Until the Lion Learns to Speak (and Listen)

 

Until the lion learns to speak

The tales of hunting will be weak…

K’Naan, a Somali rapper now living in the United States (with a pretty amazing background), recently published a beautifully written piece in the New York Times about the kind of self-censorship in which  artists in the American music industry must engage in order to maintain success on the charts.  From his op-ed: 

I could reach more people, it told me.  Was it right to spit in the face of fortune, to not walk in rhythm with my new audience?  Didn't all good medicine need a little sugar before it could be swallowed?

So I began to say yes...some songs became far more Top 40 friendly, but infinitely cheaper.

K'Naan's article calls to attention a crucial problem in American [popular] culture today - the self-indulgence and the need to be sheltered and isolated from the less than stellar realities that many people around the world, and even within the United States, face on a daily basis.  Lupe Fiasco, an American rapper, writes frequently about social issues within the United States and has also critiqued the music industry and popular culture's will to "dumb it down" (Different is never good, good is only what we pick/You ain't got a hit unless it sounds like these did...).

Music indeed serves many purposes.  Music is a form of expression and entertainment that conveys a message through the lyrics, tone, rhythm, melody, harmony, breaks, and a variety of other aural rhetorical tools.  Sometimes, music can provide the listeners with a temporary escape from reality - the glamorous lifestyle of constant partying and financial success that many pop stars write about is an understandably appealing subject matter for listeners today living in a world struggling to emerge from a global economic crisis leaving many with economic troubles of their own.

However, the problem is that constant escape through these types of messages results in a willful blindness to and ignorance of crises in the real world.  A flat-out refusal by record labels to promote and radios to play songs that actually attempt to address these issues serves as a cultural tool of collectively devaluing the lives of those human beings caught in rough situations where music can actually have the power to make a positive difference.  And there is something seriously perverse about mass acquiescence to the willful devaluation of another human being's life.

This is not to say that music has to be serious and contain socially critical messages all the time.  As previously stated, music serves many purposes, but it is important to remember that music always contains a social message.  The question now is, what are the messages that we as a society collectively value?

Do we choose to turn a deaf ear to reality and remain immersed in 3 minute - 40 second escapes?  Or can we decide that other messages are important too, that the suffering experienced by others is real and their voices are worth our brief attention?  By constantly dumbing down the messages to which we are open to receiving, we dumb down our own humanity.

Here is a story about fame.  I heard it first as a fable in Somalia, before living it out in America.

The fox, they say, once had an elegant walk, for which the other animals loved him.  One day, he saw a prophet striding along and decided to improve on what was already beautiful.  He set out walking but could not match the prophet's gait.  Worse, he forgot his own.  So he was left with the unremarkable way the fox walks today...

So I am not the easiest sell to Top 40 radio.  What I am is a fox who wanted to walk like a prophet and now is trying to rediscover his own stride.

I may never find my old walk again, but I hope someday to see beauty in the graceless limp back toward it. 

So beware what's on the airwaves

And be more aware of what's not getting airplay...