Are we really ever collective?
Adbusters Issue
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A clever read this month: Adbusters Issue 79 (East and West issue) scathingly uncovers the veil of hipsterdom as “A Dead End of Western Civilization.” And cheekily refers to the rise of the east as all things cool for the rest of the issue.
A contrast to which we couldn’t chuckle along more.
Hipster: The Dead End of Civilization
We’ve reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum. So while hipsterdom is the end product of all prior countercultures, it’s been stripped of its subversion and originality, and is leaving a generation pointlessly obsessing over fashion, faux individuality, cultural capital and the commodities of style.
Waxed, shaved, and proper
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I don’t know who was responsible for the invention or rather, clever rose-colored re-packaging, but the lady’s razor and I have had severe bouts of culture clash. A subject of constant debate and taboos in my household, and a forbidden regime that seemed so part of being lady-like, in the West at least, I’m not really sure what laws disallowed the use of shaving tools for girls in my family.
The very practice of shaving, other than my dad’s morning routine, became a point of discussion for the first time in 5th grade gym class.
“Gross, how can she wear shorts…she has patches all over!”
“OMG, I ran out of shaving cream this morning so it’s sweatpants over stuble”.
The practice was foreign in so many ways, and masculine and improper in all others. So it was locker-room talk that taught me much about grooming during the trying years of puberty, albeit in harsher language.
While my dark-hair and dark-skin could definitely not be spared by hair removing devices, taking a razor to the leg was bad; worst case scenario; a no-no. In my house, old wives tales and myths were abound about the long and lornful path of girls who resorted to razors. While ladies in the East take pride, even obsession with being hair-free and proper, burning hot wax, a couple of strips from discarded jeans, and a few hours in solitude always always always take precedence over the evil shaving kit. My mother insisted on a routine of waxing-despite puberty’s unforgiving toll for bushy haired, olive toned adolescents and despite the fact that my inexperienced and pain sensitive self could only tolerate the first aggravating rip-from-the-root for ten nanoseconds. It wasn’t just convenience that pulled me towards my first razor; it was rebellion. I remember digging into my sister’s secret stash, stuffed perfectly under the bathroom sink. I tried the first run on my arm. So smooth, so soft, so easy! I was sold, what could be so bad about this? Especially when there was no pain! Shaving was finally my domain, after listening to an entire semester’s earful of how I really can’t be seen near the basketball courts without shaving in the morning. Little did I know that these 11 year old girls were training themselves for a long and hard dependency. My skin’s reaction to the razor was visible, and that first rebellious run of the razor was only setting me up for a cycle of: stubble and shave, shave and stubble.
Now in my twenties, I can appreciate the age-old art (yes, I can now call the arduous process of waxing an art) of “natural” hair removal. Even if ripping a layer of dermis and root seems as unnatural as ever, waxing is on the gourmet assortment of salon treatments. It’s an expensive habit, but at least it only breeds a dependency that is less frequent in dosage…. Waxing ladies here will scold me with any indication of razor usage. They curse the technology for reversing my progress in hair removal and let me know that impatient and “cheap” girls opt out for such outcomes. They are usually immigrants who bring real knowledge and technique. Meanwhile, in Pakistan while you are expected to be hairless all over your body, the use of a razor is utterly vulgar and reserved for men only. Some of my female co-workers and I complained about the razor’s inescapable grip over a woman’s routine. When I proposed the idea of waxing, it was brushed of as simultaneously bourgeouis and primitive: not for fine hair and fine skin.
Each side creates their own etiquette for grooming, and perceptions about the other’s unrefined habits. We have techniques and ideals passed down from ages before. I believe it was advertisements in the 50’s that liberated women from the use of water and soap with the introduction of shaving cream. Similarly, recipes for wax concoctions run in every Eastern family I can think of. Neither side willingly wants to cross over to the other, losing their trajectory of what’s proper and right. I’ve criss-crossed from both techniques, adapting as I see fit. The shaving dilemma was one of the first tests to my mother’s expectations as she saw me assimilate into questionable, and foreign cultural traits and abandon tried and trusted ones . I never really picked a side, and the option of opting out completely was nonexistent: How could it be when your are expected to keep appearances in an environment of adopted cultures but rigid beliefs.
