North American Anthology
of Pop Music Literature
of Pop Music Literature
Two: Bayard Godsave's "White Man in Hammersmith"
Bayard Godsave's short novel*, "White Man in Hammersmith," which appears in Torture Tree, is dedicated in part "to Town." That's me.
It is a great story full of great writing, and I'm proud to be identified as its ideal audience (if that's what a dedication is meant to do...?). The story is narrated by a expat American running a small recording studio in Trinidad, and his ancillary connection to an attempted coup there by radical muslims in 1996.
The title comes from The Clash's "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais," which the band released as a single in June 1978. It also appears on the US version of their eponymous 1977 debut album, which wasn't released in the States until 1979. "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais" is the best Clash song, a song that well illustrates their mesh of politics and punk, a song that cements them as The Only Band That Matters. I presume Bayard dedicated "W.M. in H." to me because he know how much I love "(W.M.) in H. P.," and how much I revere the song's co-author, Joe Strummer. However, there are aspects to both the song and its namesake story that touch on issues of (White Man) privilege and cultural appropriation that also -- perhaps not as consciously -- might play into the dedication and the thematic unity between the song, the story, and its dedicatee (i.e., yrs trly.)
The song "(W.M.) in H.P." is about a white Londoner (Strummer, himself the son of a British foreign service diplomat) who attends a a reggae concert at the Palais, hoping to absorb some of the danger and rebellion of Jamaican music but ultimately let down by the show's shallow glitz and showmanship: ...but it was Four Tops all night / with encores from stage right. The singer then turns that thought onto the shallowness of the by-then-fully-mature London punk scene -- they're all too busy fighting / for a good place under the lighting -- when they should be using punk's energy for forward political movement: the new groups are not concerned / with what there is to be learned / They've got Burton suits, you think its funny / turning rebellion into money. By song's end, the singer himself gives up and gives in: I'm the all-night drug-prowling wolf / who looks so sick in the sun / I'm the white man in the Palais / To go looking for fun. It's sort of Thomas Frank's Commodify Your Dissent in a four-minute pop song.
The narrator in Godsave's novel is essentially taking on the same mission as Strummer in the song: he uses his white American privilege to make a personal paradise of Trinidad in the '90s, appropriating what he prefers from the culture (music, weed, an atmosphere of danger and dissent) without really understanding what he's doing. (Cf. Strummer on the recording of Sandinista!, the Clash's Jamaican dub and US hip-hop influenced album named after socialist Nicaraguan rebels: "I smoked so much pot, I'm surprised I haven't turned into a bush.") At the same time, the Trinidadian mystic/musician Master Z, with whom our narrator is obsessed and embroiled, is appropriating western/America hip hop in it's 90's/Pantherish guise of radical militarism, just as Strummer reports finding Leroy Smart and Delroy Wilson taking on aspects of the stalwart oldies-circuit Four Tops.
"W.M. in H"'s narrator's white/rich/expat privilege is most evident in that the novel places him always in contexts of recall and reaction: his privilege prevents him from doing anything but react. Most of his interactions with Master Z happen through media -- observing his radicalism through a control room's window, watching the coup on television. Our narrator can only consume culture, he can't really engage with it. He's the audience to history, like Strummer at the Palais or standing by as Caribbean youth challenged UK bobbies at the Notting Hill riots in 1976 (cf. The Clash, "White Riot.") This is part of what privilege does -- puts you behind the window, puts you in front of the screen, makes you audience or consumer rather than actor or maker. It makes you a book's dedicatee, perhaps, but not its author.
Neither "W.M. in H"'s narrator, nor "(W.M.) in H.P"'s narrator, nor I (fan of both) can be free of allegations of privilege and cultural appropriation. The life I live, the music I prefer, are things given to me, handed down or handed over. Even my kids are mine through a kind of cultural appropriation, though its not pleasant to dwell on that thought. One doesn't like to think of oneself as more Four Tops than drug-prowling wolf, even here in my lower-middle forties.
Junior Murvin said: All the peacemakers turn war officers.
Eddy Grant said: Well, I'm running -- police on my back.
Willie Williams said: A lotta people won't get no justice tonight, so a lotta people going to have to stand up and fight.
Lloyd Price said: Stagger Lee threw seven, Billy swore that he threw eight.
James Wayne said: Down the road, came Junco Partner -- he was loaded as can be.
Joe Strummer, who also said these things, died in December 2002. The Hammersmith Palais closed down in 2007 and was demolished in June 2012.
p.s. Order Bayard Godsave's Torture Tree here or ask for it at your local bookseller's. Both of the short novels within are tremendously good and well worth your time, attention, and dirty ill-gotten lucre.
