{"id":5188,"date":"2012-01-21T00:56:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T00:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=5188"},"modified":"2012-01-21T03:26:20","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T03:26:20","slug":"blues-for-ali-abdullah-saleh-and-etta-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=5188","title":{"rendered":"Blues for Ali Abdullah Saleh and Etta James"},"content":{"rendered":"

[\u00a0 by Charles Cameron<\/strong> \u2013 pop irony for Yemen, requiem for Etta James ]<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of doubling up here: for starters, the lyrics each of the two songs have a significant amount of double entendre<\/em>, and there’s a terrific parallelism between them \u2013 as well as some real differences between the two singers and genres\u2026<\/p>\n

But that’s just the beginning.\u00a0 The linkage between these two songs on the level of their lyrics \u2013 up down, stay go \u2013 has nothing to do with the fact that I was playing them today.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong> \u2013 and the other simply because I had a vague blog-acquaintance at one time with someone who played with Etta James<\/strong>, and wanted to note her passing with sadness, gratitude, and a few minutes appreciative listening.<\/p>\n

1.<\/p>\n

So the Middle East Channel over at Foreign Policy<\/a> featured a mash of Katy Perry’s Hot n’ Cold<\/em> along with some quotes from Ali Abdullah Saleh<\/strong> today, in which he too doesn’t seem to know whether he’s coming or going — video below.<\/p>\n

I also heard Clay Shirky<\/strong>‘s TED presentation Why SOPA Is a Bad Idea<\/a> today as it happens, and he was saying that every times new recreational tools came along \u2013 analog tools like the photocopier, tape recorder and VCR as well as digital tools and technologies like the internet, file-sharing, laptops and tablets \u2013 industrial concerns like the publishing, movie and music industries fought them.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n

Because it turned out\u00a0we’re not really couch potatoes.\u00a0We don’t really like to only consume.\u00a0We do like to consume,\u00a0but every time one of these new tools came along,\u00a0it turned out we also like to produce\u00a0and we like to share.\u00a0And this freaked the media businesses out —\u00a0it freaked them out every time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So yeah, someone serious enough about Yemen to mock President Saleh and savvy enough to make a YouTube video of Katy Perry<\/strong> intercut with choice selections from Saleh’s speeches \u2013 that’s just what Shirky’s talking about, it’s human nature, it’s creative<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

And sometimes stuff like that can go viral \u2013 so it’s not just pop music, it’s more than that, as Bob Dylan<\/strong> said<\/a>, it’s “life, and life only”.<\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

And Etta’s song? — again, video below…<\/p>\n

To me, Etta’s song, voice<\/strong> and life<\/strong> between them bring up a whole different set of issues. Here’s where “love” trumps “morality”.<\/p>\n

Etta James’ obituary in The Guardian<\/em> contains this paragraph:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is that “immoral” \u2013 as one part of my brain would like to conclude?\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n

Is this — “and armed robbery’ — the price we sometimes have to pay for artistry?<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 to tweak a well-worn phrase slightly \u2013 to hate the sin but love the singer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I think that’s cheap.\u00a0 I think Etta \u2013 and many others \u2013 was hollowed out<\/strong>, and that it’s that hollowing, precisely, that gave her the depth and the voice to reach us so profoundly.\u00a0 So I lament Etta’s passing today, and have taken time out to let her sing to me.<\/p>\n

Etta James: may she rest in peace.<\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

Katy Perry:<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

4. Etta James:<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

h\/t Maureen Lang<\/a> and taters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[\u00a0 by Charles Cameron \u2013 pop irony for Yemen, requiem for Etta James ] . . 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 \u2013 as well as some real differences between the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,134,21,471,215,627,371,480,164,200,1,703],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-computers","category-creativity","category-cultural-intelligence","category-culture","category-doublequotes","category-humor","category-music","category-obit","category-recommended-viewing","category-uncategorized","category-yemen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5188"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5206,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5188\/revisions\/5206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}