Let Fury Have the Hour
Page 15
Rejected by society
Treated with impugnity
Protected by their dignity
I face reality
new wave, new craze
new wave, new craze
new wave, new craze
new wave, new craze
Wailers still be there
the Jam, the Damned, the Clash
Wailers still be there
Dr. Feelgood too, ooh
Norman Mailer’s The White Negro offers some historical context to this romanticized view of racial struggle and the fixation on the “coolness” and “hipness” of “rebellious” blacks. Superficially, Mailer’s book comes across as macho posturing and Beat-era rhetoric.14 Ultimately, a bewildering fetishization of an aggressive African American response to a history of persecution lies at the heart of Mailer’s White Negro. Mailer contends that white communities must appropriate “blackness” in order to effectively revolt against repressive American society.
The thematic similarities between White Negro and songs like “White Riot” are rooted in the general belief that blacks symbolize oppression and thus model resistance to state oppression. Strummer explained that “White Riot” was “a call to kick things off,” a favorite expression of his, and to bridge the “divide between black and white youth.” Mailer intended to reach white ethnics, intellectuals, and most importantly artists who, like blacks, were excluded from society. Furthermore, Mailer asserted that the appeal of black struggle would deliver whites, namely white hipsters, from the drab conformity of the 1950s.
Mailer’s ideas largely stem from the Beats, from Kerouac to Ginsberg, who wrote romantically about blacks and their struggle. James Baldwin quotes Kerouac in Nobody Knows My Name, “wishing I were a Negro feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy, not enough life, joy kicks, darkness, music, not enough insight.”15 Mailer adds that blackness offers liberation to a staid, conservative society. White hipsters and the like needed to take on, from Mailer’s standpoint, the sexual freedom and hostility blacks seemed to possess toward the society that subjugates them. This combination would propel hip white society into action. For Strummer, it was more a case of class and recognizing the need for class struggle. Poor working-class whites needed to understand that their lot in life was tied to building relationships with other marginalized communities instead of separating themselves based on socially constructed (not political) differences.
Both Mailer and Strummer believed that at the heart of their work was a demand for critical self-examination and an evaluation of the circumstances that have created the sense of individual complacency and inability to stand against tyrannical society. Mailer argued that the severe treatment of blacks throughout American history has fostered a consciousness that is part psychopath. “Hated from the outside and therefore hating himself,” Mailer wrote, “the Negro was forced into a position of exploring all those moral wildernesses of civilized life which the square automatically condemns as delinquent or evil or immature or morbid or self-destructive or corrupt.”16 He concludes by declaring, rather ridiculously, that we must emulate this part of the Negro and “encourage the psychopath” in ourselves.17
Shortly after White Negro was published, James Baldwin wrote a response aimed directly at Mailer, his friend, called The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy. He first rebukes White Negro for demeaning and pathologizing racial minorities and then argues that it is dangerous for anyone to adopt blackness as a means of political self-transformation, particularly if white ethnic minorities are attempting to wear the mask of blackness in an effort to appear stronger in the face of oppression.18
Baldwin points out that Mailer’s thesis is defenseless in view of the fact that the majority of black Americans were hardworking, conservative, Christian citizens not displaying any of the quixotic qualities Mailer so greatly envied. And moreover, to consider the struggle of blacks as “cool” or “hip” is unwise. “But why should it be necessary to borrow the Depression language,” Baldwin writes, “of deprived Negroes, which eventually evolved into jive and bop talk, in order to justify such a grim system of delusion.”19 Mailer’s assertion that the “psychopathic hipster personality” would lead to a joyous transcendence outraged Baldwin, who countered that these personality distortions were in actuality a sign of “humiliation and suffering.”20
Still, social upheavals including the civil rights movement led some young whites to identify with and emulate black activists such as Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton, and Martin Luther King Jr. They became the heroic models for would-be white subversives. And this is what occurred in the antiracist punk movement with respect to Afro-Caribbean musicians like Horace Andy, Sly and Robbie, and Toots and the Maytals, and especially Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley. I often wondered what exactly was going through the minds of all those who sang along to songs like “White Riot.” Did the followers of the Clash understand that they were calling for a unified rebellion or were they hearing a different, more sinister message? Punk as a subculture was not impervious to the larger society—the societal values, stereotypes, and ideologies concerning race were difficult to dispel in a three-minute song or even a series of well-intentioned concerts.
