In Which Kainenchen Is Naive About Political Realities.

This morning, as I have the day off to pack for DragonCon, I've been watching Under African Skies, a documentary about the making of the Graceland Album. And the most interesting thing to me is that, at the time the rhythms were recorded, the ANC protested it, because the UN had declared a cultural boycott of South Africa. And it made sense, from a degree, to have this boycott: South Africa was still under apartheid, and political wisdom was that the country ought to be shunned, so that no one in the world could be seen to support Apartheid, in any sense- economically, militarily, or culturally.

Thing is, this is the complete and utter wrong way to go about dealing with a nation which is abusing its citizens: to lock them away from the rest of the world, in the cesspit of their abuse. It's like saying that a person being beaten by their spouse should be shunned along with said spouse, and the two of them should be locked away until the spouse stops the violence. Isolation, I think, is the exact opposite of what you should want for an oppressed country- especially when they have such amazingness to offer, musically, artistically, and yes.

I was 6 years old when Graceland: The African Concert aired. My parents taped it, and I still have that tape to this day. What the people protesting the Graceland Album and the Concert didn't see, and couldn't see, was that little kids of all races, in all kinds of places would see this, and know "Bring Back Nelson Mandela," and about Apartheid at all, and about this music and the people who make it, rather than this music being locked away behind a curtain of evil. Music, and art, and literature help people relate to others. It's one thing to know, "yeah, they have no rights, and no citizenship, and no anything else- that's sad," and another to know, "OMG, these people who make these things that I love, are being treated this way."

When Ladysmith Black Mambazo came to New York to record with Paul Simon, they wanted to go to Central Park, and asked where they could get a permit. They had no idea that you didn't need a permit to go places. And it's frigging valuable, to learn something like that, that the way things are where you are, a culture of fear and terror aren't the way it is everywhere, or the way it has to be. It doesn't change anything right at that moment, but it never goes away, knowing that kind of thing.

Paul Simon was accused of cultural appropriation: of exploiting these South African musicians for his own profit. He argued, in return, that it was a collaboration. He and the artists he worked with created a hybrid, something that hadn't existed before, and showed they could work together and make an amazing, explosive album. And in the long run, I think I agree with him. He did the right thing, and so did the artists who worked with him. It's all well and good for people of color to make art for other people of color, but it's not... satisfying, not to me anyway, to be a colored person doing colored things in a colored corner. Maybe it's being mixed race, I want to share art from all of my various backgrounds with people from each of those. And I am not really jazzed hearing fear and hesitancy from my white friends and loved ones, because they're so afraid of messing something up, they don't want to engage with anything outside of their familiar.

And maybe that's their own problem, but I've always found that it's better, and more satisfying, to just roll with it, assume good intent, and be okay.

In the meantime, Miriam Makeba's voice still nearly makes me cry, after all these years. Nkosi Sikileli Africa... just yeah.