Blues for Ali Abdullah Saleh and Etta James
[ by Charles Cameron – pop irony for Yemen, requiem for Etta James ]
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There’s a lot of doubling up here: for starters, the lyrics each of the two songs have a significant amount of double entendre, and there’s a terrific parallelism between them – as well as some real differences between the two singers and genres…
But that’s just the beginning. The linkage between these two songs on the level of their lyrics – up down, stay go – has nothing to do with the fact that I was playing them today.
I ran across one of these songs today because I’m fascinated by the ways pop culture can model, influence, and even on occasion drive events in the global seriousphere – and the other simply because I had a vague blog-acquaintance at one time with someone who played with Etta James, and wanted to note her passing with sadness, gratitude, and a few minutes appreciative listening.
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So the Middle East Channel over at Foreign Policy featured a mash of Katy Perry’s Hot n’ Cold along with some quotes from Ali Abdullah Saleh today, in which he too doesn’t seem to know whether he’s coming or going — video below.
I also heard Clay Shirky‘s TED presentation Why SOPA Is a Bad Idea today as it happens, and he was saying that every times new recreational tools came along – analog tools like the photocopier, tape recorder and VCR as well as digital tools and technologies like the internet, file-sharing, laptops and tablets – industrial concerns like the publishing, movie and music industries fought them. Why?
Because it turned out we’re not really couch potatoes. We don’t really like to only consume. We do like to consume, but every time one of these new tools came along, it turned out we also like to produce and we like to share. And this freaked the media businesses out — it freaked them out every time.
So yeah, someone serious enough about Yemen to mock President Saleh and savvy enough to make a YouTube video of Katy Perry intercut with choice selections from Saleh’s speeches – that’s just what Shirky’s talking about, it’s human nature, it’s creative…
And sometimes stuff like that can go viral – so it’s not just pop music, it’s more than that, as Bob Dylan said, it’s “life, and life only”.
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And Etta’s song? — again, video below…
To me, Etta’s song, voice and life between them bring up a whole different set of issues. Here’s where “love” trumps “morality”.
Etta James’ obituary in The Guardian contains this paragraph:
Her approach to both singing and life was throughout one of wild, often desperate engagement that included violence, drug addiction, armed robbery and highly capricious behaviour. James sang with unmatched emotional hunger and a pain that can chill the listener. The ferocity of her voice documents a neglected child, a woman constantly entering into bad relationships and an artist raging against an industry and a society that had routinely discriminated against her.
Is that “immoral” – as one part of my brain would like to conclude? Or is it glorious — is a voice soaked in whiskey and wreathed in smoke the only voice that can chill us like that, that can bring us to our senses, to our knees, to compassion?
Is this — “and armed robbery’ — the price we sometimes have to pay for artistry?
One way of dealing with this recurring business of those who bless us with extraordinary gifts despite their own lives seeming at times wretched and accursed is – to tweak a well-worn phrase slightly – to hate the sin but love the singer.
I think that’s cheap. I think Etta – and many others – was hollowed out, and that it’s that hollowing, precisely, that gave her the depth and the voice to reach us so profoundly. So I lament Etta’s passing today, and have taken time out to let her sing to me.
Etta James: may she rest in peace.
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Katy Perry:
4. Etta James:
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h/t Maureen Lang and taters.
