Tag Archives: Rahawa Haile

An Introduction to the Music of Eritrea

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This is part of a roundtable on The Best Band No One Has Ever Heard Of. The index to the roundtable is here.
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I come from a land in Africa bordering the Red Sea. Its name is Eritrea. There’s no reason for you to know it. I barely know it beyond its past. The country is one of the most informationally opaque in the world, governed by a regime convinced isolation and control trump vulnerability to invasion by land or Western politics. It took 100 years from that start of Italy’s reign to the end of Ethiopian occupation for my people to stand freely beneath their own flag. Twenty years later, they flee one of their own.

map_of_eritrea

In North America, the music of my home remains largely unknown outside the diaspora.
While the fetishization of East African women in hip-hop has been extensively documented, references to Eritrea by popular bands have either had nothing to do with the country (Future of the Left’s “Arming Eritrea”) or ignored it altogether (Bright Eyes’ “Haile Selassie”). Lupe Fiasco’s latest track is also titled “Haile Selassie” and uses excerpts from the Emperor’s speech on inequality at the 1963 United Nations General Assembly:

“That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; That until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation…[Until that day, the African continent will not know peace.]”

If these words seem familiar, the same excerpt was featured in Bob Marley’s “War.” The General Assembly address occurred less than a year after Jamaica’s independence; the General Assembly address occurred less than a year after Haile Selassie annexed Eritrea and declared it the 14th province of Ethiopia, leading to a war for independence spanning 30 years.

Another of the excerpts in Fiasco’s “Haile Selassie” involves the act of silencing:

“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

There are many ways to destroy a cultural identity. Forbidding access to a language is one of them. The year 1962 was also the year Haile Selassie burned all books in Eritrea written in the country’s most widely spoken tongue, Tigrinya, and decreed all new books and educational materials would be printed solely in Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. The role of Eritrean music, for decades already a call to arms against occupiers, skyrocketed in significance.

In terms of global distribution, this music has at best been lumped in with the synthesizer-averse E?thiopiques series. Emulations of Eritrean music have also appeared stateside by well-meaning bands (e.g., Fool’s Gold’s “Yam Lo Mosech“). Yet, the Eritrean heroes responsible for inspiring large swaths of the country to fight for independence — singers who were jailed and tortured as political dissenters — have seen limited exposure beyond their borders.

The reasons are numerous. To Western ears, Eritrean music has about as much rhythmic variation as mud; the same drumbeat can be heard at roughly the same tempo on the majority of songs; the length of each song typically falls between 6-9 minutes: Pop music this is not. And truly, these songs are for dancing, which in certain Eritrean traditions entails shuffling in a circle while shrugging one’s shoulders to the beat.

Listen, I know. I know how this sounds. I expect no miracles from new listeners. It took decades for me to embrace it. The voices were shrill. The singers’ frequent inability to commit to one pitch per vowel an affront to whatever thread of Puritanism I inherited from America. The meandering saxophone — an aural figure so revered it was employed during a minute of silence when Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki held a gathering in New York City in 2011 — haunting more songs than I care to admit.

Historically, ours has been a music of metaphor and self-censorship. For more than half a century, Eritreans have been singing about their presumably-human-and-definitely- DEFINITELY-nothing-at-all-to-do-with-political-independence loves because they couldn’t sing openly about their own country. Some tried; eyes were lost. And yes, occasionally the lyrics were about romance, but mostly they were about the endless pursuit of freedom.

Below are a handful of songs/videos featuring Eritrean performers. Some highlight the kraar, a stringed instrument present in many Eritrean songs. By no means is this a comprehensive list. While the Tigrinya tribe of Eritrea is its biggest, there are eight other ethnic groups in the country, each with its own language, style of dance, and festive garb. Additional songs and artists can be discovered on Eritrea 24, Spotify, and other online primers.
 

