ORIENTALISM

"The popular music of North Africa exists precariously in the fissure of post-colonial, postmodern in-betweenness. Popular musicians sing against the institutions of the politically powerful, yet depend upon the connections of such institutions to the former colonizing nations, especially the recording industries of Paris and London. (...) No other North African popular music has secured a place as palpably in the postmodern imagination as has raï, which means something like 'a way of seeing' or 'an opinion'. Raï is the music of the urban disenfranchised in North Africa, especially in Algeria and eastern Morocco.


The Fifth Element - real. Luc Besson, 1997

We might also interpret the attraction of raï as stereotipically orientalist. (...) As world music, raï evokes the marketplace of the Muslim city, the harem, the court, and the social gathering where forbidden substances are used. When the producers of the 1997 science-fiction movie The Fifth Element needed a soundtrack to accompany Bruce Willis as he raced through the confused fantasy of the futuristic metropolis, a song by perhaps the most famous raï star, Khaled, fitted the bill. The jumble that raï has absorbed becomes the East writ large. In the mediated world imagined through world beat, the producers of raï have succumbed to the allure of full-blown orientalism" (A Very Short Introdution to World Music de Philip V. Bohlman)

(2008)

TO MIX AND REMIX THE NATION

"On 9 May 1998, the Israeli entry won first place in the Eurovision Song Contest, broadcast that year from Birmingham, England. 'Diva' was sung by Dana International, an Israeli whose mixture of Yemenite and Sephardic heritages had located her in a lineage of popular singers famiiiar to Israelis. (...) Times had changed, however, and Dana International had a national image rather different from the earlier Israeli stars popularizing musica mizrakhit (eastern music). On the one hand, Dana was demonstrably patriotic, and she openly displayed her eagerness not just to represent Israel but to win for Israel. On the other hand, Dana was famously transsexual, and she was no less open in her display of a complex sexuality.

In a religious state, whose orthodox and ultra-orthodox religious population commanded an extraordinary degree of national power, one might expect that the image of a nation embodying multiple forms of sexuality would not be particularly welcome, especially on the stage of the most widely broadcast world music contest. (...) Dana's songs mix and remix the nation, sampling the elements that have always constituted the multiple histories of Israel's past and the multiple identities of its present. In so doing, they confirm rather than deny a national presence in Dana's own vision of world music. It was that vision that her victory at the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest so clearly recognized". (A Very Short Introdution to World Music de Philip V. Bohlman)

(2008)

MUZAK-CHÁ-DE-JASMIM

Dengue Fever - Venus On Earth

Na seríissima e erudita Very Short Introduction To World Music, de Philip V. Bohlman (publicada pela Oxford University Press), um capítulo inteiro é dedicado ao Festival da Eurovisão – dissecando tudo quanto ele implica de ambiguidade na delicada questão das “identidades nacionais” – e, nele, é particularmente analisada a figura de Dana International, o transsexual que, em 1998, o venceu concorrendo por Israel, sintetizado nestas palavras: “Dana’s songs mix and remix the nation”. Venus On Earth, terceiro álbum dos Dengue Fever (tal como os recentes dos Gogol Bordello, Devotchka, Chicha Libre ou Vampire Weekend), bem poderia ser lançado também para o caldeirão dessa polémica: banda constituída por instrumentistas americanos e cantora cambojana dedica-se à recuperação do obscuro "psych-lounge-surf-garage-pop" do Camboja que a ditadura dos Khmers Vermelhos extinguira; como Dana, entregam-se ao “mix and remix” desse vocabulário, convertem-no em matéria pop contemporânea e a Realword publica-os. No caso, porém, nem vale a pena o debate estético/ideológico: na maioria dos temas, pouco se vai além da muzak-chá-de-jasmim que se pode escutar durante o jantar, na instalação sonora de um vulgar restaurante chinês.

(2008)