Opinion: Censoring Myself for Success
By K’NAAN
Published: December 8, 2012
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.
 |
| K'Naan |
Right now, the pressures of the music industry encourage me to change
the walk of my songs. When I write from the deepest part of my heart, my
advisers say, I remind people too much of Somalia, which I escaped as a
boy. My audience is in America, so my songs should reflect the land
where I have chosen to live and work.
They have a point. A musician’s songs are not just his own; he shares
them with an audience. Still, Somalia is where my life and poetry began.
It is my walk. And I don’t want to lose it. Or stifle it. Or censor it
in the name of marketing.
I first saw censorship as a child in Mogadishu, walking into my home’s
courtyard one day and hearing a radio hushed nearly to silence. The
adults hovered around, listening to a song. And I asked why one song had
to be played at a whisper while another could blast through the house.
A war was going on, I was told, and some songs had meanings the
government did not want deciphered. Those “anti songs” were different
from love songs, or folk songs. You had to take care in dressing the
words. In love songs, words could preen in bright colors; in anti songs,
they attacked in camouflage.
6 comments:
K'Naan, on Censoring Himself for Success
FULL TEXT:
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.
Right now, the pressures of the music industry encourage me to change the walk of my songs. When I write from the deepest part of my heart, my advisers say, I remind people too much of Somalia, which I escaped as a boy. My audience is in America, so my songs should reflect the land where I have chosen to live and work.
They have a point. A musician’s songs are not just his own; he shares them with an audience. Still, Somalia is where my life and poetry began. It is my walk. And I don’t want to lose it. Or stifle it. Or censor it in the name of marketing.
I first saw censorship as a child in Mogadishu, walking into my home’s courtyard one day and hearing a radio hushed nearly to silence. The adults hovered around, listening to a song. And I asked why one song had to be played at a whisper while another could blast through the house.
A war was going on, I was told, and some songs had meanings the government did not want deciphered. Those “anti songs” were different from love songs, or folk songs. You had to take care in dressing the words. In love songs, words could preen in bright colors; in anti songs, they attacked in camouflage. And from that, I got a hint of the power of lyrics — to encapsulate magic, or to spread alarm.
Now I have recorded three albums. A few days before I was to record the third, which was released in October, I received a phone call saying my record label wanted a little talk — before the songs were written. (I like to write in the moment.) For the first two albums, there were no such talks. But that was before my name was familiar. So let me start my story there.
In 2005 I found cheap recording space and sang about the killing ground of Somalia:
“We begin our day by the way of the gun... you don’t pay at the roadblock you get your throat shot... I walk with three kids who can’t wait to meet God lately, Bucktooth, Mohamed and Crybaby.”
In 2008, with a recording budget, I went on my own to Jamaica, to Bob Marley’s old studio, and sang of a lovely, doomed young friend:
“Fatima Fatima, I’m in America, I make rhymes and I make ’em delicate, you woulda liked the parks in Connecticut... Damn you shooter, damn you the building, whose walls hid the blood she was spilling, damn you country so good at killing, damn you feeling, for persevering.”
That was my truest voice — my continent’s angst in a personal story. When I sang, my audience wouldn’t just hear music; they would see geography. And yes, it made me well known.
Which brings me to our little chat. Over breakfast in SoHo, we talked about how to keep my new American audience growing. My lyrics should change, my label’s executives said; radio programmers avoid subjects too far from fun and self-absorption.
And for the first time, I felt the affliction of success. When I walked away from the table, there were bruises on the unheard lyrics of my yet-to-be-born songs. A question had raised its hand in the quiet of my soul: What do you do after success? What must you do to keep it?
If this was censorship, I thought, it was a new kind — one I had to do to myself. The label wasn’t telling me what to do. No, it was just giving me choices and information, about my audience — 15-year-old American girls, mostly, who knew little of Somalia. How much better to sing them songs about Americans.
...
I also learned about the difference between Top 40 radio audiences and adult contemporary; between A.C. and urban. And between those and no radio play at all. (Which, for a second, made a voice inside me say with horror: “Hey, that’s me! I am Option C, no radio play at all.”)
And there I was, trembling between doubt and self-awareness. I had started at Option C, striving to make (and please allow room for grandiosity here) my own “Natty Dread” or my own “The Times They Are a-Changin’ .” But now, after breakfast, another voice was there, whispering how narrow the window of opportunity was.
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. Yes to trying out songs with A-list producers. Yes to moving production from Kingston to Los Angeles. Yes to giving the characters in my songs names like Mary.
So some songs became far more Top 40 friendly, but infinitely cheaper.
On my second album, I had sung about my mother’s having to leave my cousin behind in Somalia’s war — “How bitter when she had to choose who to take with her...” Now I was left, in “Is Anybody Out There?” — a very American song about the evils of drugs — with only “His name was Adam, when his mom had ’im.”
The first felt to me like a soul with a paintbrush; the other a body with no soul at all.
SO I had not made my Marley or my Dylan, or even my K’naan; I had made an album in which a few genuine songs are all but drowned out by the loud siren of ambition. Fatima had become Mary, and Mohamed, Adam.
I now suspect that packaging me as an idolized star to the pop market in America cannot work; while one can dumb down his lyrics, what one cannot do without being found out is hide his historical baggage. His sense of self. His walk. I imagine the 15-year-old girls can understand that. If not intellectually, perhaps spiritually.