Ape vs. Man

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This summer’s non-superhero blockbusters are by and large a paean to anthropomorphism. Though if your options are talking robots, talking turtles, or apes eager to read a trade paperback of Charles Burns’s Black Hole, you’d do well to go with the comic book-loving apes and never look back. It isn’t “Battlestar Galactica,” but with humanity mostly destroyed and attempting to rebuild a home on what is, for all intents and purposes, a “foreign” planet, this franchise could be the space opera stand-in of your J. J. Abrams-weary dreams.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes opens with soundbites of distressing global news broadcasts. An animated map charts the worldwide spread of Simian Flu, an airborne pathogen created by scientists to enhance ape intelligence that accidentally wiped out mankind. Individuals have a 1 in 500 chance of survival though containment seems unlikely. This initial sequence is similar to that of Dawn’s blockbuster neighbor to the north Edge of Tomorrow, and serves to bring viewers who may have skipped 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes up to speed with our imminent extinction.

Ten years have passed since we last saw Caesar (Andy Serkis) claim Muir Woods as the home of enlightened apekind. The first shot set in the present is an extreme close up of his eyes, minutes before a hunt, that could have been plucked from the cutting room floor of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Adult apes track and chase live game as a group, relying on each other for protection from predators, while young apes remain at the homestead, learning the alphabet and the first law of ape robotics: ape not kill ape.

As for the humans, Dawn would have you believe the only people in San Francisco who survived the outbreak were genetically immune Tea Party supporters and Jason Clarke’s family (Keri Russell and Kodi Smit-McPhee). This film, like its predecessor, does not hide its disdain for the intolerant sectors of mankind. We made this bed, it says. And dammit, we’re going to lie with our uncharged iPads in it.

Frequently, Dawn’s humans are portrayed as frightened, gun-wielding children willing to slay the unfamiliar without a second thought. Gary Oldman plays Dreyfus, a man who read the words wrong and concluded with great responsibility came great need for sustainable power at any cost. He is the de facto leader of the human colony, whose crowded marketplace and heavily clotheslined sky make it appear like a live-action rendering of Agrabah.

Unfortunately, the colony is almost out of fuel. Malcolm, played by Jason Clarke, is therefore tasked with restoring a small dam located on ape territory. The goal is to generate enough hydroelectric power to maintain some semblance of human civilization. What follows is a zig-zag progression/regression of trust between humans and apes. While Malcolm and Caesar gradually develop a healthy rapport, individual members on either side grow increasingly distrustful of one another.

Unknown to the apes, Dreyfus has granted Malcolm a mere three days in which to fix the dam under the threat of launching an all-out military offensive should he fail to return. During that time, the film is often free of speech, with the majority of apes depending on sign language to communicate.

Among the many fascinating aspects of ape culture is the organic nature of its sonic reality. Theirs is a technologically devoid society. The apes have grunting and chest beating; we have strategically placed CDs by The Band. They have the slap of ape palm against tree branch; we have the rumble of automobiles and the clack of gunfire. It all seems so natural to them, existence. When a human member of the dam repair party confesses what he finds terrifying about the apes — that they don’t need power, they don’t need heat, that these advantages make them superior to man — the effect is more than a little disquieting. Dawn forces viewers to grapple with the uneasy anachronism of accepting superiority in the creature from which they evolved.

Some critics have compared the film’s quest toward peace to conflicts in the Middle East. Cited is the struggle between people who have lost everything and are desperate to hold on to what sliver remains and apes who have gained everything and are loath to lose it. However, this parallel would suggest $170 million was spent on a film in which humanity is Hamas, fitted with its own suicide bomber, demanding a right of return. Or ISIS staking claim to the Mosul Dam. While this train of thought leads to endlessly entertaining possibilities, it’s clear the humans are far from the heroes of this film– they are barely the humans; desperation has left so little intact.