David Widgery’s Beating Time makes the case that Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League found a perfect ally in the punk movement. In spite of that, these and other historical accounts are revisionist and to a degree disingenuous. In America, the punk community’s response to racism made that in England look like the new civil rights movement. Lester Bangs addressed this in “The White Noise Supremacists,” a sharp indictment of rampant racism within the New York City punk scene originally written for the Village Voice. He recounts countless examples of prominent musicians who adopted a “racist chic” and “racist cool” attitude. Ivan Julian, one of a handful of black musicians in the New York punk scene at the time, told Bangs, “It’s like a stance . . . a real immature way of being dangerous.”21 Bangs also recounts Nico of the Velvet Underground’s explanation of Island Records dropping her from the label: “I made a mistake. I said in Melody Maker to some interviewer that I didn’t like Negroes. That’s all. They took it so personally . . . although it’s a whole different race. I mean, Bob Marley doesn’t resemble a negro, does he? . . . He’s an archetype of Jamaican . . . but with the features of white people. I don’t like the features. They’re so much like animals . . . it’s cannibals, no?”22 In the end, Bangs concludes that Rock Against Racism and other attempts “at simple decency” could never work in a scene that is intolerant and shows indifference to racism.23
The situation Bangs discusses has become the norm as punk and pop steer clear of politics, especially in relation to race and class; notable exceptions include Bad Religion, NOFX, and Anti-Flag.24 Strummer and the Clash remained undaunted if a bit bruised back in England and dedicated themselves to continuing what they started. “The media scrutiny was intense,” Strummer told me. “Any time we made any kind of statement or played a benefit show it would be manipulated and distorted to the point that they were literally putting words in our mouths . . . it took the steam out of us and made us at times somewhat reluctant to speak out.”25
Strummer then explained, “But when Margaret Thatcher started using race” and was ingeniously employing a racist rhetoric in her campaign, “the media, for the most part, did little to challenge her.” Thatcher went on to serve as prime minister from 1979 to 1990.26 Her government rolled back or eliminated many social programs that the 1945 Labour government had inaugurated. It also expanded police powers against immigrant and racial minority communities; one of the results, arguably, were the riots in England’s inner cities during the long hot summer of 1981.
Linton Kwesi Johnson, “the true Rude Boy” as Strummer called him, described those involved in events like Rock Against Racism as nothing more than “liberal racists.”27 “In the 1970s, sections of the white left in this country were trying to exploit the conditions that bl
acks found themselves in and trying to win us over to their various ideological positions. They saw us as victims. We had an analysis that we were not victims. We had a history of struggle and resistance against British colonialism, which in a sense was being continued in this country. We needed to build independent organizations that could carry our struggles, our hopes and our aspirations forward.”28
Crass, the definitive radical punk band, supported Johnson’s position.29 In the song “White Punks on Hope,” the group took on the Clash and those in the punk scene with uncompromising, critical directness:
They won’t change nothing with their fashionable talk,
All their RAR badges and their protest walk,
Thousands of white men standing in a park,
Objecting to racism’s like a candle in the dark.
Black man’s got his problems and his way to deal with it,
So don’t fool yourself you’re helping with your white liberal shit.
Johnson took a more nuanced approach about what needed to be done. “I believe in humanity, that all races have more in common than they do different,” he continued.30 “If you’re not thinking in international terms in the twentieth century you’re backward.” Strummer shared this view completely as evidenced by his subsequent creative and political activity. Johnson felt that some, like Strummer and the Clash, were sincerely trying to move forward and felt that alliances could be built among some groups and organizations at the time. “We did not see ourselves as separatists,” Johnson explains. “We felt that, given the particularities of our historical experience, we needed to organize ourselves independently as a force and to build alliances with progressive white organizations.”31
Looking back, Strummer felt that despite the many missteps and contradictions, there was a sincere attempt to respond to issues of racial injustice. Something had to be done and somewhere along the way people understood his message and changed the way they thought and acted. Even so, his “most recent work takes into account a much more global perspective and with it a more thoughtful approach to not only racial injustice but ethnic and immigrant discrimination.” Then he paused and looked at me and said, “When the music you are playing is considered a danger, a threat and then you combine it with a message of justice it can’t not be allowed to stand “you will be crushed by those who are against this political view and also by many who say they are with you.”
Act III
WALKING THROUGH THE CROWD
Performers of choreographer Elizabeth Streb’s STREB Extreme Action Company in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, during the filming of Let Fury Have the Hour. (Photo by Antonino D’Ambrosio.)
YOU CAN’T HAVE A REVOLUTION WITHOUT SONGS1
The Legacy of Víctor Jara and the Political Folk Music of Caetano Veloso, Silvio Rodríguez, and Joe Strummer
By Antonino D’Ambrosio
Victor stood in the stadium
His voice was brave and strong
And he sang for his fellow prisoners
Till the guards cut short his song
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong
—“VICTOR JARA,” BY ADRIAN MITCHELL
As every cell in Chile will tell
The cries of the tortured men
Remember Allende, and the days before,
Before the army came
Please remember Victor Jara,
In the Santiago Stadium,
Es verdad—those Washington Bullets again.
—“WASHINGTON BULLETS,” BY THE CLASH
When Joe Strummer first stepped out onto a London stage, he was a 1970s version of the 1920s and 1930s dust bowl musicians who first stirred his imagination as a young boy. Before playing in the pub rock band the 101ers, Strummer had spent time busking in the London streets and tube working alongside Tymon Dogg.2 Performing with Dogg helped Strummer hone a musical sensibility that would endure throughout his life. The 101ers were a London music scene favorite and Strummer, who had long hair, wore jeans, boots, and a checkered shirt, began calling himself Woody after Woody Guthrie, one of his musical and political heroes. Guthrie’s profound influence on music and politics serves as both the model and foundation for all of Strummer’s work. He was a cultural pioneer—mixing traditional music with emerging musical styles and forming compositions that were injected with radical political lyrics taking on the cause of the dispossessed.