I come with all the baggage of Somalia — of my grandfather’s poetry, of pounding rhythms, of the war, of being an immigrant, of being an artist, of needing to explain a few things. Even in the friendliest of melodies, something in my voice stirs up a well of history — of dark history, of loss’s victory.
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 its own stride.
I may never find my old walk again, but I hope someday to see beauty in the graceless limp back toward it.
K’naan is a Somali-born musician and poet based in New York.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 16, 2012
An earlier version of this essay omitted a second ellipsis from an excerpt of a song K’naan released in 2005 about killings in his native Somalia. The excerpt should have read: “We begin our day by the way of the gun ... you don’t pay at the roadblock you get your throat shot ... I walk with three kids who can’t wait to meet God lately, Bucktooth, Mohamed and Crybaby.”
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 9, 2012, on page SR7 of the New York edition with the headline: Censoring Myself For Success.
I would like to argue that the latest album Country, God or the girl is not as good as K'Naan's earlier albums, but that's not true.
The first three songs: The Seed, Gold in Timbuktu, and Waiting is a Drug are completely awesome, delivering both the immediate 'message' and just goosebumpy great sound. The fifth song, Simple is similar, just out-of-this-world and memorable.
The album also includes a lot of collaborations and good-to-great pop sounds, you know. The fourth song Better, the sixth song Is Anybody Out There (with Nelly Furtado), the seventh to ninth - Hurt Me Tomorrow, The Sound of My Breaking Heart, Nothing to Lose (with Nas) - are in this category. Add to its commercial value.
I'm now listening to the 10th song (70 Excuses) which is in the first category: beautiful music that has now broken into what an Irish musician would call a jig, but which is also the (you know I can see it, these drums you clap in your hands like a tambourine) type of thing you know they do in Ethiopia / the ancient lands around Israel according to my Bible stories.
With the eleventh track, Bulletproof Pride (with Bono) we're back in group two. A Bono-sounding song with K'Naan's nice vocals in.
It's a long album, six more songs. 12. The Wall is nice.
13. Sleep When We Die (with Keith Richards)
14. More Beautiful Than Silence (interesting from tender vocals to hard rap, by now you know K'Naan is gifted at both.)
15. Alone (with will.i.am) Very good song, very will.i.am.
16. On The Other Side (with Mark Foster)
17. Coming To America (rap over a male South African choir, interesting)
Great album, well, great first half, good-to-great second.
I'll tell you about the early albums later, so you can see for yourself that you want to listen to all and pick your own favourites :) And I guess there's nothing wrong with commercial success, his artistry was still on display most of the time.
Keinan Abdi Warsame's mug is the album cover for his third album Troubadour (2009), the one before Country, God and the Girl (2012). The internet tells me Troubadour was mostly recorded in Jamaica. I suppose it is 'World Music' then.
You want to know how good this album is? Wavin' Flag, which was essentially the 2010 world cup soundtrack, that song doesn't even stand out on this album. It's just song number 7 of 14. I've tried to pick out the standout track, but really, from track 1 - T.I.A (This Is Africa) to 14 - People Like Me, Troubadour is just one cool, different, authentic, piece of art by a mature artiste who has a lot to offer and has already experimented enough in the past that they can now deliver a completely satisfying product.
It's hip and it's positive, even when it's about sad things. On 10 - Fatima, his childhood sweetheart was killed in Mogadishu, as he said, she was so beautiful that 'the angel wanted to hold her'. Great poetry.
I love the beat of Fire in Freetown. He's in awe of sex with a woman, here in the 21st century. It's all very psychedelic.
Then on the next song 12 - Take A Minute, he opens with the amazing vocals "And every man who knows a thing knows he knows not a damn damn thing at all" - ah, that gets me everytime. It's pure beauty.
Then the next song is utterly clever : 15 Minutes Away , about immigrants in poverty and the joy of Western Union when you're that broke. The beat again. The whole album, you know - it's just great bass, beats, lyrics, sax, Somali-sound, heart and generousity, smoothly blended gorgeousness.
8- Somalia has the quotable lines "a lot of mainstream niggas is yapping about yapping // a lot of underground niggas is rapping about rapping // I just wanna tell you what is really crackalacking..."
There are featured artistes too:
Chubb Rock on 2 - ABC's
Damian Marley on 4 - I Come Prepared
Adam Levine (Maroon5 guy) on 5 - Bang Bang
Kirk Hammett on 6 - If Rap Gets Jealous
Mos Def and Chali 2NA on 9 I America
Alright, enrich your life today, listen to Troubadour.
I made a playlist of KNaan favourites (mostly from these two albums but with a bit from the earlier albums - The Dusty Foot stuff). Here goes:
The Seed | Gold in Timbuktu | Waiting is a Drug | Simple | 70 Excuses | Bulletproof Pride | More Beautiful Than Silence | Alone | Wavin' Flag | America | Fatima | Fire in Freetown | Take a Minute | 15 Minutes Away | Smile | Until the Lion Learns to Speak | Soobax
From this list, I could remove More Beautiful Than Silence, and then put a big fat star against Fire in Freetown. He was jamming, on fire, on that one.
Someday I'll go immerse in the earlier albums. Only so many hours in a day, you know?
I have a second playlist of the songs (last two albums) that are NOT on the Faves playlist. My favourite on this list is "The Sound of My Breaking Heart". Now one of my favourite.
Post a Comment