Sound System Culture

I still find Gilroy sitting in my mind's queue. Jim and Hannah, using appropriate and astute examples, guided us through some of the big issues nicely. I do think he's a good theorist to read alongside Rushdie, and he has obvious affinities with Bhabha, too. The Black Atlantic and its various lines of affiliation (realized in syncretized cultural productions, especially music) provide the kind of "third space" that help him escape the horns of that dilemma we talked about: i.e., on the one hand, the exceptionalist position which identifies music with cultural continuity and tradition (the Black essence) and, on the other hand, the postmodern rejection of essentialism in favor of a totally contingent, plural play of identities. Regarding the former, remember how he uses the Nelson Mandela anecdote to conclude that "the purist idea of one-way flow of African culture from east to west was instantly revealed to be absurd" (96). Both positions, he argues, "are represented in contemporary discussions of black music, and both contribute to staging a conversation between those who see the music as the primary means to explore critically and reproduce politically the necessary ethnic essence of blackness and those who would dispute the existence of any such unifying, organic phenomenon" (100). Meanwhile, the rejection of the latter position is what constitutes his "anti-anti-essentialism." We must find the third space between "a squeamish, nationalist essentialism and a skeptical, saturnalian pluralism which makes the impure world of politics literally unthinkable" (102).

He's also important, obviously, for helping us to theorize the concept of diaspora, which, as we have talked about (remember the James Clifford essay, for example), has become this huge umbrella of a term, one that's often irresponsibly generalized and valorized. "The very least which this music and its history can offer us today," Gilroy writes, "is an analogy for comprehending the lines of affiliation and association which take the idea of diaspora beyond its symbolic status as the fragmentary opposite of some imputed racial essence" (95).

As I noted in class, I think of the Club Hot Wax section in The Satanic Verses when Gilroy claims that "in reinventing their own ethnicity, some of Britain's Asian settlers have also borrowed the sound system culture of the Caribbean and the soul and hip hop styles of black America, as well as techniques like mixing, scratching, and sampling as part of their invention of a new mode of cultural production with an identity to match" (82). With the surreal juxtaposition of wax figures representing (mostly African) migrants of the past with contemporary politicians, followed by the kind of ritual purification granted by the "meltdown," the Club Hot Wax becomes the site of a kind of alternative historiography, governed, we might say, by scratching, mixing, and dubbing. Significantly, when the meltdown is complete, "music regains the night" (302).

Still on music, I continue to be intrigued, too, by the possibly fruitful line of inquiry that could connect the lyrics and role of a group like The Clash with Rushdie's project in The Satanic Verses, especially if one were to explore the genesis and contours of the punk rock movement and its probably direct relationship with Powellism and Thatcherism. I recall an article by Sasha Frere-Jones in the 11/1/04 edition of The New Yorker in which he writes: "On 'London Calling,' Strummer remakes his major points: the police are on the wrong side, wage labor will crush your soul, and sometimes people need to destroy property in order to be heard.... The Clash are laughing at Margaret Thatcher and will be dancing long after the police have come and gone.... The album's soul might be found in 'The Guns of Brixton'.... It's reggae thickened up and filtered by musicians who don't exactly know how to play reggae but love it completely.... Simonon is a croaky and untrained singer, and this only enhances his convictions: 'When they kick at your front door / How you gonna come? / With your hands on your head / Or on the trigger of your gun?' Threatening your rivals and writing scatological lyrics is one way to be 'controversial.' Staring down the riot police is another." Perhaps that should be our pre-class music tomorrow.