To that end, while Dawn is eager to establish Caeser and Malcolm as peace-driven leaders of their factions, it develops its antagonists with equal fervor. Koba, a laboratory ape subjected to experimentation, cannot see past his former abusers and longs to destroy all humans. Both Koba and Dreyfus are easy enough to understand: If you can take something using violence — planetary dominance, in this case — why waste time figuring out whether now is the right moment to do so?

Their differences contribute as much to the deterioration of ape-human relations as their similarities. Human interaction frequently takes place via intimate one-on-one exchanges. Delicate, isolated scenes involving Malcolm and Dreyfus, Malcolm and his wife, Malcolm and his son. Conversely, virtually all ape conversations are carried out before the entire group. This communal forum serves as setting to one of the most haunting ape-to-ape encounters in the film. When Caesar informs his clan that the humans will finish their work on the dam and then leave, Koba, confounded, points to one scar on his body after the other saying the words, “Human. Work. Human. Work.”

Once Koba discovers Dreyfus’s plan to exterminate the apes he organizes a raid of the human colony. His vehemence is a thing of wonder, culminating in a 360-degree tank turret POV worthy of prestige season. All expected action tropes are present and accounted for in Dawn’s 130 minutes. The storming of a stronghold. A beautifully filmed stealth mission in a collapsing house. A final battle in a compromised structure. Primary characters falling to their deaths. There’s even the chance, 20 years later, to once more hear Gary Oldman yell the word “EVERYONE,” though this time into a megaphone. What makes Dawn different from its blockbuster ilk is the ability to craft a wide range of emotional effects due to its moral ambiguity. Director Matt Reeves, a man committed to the z-axis of his visuals, consistently steers the audience away from the binary of cheering for man or ape. This is Caeser’s film. It ends as it started: on an extreme close up of the ape’s eyes. We do as he says, and for now that is follow.

 

Godzilla: The Emotionally Reticent Engine That Could

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Godzilla_(2014)_poster

 
Spoilers ahead!

Pacific Rim. Star Trek: Into Darkness. Godzilla. Poor San Francisco can’t seem to catch a break come blockbuster season. The lure of icons such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Chinatown (and their distance from 9/11’s New York) inevitably beckon destruction-oriented filmmakers to its western shores. This time, Godzilla director Gareth Edwards has crafted one of the most visually stimulating and unabashedly iconic action films of the decade, largely through repeated juxtapositions of scale and an avoidance of familial tropes. As far as cinematic wonder goes, more than Pacific Rim, more than any of the recent crop of superhero films, Godzilla is this young generation’s Jurassic Park. And it is far, far better.

After an ominous opening scene in the Philippines the film cuts to Bryan Cranston’s idyllic Japanese home. Among the first words we hear from him is the name “Takashi” (a nod to Gojira’s Takashi Shimura). It is 15 years in the past. Both Cranston and his wife, played by Juliette Binoche, are engineers, and Cranston is arguing on the phone with a co-worker at the nuclear power plant. There have been recent unaccountable seismic tremors. Inevitably, disaster strikes. While Cranston survives, Binoche does not. Their final, poignant exchange is the first and last emotional buoy offered by the film.

In the present, Cranston and his estranged son Ford (played by Kick-Ass’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson) return to the now-quarantined location that fractured their family. The underground tremors have started again, and the cause they discover that night is the first of two towering MUTOs, “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms,” this one fitted with wings.

Counter to popular opinion, I found Cranston’s early death to be one of Edwards’s shrewdest decisions, because by far the most atypical — and highly productive– aspect of this blockbuster is its near-total disregard for family. To put it in other words, no one really gets to have one. First Cranston watches his wife die. Then Cranston’s son watches him die. Ford, now an orphaned Navy lieutenant whose specialty is disarming bombs, essentially navigates the film alone. While several of his lines involve an obligatory mouthing of the words “my family,” referring to a wife and son, we get all of five minutes of screentime with the three of them sharing the same frame. They are a distant hope in the movie rather than a constant, screeching, helpless, about-to-die-and-must-be-defended presence.

