The Power of Music: Mali's Ban and Kelly Rowland's 'Dirty Laundry'

"Music is a language that communicates what we cannot always say in words; it assures us of our interconnection." — "The Day the Music Died in Mali," by Sujatha Fernandes

I read this op-ed regarding militants' ban of music in northern Mali first thing this morning, and I haven't been able to stop thinking of it since. Can you imagine a world without music? I certainly can't. As the author wrote, some Malians have described the ban as akin to "banning the air we breathe"—and I can say with utter conviction that I would feel the same way.

The power of music has been on my mind lately, with the release of Kelly Rowland's new song, "Dirty Laundry," a gut-wrenching personal story about the singer's former violent relationship.



Britt Julious wrote a wonderful piece about the song for WBEZ, calling it "one of the most important songs of 2013." I couldn't agree more. As she wrote:

"The statistics for domestic violence are sobering. We assume that because we are not actively talking about it all the time that it is not there. We assume that if it is not in front of us everyday that it can't possibly exist. And yet, the numbers do not lie. The number one killer of African-American women ages 15 to 34 is homicide at the hands of a current or former partner, says the ABA. As well, only 17% of African-American sexual assault survivors report their assault to the police. The importance of this song and Rowland’s experiences can’t be reiterated enough. Later in the song (and years after her relationship ended), she sings:

I got my shit down pat/Think I had it good/And they don't know how bad/Fooled everybody/Except myself/Soaking in this hurt/Bathing in the dirt

Like many of her listeners, Rowland kept her experiences a secret. Outside she exuded strength and charisma, but inside she kept a secret. She was shamed herself, never being able to reveal her experiences to the public."

This song gives me chills with each listen. It's beautifully constructed, with an accompanying piano and beats that match each telling line. The lyrics paint the picture perfectly:

And I was trapped in his house, lyin’ to my mama
Thought it could get no worse as we maximize the drama
Started to call them people on him
I was battered
He hittin the window like it was me, until it shattered
He pulled me out, he said, “Don’t nobody love you but me
Not your mama, not your daddy and especially not Bey”
He turned me against my sister
I missed ya

How can we question music's power when we hear a story like this? It again makes me think of the people in Mali, separated from their music. As Sujatha Fernandes wrote in her piece, "A world without music is also a world without stories."

These stories, like Kelly Rowland's in "Dirty Laundry," aren't just catchy lyrics. The music is significant. I can't put it any clearer than Britt Julious did in her piece:

"The courage to speak out can be difficult for many. If only one woman listens to Rowland's work and sees in it the courage to speak out that is one life potentially saved."

Let's hope so. And let's also hope the Malians soon get their air back, fully.

Monday Mix Tapes: You Gotta Testify (Because the Booty Don't Lie)

We need to talk about Janelle Monáe. I thought my love for her was pretty intense, but then she had to go get my girl Erykah Badu involved and make me love her even more.

Behold, Q.U.E.E.N:



Where does one even BEGIN with this song and video? The lyrics are gold. The beats are gold. The outfits! The dancing! BADOULA OBLONGATA!

I just can't stop with this.

"And is it true that we're all insane? And I just tell 'em 'no we ain't' and get down"

This might be my favorite track of 2013 thus far. THAT'S RIGHT.

Mix Tape May Madness: Gatsby, Demons, Daughter!

Can we talk about how this May is going to be the greatest month of ALL OF OUR LIVES?

Or maybe just mine. But seriously, guys...

First up, there's going to be a James Blake DJ set happening in my life. A JAMES BLAKE DJ SET!

Shortly after I calm down from that happening (you know, like a week later), I'll be seeing Daughter at Lincoln Hall. And I have a sneaking suspicion it's going to be amazing:



Then, the moment I've been waiting for, for what seems like an entirety. The Great Gatsby comes out in theaters. (Here's hoping Tobey Maguire doesn't ruin everything for all of us.) But regardless, we need to talk about the soundtrack.

BECAUSE IT'S MY DREAM:




As if all of that isn't enough excitement, The National's new album, Trouble Will Find Me, comes out May 21st. (To explain just how pumped I am about this, I think my documented love of The National speaks for itself.) I'll be seeing them for the third time this summer at Lollapalooza, and I simply cannot wait to sing along and weep and spill red wine all over myself along with Matt Berninger in the Chicago August heat!

