trace’s world tour. As I mentioned in my conversation with Dr. Imani, my experience at the Detroit concert was troubling. Witnessing Rukmini singing these songs to an overwhelmingly white audience, many of whom recited the lyrics along with her, made me uncomfortable. It felt like a real-time display of sequential and sanctioned appropriation, beginning with the singer, passed down to the audience and then offered back to the singer.

  Even more unsettling was the small population of visibly emotional brown teens in the audience who devotedly lined up against the stage. Their Instagram posts proclaim that they are grateful to “see [themselves] reflected” in Rukmini. This is the danger of an unexamined desire for representation. Is Rukmini the representation we need? What are the implications when a light-skinned brown woman replaces a dark-skinned bandmate with another light-skinned brown woman and, sporting the occasional cornrows, no less, is paid to perform the words of highly revered Black and brown female scholars for an audience of primarily white teenagers?

  For the sake of transparency, I must note that Rukmini and I used to be colleagues here at Toronto Tops. While for some, the disclosure of this connection will undoubtedly reframe this article as an expression of my jealousy of Rukmini’s success, I confess that my intentions are much more problematic — because they are personal.

  As someone who has worked and even socialized with Rukmini, I am writing from a place of love. I am deeply invested in communities in which brown women support brown women. This is one of the reasons why I attended Rukmini’s show 151and reached out to her at that time to speak to her directly about my concerns. She did not respond to my messages.

  To be clear, the erasure of Black and brown women evident in this recent chapter of Rukmini’s career isn’t necessarily a result of her individual character or her duplicity. This isn’t a call-out or an attack. Rather, this is an exposition of the ways we are all complicit in the maintenance of white supremacy, both in the music industry and beyond. My hope is that this article will remind racialized people that we need to stay vigilant in all of our practices so that collectively we can stop reproducing harm within our communities.

  I am really sorry about the tweet. I deleted it as fast as I could. Please call me. I would love a chance to clear things up.

  I don’t know what came over me. You know I never do things like that. I wish we could just talk about this in person. Can you please call me?

  I feel terrible. I wish I could take it back. I had no idea that it would explode like this. I am really so sorry.

  I wasn’t allowed to leave my apartment.

  I banished myself. I didn’t allow myself to reach for the optimism of a new day or summer air. Even after my hunger maliciously returned, I decided to starve myself, aided by my bare fridge. But after a few hours, not feeding my body felt like too easy a punishment. I had no right to wither away like a martyr or victim.

  The absolution that I had predicted would come just from being outside started to wash over me, the midday breeze sweeping my skin as I walked to the corner store. I briefly gave in and raised my face to the sky. But when the burn of the sunbeams forced my head back down, I came face to face with Rukmini.

  Toronto Tops had made Sumi’s article — with Rukmini’s face — its cover story.

  “I want to take new press shots for the tour,” Rukmini had mentioned the night she received the invitation from Bart, as we celebrated in her living room.

  “That’s a good idea. Which photographer are you thinking of hiring?”

  Rukmini took a sip of the champagne I had brought over. We had immediately popped the cork. She clinked her flute against mine. “You, actually.”

  I put my glass down on the milk-crate coffee table. “Me? I’m not a photographer.”

  “But I love the photos you post on Instagram.”

  “You really should hire a professional. This tour is a big deal. And I barely post anything.”

  “Yes, but when you do, it always feels intentional. Not just when and how often you post, but the actual content and composition of the photos too.” Rukmini grabbed her phone lying beside my glass and showed me my own account. “Look at the shadow of the sun on this building. You must have waited hours for the light to land like that.”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Puna chimed in after she got home.

  “You do?” I asked. I bit into the Spanish garlic shrimp Puna had brought from work and felt grateful to be spending time with her at last, instead of just pleasantly greeting each other in passing. She plopped herself next to us on their broad vintage loveseat.

  “I do! Have either of you ever been photographed by another brown woman?”

  Rukmini and I both shook our heads.

  “What would that photo even look like?” Puna asked. The three of us briefly looked up in silence, as though we were trying to see a ghost.

  The photo I had taken of Rukmini in her basement studio in the winter now gazed up at me, her eyes stabbing through the glass of the indigo newspaper box on the street corner. Initially I turned away, but then I made myself meet her stare. I knew she now saw the entirety of me, not just “friend Neela.”

  Despite the contents of the paper and the circumstances around the article, at first I was oddly comforted by the omnipresence of Rukmini’s face plastered alongside the city’s roads. It felt as though she was closer than she had been in half a year. She was home. She was everywhere.

  But online, Rukmini’s face was being severed from her name, and her name was being severed from her humanity. In the two days since its publication, Sumi’s article had been retweeted 4,729 times. The retweets often included an assortment of hashtags directed at Rukmini:

  #DragHer

  #coconut

  #SelfHater

  #HayleysBitch

  #SubalternSlut

  #SubalternStealer

  #SubalternSellout

  #PanderingPaki

  How was this different than trolling? I continued to be tagged in many of these tweets. I wanted to tweet “please stop tagging me,” but that would make me a hypocrite. This is what I had wanted, right? What I had been whining about? Not being properly acknowledged? My brain memorized these hashtags and scrolled through them in an endless digital loop when I closed my eyes at night, reviving my insomnia.

  By midweek, I found myself prowling from box to box at one in the morning, slinging as many copies of the paper as I could find into garbage bags, an all too accurate metaphor for the damage my tweet had caused. If I couldn’t control the internet, I could at least try to curtail the circulation of the in-print article.

  After a week, I opened a Toronto Tops box and let out a quiet chuckle, relieved to see a pile of papers with a new cover story: “People’s Patio Picks.” I folded up my garbage bag and stuffed it into my back pocket, imagining Sumi’s story also being stuffed down, buried by the latest news. I was half-right.

  Sumi’s article inspired several follow up op-eds and think-pieces where I was credited for

  “calling out the anti-Black implicatio
ns of Rukmini’s interpolation of Black theorists’ words in Subaltern Speaks’ lyrics” (VICE)

  and was praised as

  “an important example of a South Asian taking to task members of her own community” (Huffington Post)

  and even as

  “a role model who is demonstrating crucial allyship in post-Trump North America” (TIME)

  Giving up on sleep, I vigorously cleaned my apartment in the middle of the night, burning my hands when I scrubbed the tub, floors and counters without gloves. I listened to Hegemony loudly and obsessively through my headphones, the only way I could hear Rukmini’s voice. I was disturbed by how many of Sumi’s and the other writers’ criticisms of Rukmini sounded like mutations of the very lyrics she was singing. How cruel that the language she had fallen in love with in university, that she had built music, a friendship and a career out of, was now being wielded against her.

  Each time the song “bell” came on, I had to put down my sponge and hold still wherever I was in the apartment, haunted by Rukmini singing a fragment of a bell hooks quote: “How do we hold people accountable . . .” Her voice sounded on the brink of cracking when she sang that line, like a plea. The word accountable was also used copiously in many of the articles and tweets criticizing Rukmini, but none of the writers seemed to have a clear sense of how to answer bell’s question. Every time the word appeared in my feed, I analyzed its usage, hoping to figure out how I too could be accountable — to Rukmini. Accountability sometimes meant:

  @RUKMINI must apologize

  (though it wasn’t always clear to whom)

  or

  @RUKMINI should donate her revenue

  (though again it wasn’t always clear to whom, nor did there seem to be a realistic understanding of what “revenue” for the average musician amounted to, let alone for an opening act)