As a viewer, the above is a kindness, but it also means our hero needn’t spend the majority of his time awkwardly trying to win or protect anyone of emotional value; for two hours, he is simply trying not to die. There is no need to “get the girl”; Ford is already married. He needn’t win his father’s approval; his father wins his and then perishes. For all intents and purposes, Godzilla is two things: the hero and the monsters. It invests emotional resonance almost exclusively in its harrowing action and suspense, and it is understandable why this may not be enough for many. I’ve previously touched upon the difference in action of blockbusters devoid of romance (e.g., G.I. Joe: Retaliation, White House Down). Briefly, it provides fewer action-unspecific opportunities for the audience to cringe (recent Spock/Uhura dialogue) or dismiss the film outright due to “a lack of chemistry.” It untethers the action of the film from the failings of skeletal characters, who are in Godzilla  unfortunately abundant.

By far the film’s biggest failing is its dismissiveness of supporting characters. Ken Watanabe, here playing the Resident Asian, is reduced to a series of inane sound bites and furrowed brows. That Ford, our cookie-cutter American hero, temporarily adopts a Dominican Bucky does nothing to ease the discomfort of viewing a San Francisco somehow lacking in people of color.

However, while Ford is a product of the military, in Godzilla he is not a propagandized vehicle for the military. He stands alone, unattached to the brothership of kin or a military unit. There are guns, of course — pointless, pointless guns — but the film lacks the overt thrust of previous years’ draft-baiting behemoths; it makes people shooting at the unfamiliar look both useless and boring.

What the film does well is thrill unarmed. Men lie supine on elevated train tracks as a MUTO observes them from below. We watch others leap out of planes and into the statistical improbability of their survival. In short, there is an emphasis on the power of individual scenes rather than narrative sequences. Paired with tremendous sound design, these moments are nothing short of poetic. Shots of a train derailing and sailing into black waters, for example, are closer in nuance to Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping than any number of Godzilla’s cinematic peers.

Which is to say the following: sound saves this film. (As does humor. What else can one make of the dystopian-“When Doves Cry” music video outtake of one MUTO courting another with a long-stemmed hydrogen bomb?) Akira Ifukube’s Gojira score is one of the most widely revered auralscapes in the arena of monster films, which makes Alexandre Desplat’s triumph as Godzilla’s composer 60 years later all the more jawdropping. Counter to my complaints last December about the homogenous low-end belching of recent action scores, Desplat employs diverse, frequently non-Western instruments and motifs from start to finish. On the technical end, there are countless aural rack focuses between the sound effects of mayhem and the subtle devastations of the score. While the majority of the conversation regarding juxtaposition of scale has been of a visual nature, the aural interplay of diagetic catastrophe and nondiagetic grace is its own cinematic achievement, particularly in a genre so ensconced in turgid walls of noise.

No argument for or against this film can avoid the topic of destruction. Its last half hour is dedicated almost exclusively to the anticipated fight between Godzilla and the two MUTOs. Amid fires and the rippling sheets of falling buildings, Godzilla appears to viewers as a sentinel of impenetrable ash. The difference between this final battle and the Kryptonian-on-Kryptonian demolition-braun of Man of Steel is in the absence of millions running for their lives. San Francisco’s victims are prepared, desperate for their shelters to make it through the night. Do any of these people believe a nuclear bomb can destroy monsters that feed on radiation? Probably not, and neither does the audience.

Despite an engaging display of hand-to-hand monster combat (hey, it’s harder than it looks), Godzilla’s lack of motive for saving humanity comes across as poor writing gone worse, the inevitable oversight in plot symptomatic of so many CGI erections (every action film has one). After Godzilla saves the city and lumbers back into the sea, any frustration with Ford as a character playing a human — rather than the other way around — is replaced with frustration over Godzilla used as a deus ex machina in his own film. Endings aren’t easy, but laziness with a titular character is just begging for criticism, especially after coming so far.