Not to mention: This. Single. ("I can't fight it anymore, I am going through an awkward phase...")



This could be the best May yet!

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: To Be Wild and Perfect for a Moment, Before

Peonies
by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
 to break my heart
  as the sun rises,
   as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
 pools of lace,
  white and pink--
   and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
 into the curls,
  craving the sweet sap,
   taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
 and all day
  under the shifty wind,
   as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
 and tip their fragrance to the air,
  and rise,
   their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
 gladly and lightly,
  and there it is again--
   beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
 Do you love this world?
  Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
   Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
 and softly,
  and exclaiming of their dearness,
   fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
 their eagerness
  to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
   nothing, forever?

Monday Mix Tapes: Once We Get Across the Border

"It seemed he had little pity for me and the divorce I'd brought on myself. He, Eddie, and Karen liked Paul. I couldn't make them understand why I'd had to smash things up. But you seemed so happy was all they could say. And it was true: we had seemed that way. Just as I'd seemed to be doing okay after my mom died. Grief doesn't have a face."

— excerpted from Wild, by Cheryl Strayed

I'm a little more than halfway through this wonderful book by Cheryl Strayed. I had just finished reading this passage when I got to my train stop tonight on the way home from work. The book details her amazing story about hiking more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone  — and throughout, it also details her grief of losing her mom.

Reading this book is cathartic, so much so that it's probably a gamble each time I open it on the train and start reading it, surrounded by strangers. I so far have managed not to start crying in public over it, which is impressive, given the material and the power of her writing.

It's not just the way Cheryl Strayed captures her feelings of loss over her mom, or the way she captures her alternating terror and jubilation while on the trail alone. It's also the way she directly addresses her faults, as well. After her mother's death, she spiraled into a series of bad choices with men and drugs, which also led to her divorce from her husband, a man whom she still deeply loved.

At this point you might be reading (if you haven't stopped already, bless you!) and thinking: What the hell, Alison? I thought we were going to be talking about fun music, not getting all serious again. 

Well, it really is getting there, I swear it. After reading this particular passage, I came home and heard this song by Say Lou Lou (formerly Saint Lou Lou). It's called "Julian," and to me, it feels brave and hopeful and exactly like how I feel when reading that book.



There's something about the lyrics, "I'll get you through the check points/I'll get us through the night." There's a sense of displacement, but under it all, this hope that we're going to get to the right place eventually. ("Oh, Julian.")

I haven't written that much lately. After my last post about Local Natives, a couple of people commented to me that I seemed sad. When I wrote it, I was. But then today, I listened to that same album and I didn't feel sad anymore. It wasn't that I no longer felt anything. I just felt something different.

It's kind of like how Cheryl Strayed felt hiking the PCT, I think. One day, she's miles away from water on a hundred-and-something degree day and feeling like "a big fat idiot," but then the next:

"As I spoke, the doubts I had about myself on the trail fell away for whole minutes at a time and I forgot about being a big fat idiot...I felt like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen."

So with that said, here's one more track for your Monday mix tape. It's the kind of song that makes me stop worrying that while I might feel like a big fat idiot one day, the next I might be a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.

Sometimes, you just have to feel it. Whatever that may be.

Every Night I Ask Myself...

Local Natives played in Chicago tonight. I was originally planning to go, but that didn't work out.

Maybe it's for the best.

I’ve been listening to their new album repeatedly since it was released, so much so that it’s become deeply personal, and almost representative of these last few months of my life, strange as that may sound. And since most of that listening has been through my ear buds, riding the train and walking to work, it’s also become an album that for me, speaks specifically to my solitude as well. It's how I feel bundled up against the harsh Chicago winter wind. It's how I feel, being alone with my thoughts as I walk to work in the mornings.

I know that if I start playing Hummingbird, the new album, right as I step out the door on the way to work, by the time I get to the elevators at my office building, the last song, "Bowery," will have just started. I know this, because I've been doing it at least once a week for the last two months.

One day, one of the first days, "Breakers" came on and I was so excited, I couldn't stop grinning as I stood, alone on the crowded train.

