Because…You’re Not One of Us

What’s become of the state of music? Almost an entire year has gone by and I have not bought music from a new and/or emerging artist. I’ve scoured the independent music blogs, listened to umpteen offbeat streaming channels and not one new artist has tickled my ears. Instead, I’ve discovered oldies I knew of but never previously thought to listen to. Trust me, I’m as shocked as the next person that I actually like Black Sabbath’s Black Sabbath. And The Cure’s Disintegration? Where was this gem during my angst out, pseudo goth days? These old new discoveries have been wonderful surprises, but new music is being made every day and broadcast on the various in sundry platforms available every minute, so why am I not able to find a new band to gush over? Because the state of music and the music business—and business as a whole, really--is a bit rotten at the moment. I will never dog a musician even if I don’t like their music or somehow consider their songwriting skills to be inferior. To create music is an incredibly difficult task and to share it with millions of ears is just about one of the bravest things one can do. Yet my thinking is: if you’re going to go through the soul dredging act of producing and sharing, why not let it have some kind of backbone? It doesn’t have to be political, it doesn’t have to be genius, can it just be meaningful lifelong candy to my ears?
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Peter Gabriel is one of the most esoteric musicians to be part of the pop canon, and after Genesis my favourite musical artist. Everyone knows a Peter Gabriel song, yet only a few know a Peter Gabriel album. With a catalogue so varied and vast, his music can hit many personal chords. He also happens to be one of the most politically active musicians of the last century, with his third self-titled album—sometimes known as Peter Gabriel 3 or Melt--being one of the most ministerial albums I’ve ever heard. A prime example of how protest music can be written without bludgeoning the listener with blunt statements. Three songs on Melt strike me as the crème-de la-crème of revolution song: Games Without Frontiers, Not One of Us and Biko.
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I grew up in South Africa during apartheid. I’ll never forget living in the States, being in high school and having an American question my filiality to the cause when I said I’d never heard Biko. In that instant as a young immigrant woman trying to figure herself out in the confusing mess of high school in the Northeast United States, this person tried to erase my entire childhood experience by suggesting I was not authentic enough. Not knowing why, but deeply ashamed, I went home and got on my Mum’s work computer and looked up the song Biko. From the first moment I heard it, everything about living in a country steeped in division hit me. I went to English and Afrikaaner schools, so this part of South African history was not known to me, but in that moment, listening to the heavy drum beat and the echoing wails of mourning, I felt everything I ever had and would feel about living in apartheid.
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The world has always been and always will be at war. As long as man has free choice, man will have hatred and greed, the two catalysts of conflict. The Native Americans played lacrosse over hundreds of miles, a deadly blood sport where men were bludgeoned to death, decapitated and maimed in the name of territorial tribal affiliations. Today lacrosse is played by the American elite with padding in a tight little civil rectangle. The war may have become a game, but still the same stakes of greed and racial separation are being played for. These are my thoughts when I listen to the nearly non-sensical lyrics of Games Without Frontiers, my mind playing a reel of the never ending cycle of fighting humans have engaged in for the sake of supremacy. How apropos that the song that follows Games on Melt is Not One of Us, with lyrics such as these: looks are deceptive/but distinctions are clear/a foreign body/and a foreign mind/never welcome/in the land of the blind/you may look like we do/talk like we do/but you know how it is/you’re not one of us/not one of us.    
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What is the responsibility of politically active musician: to inspire through their music and actions. Revolutionary acts can be subtle in the arts, a luxury afforded to those who dedicate their lives to expressing the human experience through nuance. Every once in a while an artist makes an out and out bold political statement, one that gets the division bells ringing. I’ll never forget watching the video of Sinead O’Connor tearing the picture of the pope as people booed her, when Kris Kristofferson came onstage and protected her. It was such a moment, one that spoke a thousand words not just about Kristofferson but the audience that booed Sinead. Throughout his career Kristofferson paid the price for his political stance, so he knew firsthand what it was like to be disliked. But what he did, that empathetic action spoke more to me than any chord he ever played.
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Kris Kristofferson and Quincy Jones died this year, greats with very different paths and trajectories. Both men believed money to be the root of all evil, and whether we agree with them or not, their music spoke to us. In the end, they made what they sang count.

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Image credit: Lou Patrick Mackay (Opawapo)*