Joe Strummer performing with Tymon Dogg and Martin Slattery of the Mescaleros during the musician’s series of performances at St.Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, on April 5, 2011. (Photo by Antonino D’Ambrosio.)
At the time of his death Strummer had come full circle. With a distinctive worldview and artistic vision, his newest recordings had a fury reminiscent of the Clash and a maturity gained from hard fought battles won and lost. In the years beginning with the release of Rock Art and the X-Ray Style recorded with his new band the Mescaleros, Strummer was climbing hard to join the ranks as one of contemporary music’s most compelling political musicians.3 Building on what he started with the Clash, he incorporated scores of world musical styles to create new music that carried his unique subversive wit and humanist politics.
Martin Slattery of the Mescaleros during Joe Strummer’s series of performances at St.Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, on April 5,2011. (Photo by Antonino D’Ambrosio.)
“That’s bullshit dumb,” Joey Ramone once remarked about groups like the Clash who used their music as a vehicle for political activism.4 “If anything,” he continued, “punks should have no politics or be right wing.”5 Not only was Strummer up against a political and social environment that rejected much of what he had to say as nothing more than dogmatic leftist rhetoric, he also had to contend with a music scene that felt his exploration and mixing of different musical styles was “unpunk.” The rampant hostility and affected negativity that dominated punk with slogans like “No Future” made for great press.6 Punk became and remains a largely reactionary music, a trivial reflection on societal problems whether alienation or heartbreak.7 The record companies like it because there is profit to be made with little risk. Don’t challenge the kiddies to think about their reality in any critical way that may engage and empower them. Make them feel even worse about their lot in life. Commercialize hopelessness. Commodify self-loathing. As Strummer sang, turn rebellion into money. And lots of it.
Strummer’s moment with the Clash and his success, many believed, weakened any political stance he took.8 “I think I self-consciously destroyed it all,” he remarked to me, “Once Jones was gone the Clash were no more . . . and with Reagan and Thatcher . . . there was no room for questioning and even less tolerance for protest music.” It is true that the once celebrated “only band that mattered” was about the music and the message and without the two, success and all the rest of it did not matter. So Strummer floated a bit for the better part of a decade and returned on his own terms. Music and message were tied tightly together again in what became his last stand.
In a life that was filled with ironic twists, Strummer was entering his prime five decades into his life. All that had come before was a long rehearsal for the next stage in his creative-activist life. Before his death, Strummer was influencing new musicians around the world with his impassioned blend of inspired new music and political activism. “He showed me that music could be a very powerful political tool,” Manu Chao explained. “We should not be willing to compromise, and take the necessary step forward to fight injustice with art.”9 Manu Chao is a gifted musician, who in many ways is an heir to Strummer’s creative-activist legacy. Crafting music from a wide range of musical styles, Chao expands on the work he started with Mano Negra, named in honor of an Andalusian anarchist group. Spanish natives who immigrated to Paris, Mano Negra combined rai, rock, rap, and flamenco to create a style they dubbed “Patchanka.”10
Strummer’s influence on the Rock en Español and the world music movements and, to a lesser degree, hip-hop and reggae, continues to be ex
tensive. Café Tacuba, Tijuana No!, Los Olvidados, Maldita Vecindad, Spaccanapoli, and Anouk are artists ranging from Africa, Europe, and South America who cite Strummer, the musician and political activist, as a primary influence. The self-effacing charm and intellectual maturity Strummer the songwriter revealed in his later recordings is rooted in his appreciation of the political folk of Brazilian Caetano Veloso and Cuban Silvio Rodríguez, musicians dedicated to uplifting the repressed peoples of the world.
For Strummer, the vanguard movements of the 1960s and early 1970s played a huge role in his development as a musician and an activist, and both Veloso and Rodríguez played a significant role in fostering the change. “May ’68 was a moment that showed me that anything was possible,” Strummer told me, “and what followed in the ’70s was just a mess . . . “we needed to get behind something and when punk broke I had something I could not only get behind but be a part of . . . “you see we were part of this post–World War II generation . . . “there was a great deal of disaffection . . . “we wanted no part of what was being offered to us, which seemed to be dead-end jobs that did very little for the working class . . . “and we were frustrated because we had no voice in a political system that was more a tool for the ruling class.”11
Strummer watched as people rebelled against right-wing dictatorships and scored some short-lived democratic victories in France, Chile, and to a lesser degree the United States. He also witnessed the role music played in helping to bring about these historic political changes. In the late 1960s, these emerging, exciting artists including the Last Poets and the MC5 in the United States, Léo Ferré in France, and Mercedes Sosa in Argentina—bold composers arranging a new revolutionary soundtrack.12 Subsequently Strummer would find himself part of the next wave of politically active musicians introducing new music to the world that was electrifying and determined to change things.