One day, one of the worst days, I listened to "You & I" and pressed my cheek against the cold train window. I didn't realize I was crying until I caught a woman staring at me, with that specific, kind sense of worry in her eyes that nice people give strangers they see crying in public. So I decided to just keep crying, because I needed to cry and because the songs were asking all my questions for me.

"When did your love, when did your love grow cold? The closer I get, the farther I have to fall..."

It’s funny how I can love an album so much when it makes me feel so deeply sad. But perhaps sad isn’t the right word. The album also makes me really damn happy. (I swear.)

But there's something about these songs. I feel it in almost every one. A yearning for something. Another fan said to me: "It's definitely a breakup album."

Maybe. But it's so much more than that. It makes me feel a yearning for so many things—things that I know I can't have, and things I didn't even realize I missed or wanted until that moment I hear it through the song. Either way, it's a feeling of wanting, of needing, something that seems just out of reach. But maybe if we keep listening, we'll get there.

***

The song "Colombia" begins with a slow, steady piano, and the words:

"The day after I had counted down all of your breaths down until
There were none, were none, were none, were none;
A hummingbird crashed right in front of me and I understood all you did for us."

From my first listen, I knew immediately what it was about.

I wanted to be wrong. But I wasn't. It's a song for vocalist Kelcey Ayers' mother, who passed away in 2012, and as the song builds, and builds, I'll be damned if you can't feel every ounce of his loss come through every plea.

"Ohhh, every night I ask myself
Am I loving enough?
Am I loving enough?

Patricia, every night I'll ask myself
Am I giving enough?
Am I?"



I can't tell you how many times I've listened to this song. I can't tell you how many times I ask myself those same questions.

***

The Saturday morning the tickets went on sale, we’d been out late at another show the night before. But we were serious about getting these tickets. He'd set an alarm on his phone to make sure to buy our tickets as soon as they went on sale. When the alarm went off at 10 am, he got out of bed, grabbed his laptop and carried it over, and bought us our tickets from bed.

A little bit later we walked to get breakfast, and the sun was shining. It was bright, too bright for how cold it really was. Our fingers were interlocked together but we were a million miles apart.

Across the booth from him at the diner, I gripped my coffee mug and looked down, and then up at him, trying to read his eyes. He smiled at me, but his eyes didn’t. I had a feeling, then, that maybe we weren't actually going to go see Local Natives together in March.

Because his eyes said everything that I knew he wasn't going to say. Or at least wasn't going to say again, not when the sun was so goddamn bright and it was so cold outside and all I could taste was the coffee on my tongue.

Later that day, I played "Heavy Feet" as I walked down the street away from his place, and to the train.




"After everything, after everything/left in the sun shivering"

***

The album comes to a close with "Bowery," which is perfect. ("Can't tell if the ceiling is rising or if the floor is falling down.")

I'm sure Local Natives put on a beautiful performance tonight. But I'm okay, right here.



"At the time I wasn't with you

At the time I didn't care."

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: the dance & the terror (the dead musicians & the hope)

It's been far too long since we've revisited For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.

Sooner or later, I will likely have excerpted the entire choreopoem, piece by disjointed piece. But for now, this:

lady in purple

i lived wit myths & music waz my old man & i cd dance
a dance outta time/ a dance wit no partners/ take my
pills & keep right on steppin/ linger in non-english
speakin arms so there waz no possibility of understandin
& you YOU
came sayin i am the niggah/ i am the baddest muthafuckah
out there/
i said yes/ this is who i am waitin for
& to come wit you/ i hadta bring everythin
the dance & the terror
the dead musicians & the hope
& those scars i had hidden wit smiles & good fuckin
lay open
& i dont know i dont know any more tricks
i am really colored & really sad sometimes & you hurt me
more than i ever danced outta/ into oblivion isnt far enuf
to get outta this/ i am ready to die like a lily in the
desert/ & i cdnt let you in on it cuz i didnt know/ here
is what i have/ poems/ big thighs/ lil tits/ &
so much love/ will you take it from me this one time/
please this is for you/ arsenio's tres cleared the way
& makes me pure again/ please please/ this is for you
i want you to love me/ let me love you/ i dont wanna
dance wit ghosts/ snuggle lovers i made up in my drunkenness/
lemme love you just like i am/ a colored girl/ i'm finally bein
real/ no longer symmetrical & impervious to pain