*I prefer the term "short novel" to "novella," because novella strikes the same reactive nerve in me as do most portmanteaus: webisode, guesstimate, and the now thankfully obsolete cassingle. These words create bullshit specificity -- do we really need a word to indicate a thing and its form all in one go? Even short novel seems unnecessary and arbitrary: is Of Mice and Men called a short novel? Or Bright Lights, Big City? Anyway: I will refer to Godsave's "W.M. in H." as a story from here on.
It is a great story full of great writing, and I'm proud to be identified as its ideal audience (if that's what a dedication is meant to do...?). The story is narrated by a expat American running a small recording studio in Trinidad, and his ancillary connection to an attempted coup there by radical muslims in 1996.The title comes from The Clash's "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais," which the band released as a single in June 1978. It also appears on the US version of their eponymous 1977 debut album, which wasn't released in the States until 1979. "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais" is the best Clash song, a song that well illustrates their mesh of politics and punk, a song that cements them as The Only Band That Matters. I presume Bayard dedicated "W.M. in H." to me because he know how much I love "(W.M.) in H. P.," and how much I revere the song's co-author, Joe Strummer. However, there are aspects to both the song and its namesake story that touch on issues of (White Man) privilege and cultural appropriation that also -- perhaps not as consciously -- might play into the dedication and the thematic unity between the song, the story, and its dedicatee (i.e., yrs trly.)
The song "(W.M.) in H.P." is about a white Londoner (Strummer, himself the son of a British foreign service diplomat) who attends a a reggae concert at the Palais, hoping to absorb some of the danger and rebellion of Jamaican music but ultimately let down by the show's shallow glitz and showmanship: ...but it was Four Tops all night / with encores from stage right. The singer then turns that thought onto the shallowness of the by-then-fully-mature London punk scene -- they're all too busy fighting / for a good place under the lighting -- when they should be using punk's energy for forward political movement: the new groups are not concerned / with what there is to be learned / They've got Burton suits, you think its funny / turning rebellion into money. By song's end, the singer himself gives up and gives in: I'm the all-night drug-prowling wolf / who looks so sick in the sun / I'm the white man in the Palais / To go looking for fun. It's sort of Thomas Frank's Commodify Your Dissent in a four-minute pop song.The narrator in Godsave's novel is essentially taking on the same mission as Strummer in the song: he uses his white American privilege to make a personal paradise of Trinidad in the '90s, appropriating what he prefers from the culture (music, weed, an atmosphere of danger and dissent) without really understanding what he's doing. (Cf. Strummer on the recording of Sandinista!, the Clash's Jamaican dub and US hip-hop influenced album named after socialist Nicaraguan rebels: "I smoked so much pot, I'm surprised I haven't turned into a bush.") At the same time, the Trinidadian mystic/musician Master Z, with whom our narrator is obsessed and embroiled, is appropriating western/America hip hop in it's 90's/Pantherish guise of radical militarism, just as Strummer reports finding Leroy Smart and Delroy Wilson taking on aspects of the stalwart oldies-circuit Four Tops.
"W.M. in H"'s narrator's white/rich/expat privilege is most evident in that the novel places him always in contexts of recall and reaction: his privilege prevents him from doing anything but react. Most of his interactions with Master Z happen through media -- observing his radicalism through a control room's window, watching the coup on television. Our narrator can only consume culture, he can't really engage with it. He's the audience to history, like Strummer at the Palais or standing by as Caribbean youth challenged UK bobbies at the Notting Hill riots in 1976 (cf. The Clash, "White Riot.") This is part of what privilege does -- puts you behind the window, puts you in front of the screen, makes you audience or consumer rather than actor or maker. It makes you a book's dedicatee, perhaps, but not its author.
Neither "W.M. in H"'s narrator, nor "(W.M.) in H.P"'s narrator, nor I (fan of both) can be free of allegations of privilege and cultural appropriation. The life I live, the music I prefer, are things given to me, handed down or handed over. Even my kids are mine through a kind of cultural appropriation, though its not pleasant to dwell on that thought. One doesn't like to think of oneself as more Four Tops than drug-prowling wolf, even here in my lower-middle forties.
Junior Murvin said: All the peacemakers turn war officers.Eddy Grant said: Well, I'm running -- police on my back.
Willie Williams said: A lotta people won't get no justice tonight, so a lotta people going to have to stand up and fight.
Lloyd Price said: Stagger Lee threw seven, Billy swore that he threw eight.
James Wayne said: Down the road, came Junco Partner -- he was loaded as can be.
Joe Strummer, who also said these things, died in December 2002. The Hammersmith Palais closed down in 2007 and was demolished in June 2012.
--- --- ---
p.s. Order Bayard Godsave's Torture Tree here or ask for it at your local bookseller's. Both of the short novels within are tremendously good and well worth your time, attention, and dirty ill-gotten lucre.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment