12

OVER THE EDGE
December 5, 2007-January 9, 2008

ANDREW KURJATA-FEATURES AND O
Music of the year: “Kala,” by M.LA.

With communism dead, capitalism eats itself

My favourite band of all time is the Clash. I have all their
proper albums (with the exception of “Cut the Crap”, which
hardly counts) and am working on doubling them up with
vinyl sets, not to mention the multi-disc compilations. Under-
standing why this is will help explain my choice for album of
the year.

Famously, the Clash was dubbed “The Only Band That Mat-
ters,” a title that has since been pretended to by artists ranging
from Bruce Springsteen to U2. But while these artists have
laid claim to the title for singing about small-town America
in the face of Reaganomics or the universal issues of redemp-
tion out of hardship, these have never been for quite the same
reason the Clash owned it. You see, the Clash came out of a
nihilistic punk movement, one that can best be described as
dancing on the flames of a declining Western civilization. Out
of this came groups like the Sex Pistols, whose song “Holiday
in the Sun” celebrated the idea of visiting the Berlin Wall and
East Germany, a shocking idea to those whose greatest fear
was that East Germany’s presence in the heart of Europe was
the first step towards godless communism eventually overtak-
ing Western civilization. But while most punks chose to react
to this situation by moving into the “whitest” style of rock and
roll available and parody their demise by spitting in people’s
faces and subverting neo-Nazi fashion, the Clash went a step
further. They incorporated reggae rhythms into their songs,
experimented with dub, modernized rockabilly, and named an
album after the Sandinistas, a Marxist group operating out of
Nicaragua. They had the nihilism (“London Calling” is about
a nuclear Armageddon in England), but they went further with
it, examining the root causes and what it meant in other coun-
tries and cultures. They looked beyond the Cold War politics
of the West vs. the USSR and saw what was happening in
Latin America, the Middle East, and the ghettoes of capitalism
itself. And this is why they were the Only Band That Mat-
ters—they made everything else coming out of the time sound
self-involved and irrelevant.

Listening to “Kala” by M.I.A:, I get some idea of what it
might have been like for the people who discovered the Clash
when they were still a contemporary group. Her songs hit on
themes of discomfort and fear that the West is experiencing in
light of the changing world and which have been explored to
great effect by Green Day and My Chemical Romance. But
while these groups turn their piercing eyes inward on America
and its politics and culture, M.I.A. follows the Clash and ex-
plores the outlying regions of humanity which for most people
are only ever experienced in the abstract: refugee camps in
Africa, Aborigine tribes of the Australian outback, and Indi-
an street merchants. She comes by it honestly: she recorded
this album in these and other locales after being denied entry
into the United States, another casualty of a faulty no-fly list
brought on by an increasingly paranoid world. So instead of
wasting time fighting it, she went to visit other people who are
being so diligently excluded.

What she found is a startling situation: the poor of the world,
who the West once feared would turn to communism, have

OTHER ARTISTS OF THE YEAR:

<A

The Weakerthans (photo courtesy Damn Moni of radio3.cbe.ca)

These guys are like the Tragically Hip for the emo-punk generation,
taking the rock sound of the moment and making it sound both classic
and timely. More importantly, like the Tragically Hip, their lyrics reflect
Canadianism in a way that is never over-sold. Take “Civil Twilight” as
an example: singing about biting off your mittens in order to give the
bus driver money is something that unites the country more than any

railroad or Prime Minister.

MIA
~COURTESY MIAUK.COM

embraced capitalism at a level most of us never dream of.
Diamonds are status symbols, but so, too, are AK-47s. “Kala”
takes place on capitalism’s fault-lines, where the protagonists
covet laptops and prepaid phone plans, while fighting wars
over gasoline with hand grenades and machetes. When cap-
italism has no challengers, the people who work in factories
all day making Air Jordans dream only about owning the Air
Jordans themselves. So how do they do this? Black markets,
smuggling, and violence—aspects of capitalism we try to pre-
tend don’t exist yet have always been present.

M.I.A. sees this and makes an album full of startling juxta-
positions of First World ideals and Third World reality. The
first single “Boyz” seems like just another drunk in the club
party track until you realize the chorus is asking, “How many
no money boys are rowdy? How many start a war?” Look at
history and you’ll see that a large portion of violent revolu-
tions have been carried out (if not started) by no-money boys
frustrated with the inequality in the world. This was true of
communism, but at least back then they were subscribing to
some sort of socialistic ideal. Now, they just want to be on
the top rungs of capitalism, and are going to take us down to
get there. This is not justification for the violence, it’s just the
facts: when you keep the peasants down long enough, eventu-
ally they’Il get organized and overthrow you. “Catch me at the
border I got visas in my name” boasts one character, and it’s
hard to tell whether they mean the credit card or the allowed-
entry document—are they bragging about their ability go get
into any country they want to using legal means, or their abil-
ity to buy their way in? Does it even matter?

It is the belief that this Third World, raised on capitalism
without safety nets, is coming to get us that informs many de-

able.

Ne-Yo (photo courtesy of courtesy Robin Wong)

Seriously, who was the last mainstream R&B artist to
write songs this good? Perhaps the best examples of his
skills are the Beyonce-sung “Irreplaceable,” which por-
trays a breakup from the empowered female perspective
as well as anything else out there, and his new album car-
ries on the stretch of singles that are both catchy and relat-

iOnS EDITOR

cisions today. If you think I’m exaggerating, consider this: cur-
rently every major presidential candidate is endorsing building
a wall along the Mexican border because they fear the threat
posed by people whose situation is so desperate they are will-
ing to risk death in order to do menial jobs at wages lower than
any American would ever consider. Yes, there are drug dealers
and gangs, but most people just want a chance at the American
dream—a dream that for centuries has been built on the backs
of slavery, colonialism, and harsh factory conditions. And
America isn’t alone in this: the world economy is based on
exploitation of the poor, and every country currently benefit-
ing from a market economy (Canada included) has contributed
to this exploitation. And like the United States, these countries
are now dealing with the fallout. Switzerland recently had an
election where the party with the most votes displayed the
image of three white sheep kicking a black sheep off of their
flag, Australia has seen violence erupt over clashing religious
values on bathing suits, and cities in Quebec have felt the need
to pass rules explicitly banning stoning women to death, a
statement clearly aimed at the growing Muslim population.
Underlying all of this is the fear that “our” civilization is at
risk, not from nuclear war or some deadly strain of the Avian
flu, but from sheer demographics: the birth rates of G8 coun-
tries is almost universally on the decline, meanwhile China,
India, and Africa add a few hundred million more on a yearly
basis, and these are mostly among the poor—even in Canada,
the greatest population growth comes from the lowest rungs
of society: new immigrants and reserves. And while we fear
them, we also need them. In the past we left the third world in
the third world to work in sweatshops and diamond mines, but
increasingly we are importing indentured workers to pick our
berries, do our laundry, and drive our taxis. And as more and
more of them come through our borders, we get more worried
they might not assimilate fast enough or in the right way, so
we pass laws excluding them from citizenship, and build walls
not only around our countries but around our houses, as well.
Gated communities are becoming more and more common in
big cities around the world, be it in China, Uganda, or Toronto:
islands of security in a sea of the unwashed masses. Don’t be-
lieve me? Watch the OC, which takes place in California, and
wonder to yourself where the Hispanic population is.

Perhaps the clearest expression of the themes of Kala is on
the first track, “Bamboo Banga.” “I’m a big timer,” sings the
protagonist, emulating the business leaders of the world. But
then it gets darker:

“I’m knocking on the doors of your hummer hummer. You’ll
be hungry like the wolves hunting dinner dinnerAnd we’re
moving with the packs like hyena ena” Scavengers of cap-
italism, turning on the wolves. This is the future of Kala: the
Third World soldier, raiséd on the duality of capitalistic ideals
and harsh poverty, of gang rule and free markets, knocking on
the doors of a hummer owned by a frightened tourist who is
willing to let them wash the windows but never daring to open
the doors and invite them in.

Wang Lee-Hom (photo courtesy of courtesy www.
lee-hom.com)

Never heard of this New York based singer-song-
writer who works in pop and hip-hop? It doesn’t mat-
ter, because he’s in the upper echelons of Chinese pop
culture royalty, and when his latest album came pack-
aged with reusable chopsticks (most Chinese opt for
disposable ones) and an environmental message, he
probably did more to fight climate change than all the
Live Earth concerts in the world.