Soundtracks of the Revolution: The People

I wrote in a previous post on the abundance of high quality, richly textured music that we've been able to consume, to digest, to chew on, to sit with, to allow to mess with us over the last year. I still believe now, as I did at the end of last year, that we are in a new age of music, one where artists have the potential to go beyond the constraints of the medium of their chosen tools: sound and voice, to arbitrate culture and influence the conversations that shape our society. To reach the standards set by Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, and even (as divisive as he is) Kanye West, is to dialogue with the biggest questions of our existence: what is important? Why are we here? What makes us human?

This last question concerns me as I survey the variety of music available for us to choose. As a form of art, music is inherently a description, sketch, and reflection of the humanity that creates it. You can see the ideas that my favorite band, Radiohead, wrestles with when they moved from communicating primarily through analog instruments (guitars, drums, etc) to the abstracted blips and screed of disembodied computer noise. They described the alienation experienced through our access to technology, namely, the fear that our "progress" has merely made our inevitable self-destruction more apparent. It is the anxiety we face in relation to what Jacques Ellul describes when he writes about "technique," which creates systems of control that subordinate the natural world. But Radiohead operates from the standpoint of those benefitting from the advancements of modernity. The band's story is ingrained in their formation in Abingdon, close to the heart of England's intellectual center, Oxford, and remains a favorite of cultural elites who do not share the burdens of the vast majority of this planet's inhabitants.

Although Thom Yorke has since adopted a posture of advocacy, speaking on behalf of causes like climate change and nuclear disarmament, the conversation around Radiohead, and much of indie rock's personalities, rarely ventures into the serious grounds of social criticism and grassroots activism. To find artists whose music comes with an equally powerful message, we must look elsewhere.

Recently Paste Magazine, the Georgia-based webazine dedicated (mostly) to music, movies, and beer (as far as I can tell) for once grappled me into its snares of list-based clickbait when it decided to publish a series of artists making music from an Indigenous, Native American/Alaskan and Canadian First Nations perspective. From here not only was I introduced to the Alaskan Inuit tradition of throat singing, but in featured artist Tanya Tagaq's participation in Ottawa-based hip-hop collective A Tribe Called Red's latest album, which landed in fall 2016. That album, We Are the Halluci-Nation, made such an impact on me that I hardly noticed its immediate influence the first time I listened. It hit me with the hurricane force of beauty the way all great pieces of art do: the first time you can't take it in.

The album rode its lead single "R.E.D." off the cred of its featured guest, Yasiin Bey (better known by his former stage name, Mos Def). But the most powerful experience for me as a listener occurred when I listened to the next track on the album, later released a few months ago as a single. That track, "The Virus" begins with a repetitive loop of breathy percussive clicks, perhaps the sounds of a man running. One of Tribe's members begins rhythmically chanting the lines of the first bars, in the cadence of a spoken-word piece. "The people...the virus took on many shapes: the bear, the elk, the antelope, the elephant, the dear the mineral, the iron, the copper, the coltan, and the rubber, the coffee, the cotton, the sugar..." as the instrumental swirls behind and comes to a climax a single line comes to the fore: "We are not a conquered people."The liturgy of the most sacred moment of worship in my church is rendered against the violence done to these people: "This is my body broken for you...this is my blood." The intensity of the beat's drop, the howling chants of the Northern Cree circle dancers, and the abrasive scratches of the dubs and bass coalesce into a testimony of the vibrant, persistent, and beautiful life that still soars from the spirits of these, of my, people.

The violence and colonization imposed on my people and our Cree relatives continues to affect us to this day. As we speak a wing of the US Armed Forces forces peaceful encampments of activists and protestors who attempted for so long to halt the devastation of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Their struggle, uniting over 300 indigenous groups from all over North and South America, once again falls victim to the grinding axe of American progress, as the pipes are built to deliver a river of black currency into the veins of the neoliberal economy, and into the pockets of the ruling class of this society. It is difficult for me to find any fault with Marx's analysis of these forces of power that institutionalize their ideologies and proclaim them as universal values. Now that I know about our country's treatment of Black, Native, Asian, Female, and Brown lives, it is almost a cruel joke to hear phrases like "all men [sic] are created equal" and "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all."Yet for all the promises that the transcendence of the capitalist economy provides, Marxism remains yet another position of privilege that in practice, continues to commodify and dehumanize people. This is something to which my relatives from another ancestral homeland, Poland, can surely attest.

We Are the Halluci-Nation is so important because it is a work of art that attests to the vibrance and very alive-ness of its creators. All art attempts to find value in the subjective gaze of its interpreters, which allows for such movements as Impressionism and Post-Expressionism, iconified by geniuses like Monet and Van Gogh, respectively, to transcend the limitations of their time, which dismissed their work as "unfinished," rudimentary, and tasteless. The contemporary means of music distribution, with an emphasis on viral sharing, enables works like that of A Tribe Called Red to cross the boundaries of the Canadian underground hip-hop world. Now that Latino/as, black activists, and others can hear this message of self-determination in the face of oppression, they can see some of their own struggle in the affecting howls of the Cree dancers and drummers. 

This is not merely the stuff of a movement, an alternative "scene" like so many others in the history of music. This is the soundtrack to an emerging consciousness, one that is able to stare into the gun barrels of the police officers and US Army Engineers tasked with enforcing the strong arm policy enacted yet again at Native peoples. It is the soundtrack of a revolution, and We The People had better listen.