Hit appropriate[d]: Natasha Khan
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There’s something incredibly poetic about Natasha Khan, the half Pakistani-half-British chanteuse behind mystical Bat for Lashes. Her fluttery style and floaty lyrics are transcendent, enchanting, and kind of eerie. But in all honesty, I think I like her because of her mysterious bohemianism. She’s unlike many of the Pakistani girls I grew up knowing. Her inquisitive, introspective timidity are just so endearing. And the haunting, folksy avant guarde sound of her ensemble, Bat for Lashes, is creating a new cool for art school drop-outs (as if they needed it). The Guardian`s recent chat with Natasha captures her self-deprecating tortured artist spirit, and this video for “Whats a Girl to Do” makes you wonder what world her dreams take place in:
But perhaps what’s even cooler is that she is related to Rahmat (father) and Jahangir (uncle) Khan, that formed the ultimate Pakistani Squash Dynasty-which of course meant they were household names- when I was growing up. I still remember Jahangir’s face iconized in soda ads around the country in the ’90’s. He always kind of bore a resemblance to Fido Dido.
Jahangir Khan in fierce battle
Improv
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Inspired by May’s last post on the question of “I”, I needed to bring out the other “I” that is a persistent theme in questions of my “I”dentity: Improvisation.
We’ve all met How-To people. The type that carry around “How-To” manuals on just about every topic from cleaning to figuring out your ninth moon in Venus….. OK, maybe we’ll stick to the more practical of the manuals that are out there. I, on the other hand, have felt–or been made to feel– foolish for my insistence on improv in most situations. I grew up with a family that improvised at every key turning point, but was made to feel inadequate when Canadian raised kids seemed to have everything so… orderly, so set, so….pedantic. The how-to manuals, if there ever were any in my household, never got read. There’s a reason my mother always said we were like gypsies. You may be envisioning skirt wearing, tambourine strumming people, but I mean to convey the slightly nomadic, make-do, make-shift improvisational side of the Roma. Oh, and we sometimes wore big skirts.
I wrote this passage some time ago and I come back to it often as I see that the grandest improvisateurs I know are always immigrants. Rarely reliant on manuals, directions, courses, or packaged kits, because such inventions are over packaged frills for straight-edge and settled people, not fluid, transcendental, adapting newbies(ish). “We are still building our house on sticky foundation, so we bring our roots with us…or we make use of what we find”. Though admittedly, sometimes it is just simpler and more cost efficient to…keep it simple. Still, how easy it was to relate to Toula`s angst about her dad`s quirky fixation with cure-all Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
From broken chairs holding open garage doors, to hoarding steel pressure cookers from the Friday Bazaars of Punjab, there`s little room for quick acquisition and bring to heart: waste not want not. History is detailed in the make-shift and resourceful nature of adapting into new places, and I see this in the first generation I`ve been surrounded by, sometimes stiflingly so.
Of course, there is some idealism in the new emigres way of life as they try to adapt. Improvisation is perhaps just a test of time. It seems upward mobility opens up a new world to disposable, quick-fixes. The ways of the old-country, as you learn to make-do with less reliable new world materials that quickly figure into your rush rush life of free ways and instant coffee days, begin to fade, become foreign and slightly repugnant. Status signifies the perfectly assembled toolbox as you begin to order and regulate trivial challenges into methodical and manageable pockets. You are no longer your own builder, in most respects. You’ve managed to learn enough lingo to pawn it off with ease. Improvisation and invention become fading traits, especially in second, third, and fourth generations.
Maybe Improv, and it`s fading relevance make for a good debate on integration, adaptation, or that hot topic of immigrant-youth radicalization. But that`s open for discussion.
Be Thyself
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Once, I had the (mis)fortune of spending a night at a high-class hotel in a foreign city by myself, once. It was at the tail-end of an extended trip, and I was being held captive with travel fatigue. The said fatigue was not only from the physical challenges of the daily travails, but also from all the emotional, cultural, and socio-economic rifts that I have witnessed during my travels.
An anonymous (and faceless and traceless) hotel staff had left a welcome basket accompanied by a generic corporate hello-how-are-you card, with a caption that ran across in gold-encrusted cursives: “the luxury of being yourself.”Picking up an eerily round and supple apple from the fruit basket, I nestled myself on the welcoming canapé, and started thinking long and hard about what it means to be “one self.”
I remember vividly the initial shock at the corporatisation of the sense of self, soon followed by the grave realization that there was sure to be a client-base eager to pay the going rate for that very luxury.
I normally don’t think long and hard thoughts over marketing ploys. But the trip had awoken me to perhaps the biggest part of “myself” that often goes neglected with the onset of political correctness and other potential mishaps. That is, to the question “Where are you from?” I would respond, “Canada,” to which many (most, fine, all) would retort, “But you don’t look Canadian!” to which I finally succumbed and began answering, “I am from Japan/Korea/China,” depending on the mood of the day.
What a loaded question - where are you from? You mean where I was born? The scene of my innocent childhood crimes? The city where I’ve temporarily set up shop? Can we really get anywhere without knowing where we come from? Does the destination have any meaning if the origin is unknown? Can I be myself without knowing the nature of the self? How does one command the luxury of being oneself anyways?
A thrashing course in afro beats.
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The Fader Issue 52
This month, The Fader has gone and done something that other magazines have only attempted, but failed at in pretty serious ways. Representing the African continent as the centre of hipster appropriation–from indie prep school musicians (”Upper West Side Soweto”) to the roots of bloghouse–with much more depth than can ever be copied. Vanity Fair’s July issue claiming “we are all African” is a best forgotten attempt at insight into the continent. Despite the gratuitous inclusion of a few African writers and attempt to bring awareness to the Dark continent along pictures of Hollywood saviors, the glossy couldn’t be saved by good intentions or high fashion.
The Fader’s special issue, though a little late if anything, illustrates not only the explosiveness of the various African music scenes, are but the diversity in the music as well. Using art to burst stereotypes is always my number one– don’t you dare roll your eyes and picture a glossy full of long dreads and hand drums; think of something much more dynamic, new, but still full of head-on body movement.
Until more recently, my knowledge of music from the continent was limited to French West African celebrities who’ve made it big in the diaspora (Amadou et Mariam, Youssou N’dour), and who have an older generation appeal–fans of Manu Chau perhaps–versus club jockeys who may listen to Diplo or Justice. This issue challenges that of course by showing us the cross over from Nigeria to Britain’s underground Garage clubs, o rthe burning up of floors in Joburg’s townships. It’s a side we rarely see (aside from the previously applauded Awesome Tapes Blog). “On danse comme on veut-we dance how we like”, as my Ouagadougouan friends would say, pretty much captures the spirit.
Like many others, In 2005 I watched Tsotsi which was my first introduction to the South African township phenomenon of Kwaito. How could something so raw, so expressive, so aggressive, so mixed be so good? It’s just one type of the hyperactivity of hypermixes in exchange across continents.
The Fader’s 52nd issue is a brave repertoire of Hiplife scenes from Accra to Soweto Kwaito clubs, to Malawian producers, to it’s transport in the diaspora. These vibrancy of talents and rooted musical thrashes are only beginning to get some well-deserved attention outside of bohemian idealizers (or those stuck on immortalizing the djembe alone without it’s variations). Undoubteldy, this music has been an influence for centuries, but it means something when a teenage girl from Cote D’Ivoire who’s diabolic Coupe Decale moves on YouTube lands the attention of MTV hip-hop video producing execs.
So what does all of this mean now that The Fader has jumped on the bandwagon? Could it be that the new breed of mixing is bound to be captured for mass reproduction and hipster-boundary line-trendy overplay land? At least this is style with substance and a penetrating sound core as authentic and original as they come.
Ethnomusicology for lovers
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I have spent two euphoric hours perusing the MP3 blog, Awesome Tapes From Africa, desperately trying to assemble what I so wish I’d managed to smuggle back with me this summer from the streets of Ouaga and Accra. Unreliable street CD vendors, and unfamiliarity with the musical masters from West Africa kept me from really digging and buying music that would encode what we were listening to in make shift Maquis’s, music halls, and street sides on a daily basis. I should have known that Tapes were the way to go. I’ll never forget the times we had to assist the DJ at Le Titanic locate that particular requested song amongst his piles and piles of Cassette Tapes. It always made me wonder what kind of musical and categorical memory you need to be a Tape Jockey relying on Rewinds and Forwards. What a way to listen to music.
This blog belongs to an ethnomusicologist who spent a number of months in West Africa collecting tapes of all genres from all types of artists. His tape-to-MP3 blog is a welcomed addition to my longing ears. I spent months trying to build a collection of music my ears had gotten so used to from the summer. Emails to my Burkina counterparts requesting names, desperate YouTubing and Googling produced unfruitful results. I was saved when I was lent some compilations of mostly Burkina specific music (Yeleen, Floby, Faso Kombat). This blog’s compilations are by no means comprehensive, but it has a pretty diverse range of downloads. Popular figures like Tiken Jah make an appearance, in addition to more obscure names like Mariam Bogayogo, although most of it tends to be more traditional with few, if any references to performers specializing in Ivorien dance sensation, coupe decalle.
